Empress Menen Asfaw: Queen Omega of Ethiopia in Rastafari

Empress Menen Asfaw (c. 1889–1962) was the wife of Haile Selassie I and Empress of Ethiopia from their joint coronation in November 1930 until her death. A noblewoman of the province of Wollo, she was known in Ethiopia for her piety and her patronage of girls' schools and the church; in Rastafari she is honoured as Queen Omega, the divine partner of the emperor as King Alpha, and as the model of the Rastafari woman, the "Empress".

The emperor's own life and his place in Rastafari theology are told in Haile Selassie I in Rastafari; this article follows the empress.

Menen Asfaw: Family and Early Life§

Menen was born in Wollo, in north-eastern Ethiopia, most sources say in 1889, though 1891 is also given; precise dates for Ethiopian nobility of this period are often uncertain. Her father, Asfaw, was a nobleman of Ambassel, and her mother, Sehin, was a daughter of Negus Mikael of Wollo, one of the most powerful lords of the empire. Mikael had been born a Muslim and had converted to Christianity under Emperor Yohannes IV; he married a daughter of Emperor Menelik II, and their son Lij Iyasu became Menelik's designated heir. Menen was thus the granddaughter of a king and the niece of the future uncrowned emperor.

Like other women of her rank she was brought up in the Ethiopian Orthodox faith and the culture of the court. She was married young, before her marriage to Tafari, and had children from that earlier union. These details, which appear in Ethiopian court histories and modern biographies, matter for understanding her later position: she brought to her second marriage both her own lineage and close ties to the most powerful family in the north.

Marriage to Tafari Makonnen and the Coronation of 1930§

In 1911 Menen married Tafari Makonnen, the young governor of Harar and son of Ras Makonnen, a cousin and leading general of Menelik. The match connected Tafari to Iyasu's family at a time when Iyasu was heir; within a few years the two men were rivals, and in 1916 Iyasu was deposed and Tafari became regent under Empress Zewditu. Haile Selassie's autobiography, My Life and Ethiopia's Progress, describes the marriage with warmth, and contemporaries regarded it as a close partnership.

The couple had six children together: the princesses Tenagnework, Zenebework and Tsehai, and the princes Asfaw Wossen, Makonnen and Sahle Selassie. Asfaw Wossen became crown prince.

On 2 November 1930, at St George's Cathedral in Addis Ababa, Tafari was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I, King of Kings of Ethiopia, and Menen was crowned empress in the same ceremony. The coronation was reported around the world, and photographs of the imperial couple in their regalia, surrounded by foreign delegations, reached Jamaica. For the first Rastafari, the image of a crowned Black king and queen, heirs of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba according to the Kebra Nagast, was itself a sign of prophecy fulfilled; the legend behind that claim is explained in the Kebra Nagast in Rastafari.

Empress of Ethiopia: Education, Welfare and the Church§

As empress, Menen took up causes that suited the emperor's programme of cautious modernisation and her own piety. In 1931 she founded a school for girls in Addis Ababa that bore her name, one of the first institutions in the country to offer modern education to girls. She was a patron of women's charitable and welfare associations, and during the crisis of 1935, as Fascist Italy prepared to invade, Ethiopian noblewomen under her patronage organised relief work and appeals for support abroad.

Her devotion to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was well known. She endowed churches and monasteries, and she maintained close links with the Ethiopian community in Jerusalem, whose monks had kept a presence at the holy places for centuries. Ethiopian writers remember her as a pious, reserved and charitable figure, less visible in politics than the emperor but influential at court.

War, Exile and the Post-War Court§

When the Italian army defeated the Ethiopian forces in 1936, the imperial family left the country in May. Menen shared the exile, spending time in Jerusalem as well as in England, where the family settled at Fairfield House in Bath. The years of exile were hard: the court was short of money, the emperor's appeal to the League of Nations had failed, and news from Ethiopia was of massacres and occupation.

