By Quentin Clark (PhD Student, Department of Art History, Florida State University)

Provenance and Description

A previously unpublished Ethiopian seal stamp, currently housed in the Blick-Harris Study Collection, was first acquired in 1976 by Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University, David P. Harris (1925–2019) (Fig. 1). It was subsequently bequeathed to Kenyon College in 2020 following Harris’ death. The stamp’s location of purchase, a secondhand shop in Virginia termed “Nuevo Mundo,” is the object’s earliest known provenance. The stamp’s pre-1970s whereabouts are unknown.

While certain details regarding our stamp and its early history––the identities of its creator and original owner, and its precise region and year of production––remain a mystery, much is revealed upon examining its iconographic program. A single figure, perhaps a woman based on the detail of her long, braided hair, comprises much of this object’s composition. Her upper body is portrayed as multi-layered fabric, while her lower body is represented more abstractly; instead of a continuation of the woman’s form, the stamp’s lower half features a depiction of a lion against a backdrop of vegetation (Fig. 2). Located beneath the stamp while in its standing position is the circular seal matrix, which features a portrait in left profile, also with braided hair, and flanking ancient South Arabian and Ge’ez inscriptions (Fig. 3).

I propose that by representing a woman––who I identify as an iteration of the Queen of Sheba––and a lion on this object, our stamp’s twentieth-century owner signified a Christian identity related to the legend of King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, and King Menelik I that originated in the medieval Aksumite Kingdom (ca. 300–700 CE). This identity, and visual representations of it, witnessed a resurgence of Ethiopian material culture in the mid-twentieth century.

Christianity in Medieval Aksum

The ancient city of Aksum––the medieval kingdom’s namesake––is situated in Ethiopia’s modern-day regional state of Tigray in East Africa. At its political height between the fourth and fifth centuries, the boundaries of this Ethiopian state spread across the Red Sea and into South Arabia. This ideal coastal geography allowed the kingdom to thrive through at least the tenth century. Its location proved optimal as a central hub of trade between Roman powers in the north and west, and Arabian, Persian, and Indian powers in the south and east (Munro-Hay 1991, 1).

For much of its early existence, the Aksumite Kingdom functioned as a non-Christian, polytheistic society. By the fourth century, however, it transitioned from such a state to one that primarily practiced a monotheistic, Christian religion. Evidence of this transition survives in the texts of fourth-century Latin historian Rufinus (Rufinus 1997). His works were written as first-hand accounts conveyed to him by his contemporary Aedesius of Tyre, who served as both a prisoner and a servant in the royal household at Aksum with his brother Frumentius, a future Christian bishop. According to Rufinus’ text, Frumentius functioned as a missionary of sorts, urging those in Aksum to pray and establish Christian foundations––or churches––as they traveled through and beyond the bounds of the kingdom (Rufinus 1997). This account thus documents the proliferation of Christianity throughout Aksum in the first half of the fourth century.

This shift to Christianity is exemplified also in the imagery of the kingdom’s official coinage. The first Ethiopian ruler to integrate Christian iconography onto his coins was fourth-century Emperor Ezana. While earlier royal coins featured standard images of a disk and crescent, those of Ezana’s replaced this symbol with that of the Christian cross. We witness this iconographic shift in two early fourth-century Aksumite coins––the first minted during the reign of Emperor Endybis (r. 295–310), and the second minted during the reign of Emperor Ezana (r. 320–360) (Figs. 4 and 5). Each coin features a visual iteration of its respective ruler at its center and an inscription circling the area of its exterior. Endybis’ earlier coin features a disk and crescent above the depicted ruler’s head, while Ezana’s instead features a cross. The texts of Rufinus and the coins of both these fourth-century Ethiopian rulers indicate the official adoption of Christianity on behalf of the Aksumite Kingdom by this early period.

The Queen of Sheba in Ethiopian Legend

The Queen of Sheba, a figure alleged to have lived nearly a millennium prior to the founding of the medieval state, was central to Christian Aksumite identity. According to both Ethiopian Christian tradition and the state’s interpretation of biblical scripture, the legendary queen was born in Ethiopia––in the same region in which the later Aksumite Kingdom would be established (Wheeler 1936, 3). This perceived association with Aksum thus encouraged Ethiopian Christians to claim the queen as their own (Wheeler 1936, 3–4). The Queen of Sheba, her relationship with King Solomon, and the supposed son they bore allowed Aksumite Christians to justifiably claim a direct royal lineage to the queen and her divine family (Wheeler 1936, 3–4).

