ABSTRACT
Ethiopians have always considered themselves the lawful successors of the Jews. Aksum, the Zion of Abyssinia, became the seat of God and the Atk of the Covenant–as embodied in the Kebra Nagast ("Glory of the Kings"), the national saga of the Ethiopians. The Jews, Jewish proselytes, and Judaism were thus strongly entrenched in pre-Islamic Arabia. This chapter proposes the penetration of Hebraic-Jewish elements into Abyssinia in a twofold manner. It has already been mentioned that among the South Arabian immigrants into the Aksumite Empire there must have been some Jews. There were, it appears, with military interventions of the Habasatin Arabia. They all occurred at a time when the Jewish impact on South Arabia was considerable. As circumcision has always been specially associated with the Jews, it is scarcely surprising that early accounts of Ethiopia see in circumcision yet one more custom borrowed by the Ethiopians from the Jews.