The family returned after the liberation of 1941, but the empress's later years brought heavy losses. Princess Tsehai, who had trained as a nurse in England, died in 1942, and Prince Makonnen, Duke of Harar, was killed in a road accident in 1957. In 1960 a group of officers and officials attempted a coup while the emperor was abroad, briefly proclaiming the crown prince in his place; the plot failed within days. Empress Menen died in Addis Ababa on 15 February 1962 and was buried in Holy Trinity Cathedral. When Haile Selassie's remains were finally given a state funeral in November 2000, twenty-five years after his death, they were laid in the same cathedral beside hers.

King Alpha and Queen Omega: Menen in Rastafari Belief§

Rastafari theology, as it developed in Jamaica in the 1930s, gave the empress a place no Ethiopian source had given her. The 1920s pamphlet The Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy by Fitz Balintine Pettersburg spoke of a King Alpha and a Queen Omega, and Leonard Howell's The Promised Key (c. 1935) applied these titles to Haile Selassie and Menen. The names come from the "Alpha and Omega" of Revelation 1:8, the beginning and the end. Applied to a royal couple, they expressed the idea that the divine is complete in male and female together, a theme developed in Howell's career as told in Leonard Howell and Pinnacle.

Not all Rastafari read the pair in the same way. For some, Menen is a divine figure alongside the emperor, the mother of creation; for others she is the honoured consort of the King of Kings, a queen in the line of Makeda, the Queen of Sheba. Her picture often hangs beside his in Rastafari homes and tabernacles, and chants and prayers name them together. The differences between the orders on this and other questions are described in the mansions of Rastafari.

The Empress as a Model for Rastafari Women§

In Rastafari usage a woman partner is often called an empress or queen, and women in the movement are sistren or daughters. The title draws directly on Menen: a Rastafari woman is understood to be to her kingman what the empress was to the emperor, dignified, devout and royal. For many Rastafari women this has been a source of pride, a rejection of the contempt with which Black women were treated in colonial society.

Scholars and Rastafari women themselves have also discussed the limits of the model. Obiagele Lake and others have argued that early Rastafari often confined women to the home and to modest dress and conduct, and that the ideal of the empress could reinforce male authority. Since the 1980s Rastafari women have organised, written and preached more publicly, and some have reread Menen as an active figure, founder of schools and patron of public causes, rather than only a silent consort. These debates are followed in Rastafari today.

Frequently asked questions§

Who was Empress Menen?§

Menen Asfaw was the wife of Emperor Haile Selassie I and Empress of Ethiopia from 1930 until her death in 1962. A granddaughter of Negus Mikael of Wollo, she was known for her piety and for founding a school for girls in Addis Ababa.

Why is Empress Menen called Queen Omega?§

Early Rastafari texts, especially The Promised Key, called the Ethiopian imperial couple King Alpha and Queen Omega, after the "Alpha and Omega" of the Book of Revelation. The titles express the belief that the emperor and empress together represent the fullness of the divine or of royal authority.

When did Empress Menen die?§

She died in Addis Ababa on 15 February 1962 and was buried in Holy Trinity Cathedral. Haile Selassie's remains were reburied beside her there in November 2000.

Why do Rastafari women call themselves empress?§

The title honours Empress Menen and expresses the dignity Rastafari give to women as queens alongside their kingmen. Some Rastafari women embrace it as a statement of African royalty, while others question the domestic roles that were once attached to it.

Sources and further reading§

• My Life and Ethiopia's Progress, 1892–1937 — Haile Selassie I (trans. Edward Ullendorff), 1976
• Haile Sellassie I: The Formative Years, 1892–1936 — Harold G. Marcus, 1987
• King of Kings: The Triumph and Tragedy of Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia — Asfa-Wossen Asserate, 2015
• A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991 — Bahru Zewde, 2001
• Rastafari Women: Subordination in the Midst of Liberation Theology — Obiagele Lake, 1998
• Rastafari Reasoning and the RastaWoman: Gender Constructions in the Shaping of Rastafari Livity — Jeanne Christensen, 2014
• The Rastafarians — Leonard E. Barrett, 1977
• Dread History: Leonard P. Howell and Millenarian Visions in the Early Rastafari Religion — Robert A. Hill, 2001