Case file · Folklore / legend
Queen Gudit and the fall of Aksum
Ethiopian tradition remembers Gudit (Yodit), a queen of the 10th century, as a destroyer who burned churches, killed the royal family and tried to wipe out Christianity at Aksum.
960 CE · 14.13, 38.72 · status: legend
The account
Later chronicles blame her for toppling stelae and sacking Aksum, and some versions say the Ark was hidden from her on islands in Lake Tana. A letter from an Ethiopian king to the Coptic patriarch, reported in the Arabic History of the Patriarchs, speaks of a queen ravaging the kingdom around this time.
The sceptical view
Her name, origin and deeds vary from text to text; some historians see in her a non-Christian ruler from the south, others a symbol of the decline of Aksum. The great stelae probably fell much earlier.