Sheba

108
THE KEBRA NAGAST
The Caleb Cycle of the Kebra Nagast is sometimes dated between the
reign of the eastern Roman (Byzantine) emperor Justin I (A.D. 518-527)
and before madness overcame Justin II (A.D. 571). The reasoning behind
this is that the Caleb Cycle treats the death of the eastern Roman emperor
Marcian (A.D. 457), last of the male imperial Theodosian line, as a
consequence of his convening the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) that
rejected Monophysitism. It refers to Justin I as a co-religionist, hence a
Monophysite, but makes no mention of Justin II’s later years when his
insanity had advanced to such a stage that he had himself wheeled round in
a small cart so he could bite his subjects’ legs. If the Caleb Cycle had been
written during or after this time, it would have used this madness as an
example of the consequences of rejecting Monophysitism. However,
references to both Justins and to Marcian come at the end of the Kebra
Nagast in the same section as the fourteenth century monarch Amda Seyon.
In addition, the references to Marcian and other issues are inaccurate, so it
is probable that the whole of this late section was written in the early 1300s
not in the 500s as is the rest of the Caleb Cycle. The Caleb Cycle speaks of
the emperor Marcian as being vanquished by the Persians. The writer
seems to have confused Marcian, who suffered no such fate, with a later
ruler. During and after the Himyarite War the Byzantines were in frequent
diplomatic contact with Aksum, but it seems the authors of the Kebra
Nagast did not have access to pertinent records. The Caleb Cycle states
Justin I and Caleb met before launching their campaigns against the Jewish
movements in Armenia and in Himyar. Such a meeting never took place,
and Justin’s name may have been confused with Julian, an envoy whom the
Emperor Justinian (A.D. 527–565) dispatched to Aksum. The Caleb Cycle
also confuses Justin’s Armenian campaign with the Persian campaign
against the Jewish state of Mahoza. It is Mahoza that was linked to Yusuf’s
rising in Himyar/Yemen. Justin’s campaign was in the region of modern
Armenia and Georgia, where there were demographically insignificant
isolated Jewish groups, including blacksmiths of African descent in Colchis,
whose ancestors, according to Herodotus, had been exiled by the Assyrians.
These Jewish groups do not seem to have led a major rebellion against the
Byzantines. The confusion between Justin’s campaign and the Persian
campaign must have been partly due to references to “Armenia,” whose
boundaries once included much of modern Turkey and Iraq. Lastly, the
Caleb Cycle only briefly refers to Caleb’s crusade against Jewish Himyar,
although other highly detailed Monophysite accounts in Syriac exist. All
this evidence points to the bulk of the Caleb Cycle being written at the