This Ethiopian legend was rooted in biblical scripture. The original meeting of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon is described in the first book of Kings in the Old Testament (1 Kings 10:1–9). While the Queen of Sheba is identified within this passage specifically, her country of origin is not. This lack of detail has caused much debate regarding the figure’s identity, as well as the identity of her ancestral descendants (Coulter-Harris 2013). Here, I underscore medieval Aksumite claims to the Queen of Sheba and the ways in which these claims affect our reading of our stamp.

According to Ethiopian legend, the Queen of Sheba became pregnant with King Solomon’s son while visiting him in Jerusalem––a detail decidedly absent from the scriptural account (Wheeler 1936, 93–113). Upon her return to Ethiopia, the queen bore her child, naming him Menelik I (Wheeler 1936, 122–27). This boy became Ethiopia’s first official king, and the king from which all his successors, both medieval and modern, claimed royal lineage (Wheeler 1936, 144–51). The legend of the Queen of Sheba and King Menelik I therefore remains critical to Ethiopian Christian identity, particularly because a claim to this lineage has historically signified both divine and royal legitimacy.

An additional element of this legend is that of the lion. According to the same Ethiopian tradition, King Solomon gifted the Queen of Sheba a ring upon her departure from Jerusalem (Wheeler 1936). This object featured an engraved image of a lion, which the king intended be passed to their son. Following King Menelik I’s death, the lion-ring was then alleged to have been passed from one successor to the next, until the final emperor of Ethiopia’s––Haile Selassie I’s––death in 1975 (Wheeler 1936). The legend of this ring presents the lion as an iconographic symbol of legitimate royal rule––a symbol, according to Ethiopian tradition, that originated with the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon in the tenth century BCE, persisted through the medieval Christian Aksumite period, and continued into the late twentieth century. It is through this lens that we must examine our stamp and its iconography.

Modern and Medieval Visual Comparanda

At least two modern stone seal stamps comparable to ours exist and can be purchased, as of the writing of this post, on an online site dubbed “Ethiopian Culture.” Much akin to our stamp, these others integrate figurative elements into their compositions: one portrays a form identified as King Solomon, and the other portrays a form identified as the Queen of Sheba (Figs. 6 and 7). Their seal matrices, resembling our stamp’s, feature individual portraits rendered in right profile, yet they lack the inscriptions ours possesses (Figs. 8 and 9). These objects indicate that others similar to ours exist and feature common types of iconography despite their varied styles and degrees of detail. The lack of representations of these subjects in any extant medieval Aksumite material culture suggests these objects and their images were created during the twentieth century, a period in which the same subjects proliferated in Ethiopian artistic culture.

The formal qualities of our stamp’s impression––or the seal itself––also signify a medieval Aksumite identity, specifically related to the imagery on royal coins. When pressed into modeling clay, our seal matrix’s visual program was reversed, leaving an image of a figure in right profile at center and ancient South Arabian and Ge’ez inscriptions to its left and right sides, respectively (Fig. 10). A fourth-century coin minted during the reign of Ezana features an identical formal arrangement: a central figure in right profile is framed on both its left and right sides by inscribed texts (Fig. 11). This similarity indicates that medieval Aksumite coins could have functioned as models for the visual program of our stamp’s seal matrix.

Conclusions

As demonstrated, our Ethiopian seal stamp was but one to emerge during the twentieth century. Its iconographic elements––the Queen of Sheba and the lion––functioned as visual expressions of a longstanding and legitimate Christian identity. The formal qualities of its matrix, reminiscent of the standard visual program of medieval Aksumite coinage, reflected the same royal lineage.

Connecting our stamp undoubtedly to the legend of the Queen of Sheba is its inscription. Its South Arabian text is largely obscured, as only two letters remain legible: 𐩴𐩬 (N and G) (Muehlbauer 2025). Its Ge’ez text, on the otherhand, is bordered above and below by the symbols of a cross and a disk and crescent, respectively. It reads: ሳባ (“Saba” or “Sheba”) (Muehlbauer 2025). Whatever meaning the entirety of its inscription conveyed, it becomes clear that our stamp evoked the Queen of Sheba through both its word and its image. Reasons for the specific desire or need for such an expression on this object––and others of a similar fashion––during the twentieth century have yet to be explored.

Selected Bibliography

Coulter-Harris, Deborah M. The Queen of Sheba: Legend, Literature and Lore. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2013.

Munro-Hay, Stuart. Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991.

Rufinus. The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia. Translated by Philip R. Amidon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Wheeler, Post. The Golden Legend of Ethiopia: The Love-Story of Mâqedâ, Virgin Queen of Axum & Shêbâ, & Solomon the Great King. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1936.

Inscription translations are attributed to Mikael Muehlbauer, PhD.