A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Judith (of Abyssinia)
JUDITH, Queen of Abyssinia,
Menilek, the son of Solomon and the queen of Sheba, or Saba, having brought over from Jerusalem the books of the law of Moses, and many learned doctors, to instruct his people in the faith, established the succession of his family to the throne; and his people embracing the Jewish religion, remained in it till about the year 330 after Christ, or a few years later, when they received the Gospel; but the crown continued in the same family, as it has done till the present day, with only two interruptions, one of which is the subject of this article, in the tenth or eleventh century.
In one family of the Jews, an independent sovereignty had always been preserved on the mountain of Samen, and the royal residence was upon a high-pointed rock, called the Jew's Rock. Several other inaccessible mountains served as natural fortresses for these people, now grown very considerable, in consequence of accessions of strength from Palestine and Arabia, whence the Jews had been expelled. Gideon and Judith were then king and queen, and their daughter Judith (whom in Amhara they call Esther and sometimes Saat, i.e, fire), a woman of great beauty and talents for intrigue, had been married to the governor of a small district called Bugna, in the neighbourhood of Lasta, both which countries were likewise much infested with Judaism.
Judith, in line, had made so strong a party, that she resolved to attempt the subversion of the christian religion, and with it the succession in the line of Solomon. The children of the royal family were, in virtue of the old law, confined on the almost inaccessible mountains of Damo, in Tigrè. The short reign, sudden and unexpected death, of the king Aizor, and the weak state of Del Naad, who was to succeed him, yet an infant, with the desolation an epidemical disease had spread both in court and capital, impressed her with the idea that now was the time to place her own family on the throne, and extirpate the race of Solomon. Accordingly she surprised the rock Damo, and slew all the princes there, to the amount, it is said, of four hundred. Some nobles of Amhara, upon the first news of the catastrophe at Damo, conveyed the infant king Del Naad, now the only remaining prince of his race, into the powerful and loyal province of Shoa, and by this means the royal family was preserved to be again restored. Judith, nevertheless, took possession of the throne in defiance of the laws of the queen of Saba. By this, the first interruption of the line of Solomon; and contrary to what might have been expected from the violent means she had used to acquire the crown, not only enjoyed it herself during a long reign of forty years, but transmitted it to five of her descendants. After this, the line of Solomon was restored in the descendants of Del Naad, who, in the mean time, had continued their residence at Shoa, without making one attempt, as far as history tells us, towards recovering their ancient kingdom.