by
Damien F. Mackey
“Judith's father King Gideon … the Jewish King of the Jewish Kingdom of Semuin married Esat (Esther) the daughter of the Christian Solomonic Emperor … 930 AD.
Mar David …. in about 948 decided to visit Fatimid Jerusalem ….
Mar David's wife was a Bagratuni princess called Tamar …”.
Gideon, David, Solomon[ic], Tamar, Judith, Simeon (“Semiun”), Esther, Jerusalem!
What a horrible mish-mash of biblical names, BC time, all rolled up (like queen Cleopatra), into a (time-defying magic) carpet, and then rolled out in AD time.
Tenth century (c. 1000 BC) King David, for instance, rolled out into the tenth century AD.
Thus we read at: http://alternativegenhist.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/judith-jewish-queen-empress-of-ethiopia.html
In the 10th century in Ethiopia in the Jewish Kingdom of the Beni Hamwiyah (also called Beta Israel and Semuin) a long line of Jewish kings had reigned since the 4th century. It was in the fourth century that the Christian Solomonic Kingdom began while the Jewish branch continued at Semuin. It is in the 10th century that the figure of the great conquering Jewish Queen known as Judith or Gudit appears. She restores Jewish rulership to the whole of [Ethiopia] under the Zagwe Dynasty. ….
I have already suggested that this “Gudit” (or Judith) was simply a later appropriation of the original Judith of Bethulia:
World Renowned Judith of Bethulia
The article continues, introducing a second Tamar, the renowned Queen Tamara, and even a - wait for it - Moses. Oh, and also, Aaron. Oh, and there’s a Ruben tossed in for good measure:
Judith's father King Gideon (Gedajan) the Jewish King of the Jewish Kingdom of Semuin married Esat (Esther) the daughter of the Christian Solomonic Emperor Wedem Asfare around 930 AD. Mar David the Khazar King of Taman's son Tzul (Zenobius / Tzul ben David /Zavid) in about 948 decided to visit Fatimid Jerusalem and then to head further south to Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopa. He visited the Kingdom of Georgius II of Makhuria (Nubia) and where he took an additional name of Georgius in honour of the great hospitality of the King. Mar David's wife was a Bagratuni princess called Tamar the daughter of Bagrat II of Kartli (r.976-978) and Abkhazia (978-1008) and his wife Rhipsime of Armenia sister of Ashot III.
Historians have confused Bagrat II with his grandson Bagrat III (the son of Empress Judith and Georgius Tzul). When Gurgen (Bagrat II's natural father) died in 1008 it was the grandson Bagrat III who became the King of all Georgia and his grandfather Bagrat II died soon after.
Next Georgius Tzul (Zenobius) visited the Jewish kingdom in Northern Ethiopia where he married Gudit (Judith/ Gurandukht/ Duka) the daughter of King Gideon and Queen Esther of the Falashas. Zenobius (Tzul ben David /Zavid) as a trained and experienced Khazar warrior aided the Jews of Ethiopia in their fight with the Christian south. However Georgius Tzul received word around 988 that his father's Khazar Kingdom of Taman was under attack and he left Ethiopa to go to the aid of his father. Judith then led her Jewish warriors into battle and established her son Mar Takla Haymanot on the Imperial Throne and she married him to Masoba Warq the daughter of Dil Naod the last emperor of the older Solomonic Christian Dynasty.
The Zagwe Dynasty was also known as the House of Moses as they claimed male descent from Moses. However this Moses was the Khazar King Moses (also known as Morovec and Marot) who was the ancestor of Georgius Tzul of the Khazars. Other writers claimed that the Zagwe Dynasty descended from Moses and Aaron and in fact the Khazar King Moses (Marot /Marovec) was the father of King Aaron I (Aharon) of Khazaria. David the Khazar King of Taman was a son of King Aaron II of Khazaria.
Leaving her eldest son on the throne of Ethiopia Queen Judith went to join her husband in the Crimea with two of her younger sons Bagrat and David. Through their Bagratuni blood through their grandmother Tamar both of her sons were to become Kings -Bagrat III of Georgia and David I of Lori.
Bagrat III's son George I of Georgia had a daughter Gurandukht who married Prince Smbat of Lori a brother of King George (Kyurike) II of Lori. Prince Smbat and Gurandukht's daughter was also called Gurandukht and she married Alp Arshan the Muslim Sultan of the Great Seljuks.
Prince Smbat of Lori and Princess Gurandukt of Georgia also had a son called Ruben who was to become the first Rubenid King of Armenia. His daughter Princess Rusudan of Armenia was the first wife of King David IV the Builder of Georgia. King Ruben I of Armenia married Euphrosyne of Polotsk the daughter of Vseslav Prince of Polotsk. Queen Euphrosyne was the aunt of the famous St. Euphrosyne (Efrasinnia) of Polotsk.
Alp Arshan's daughter Gurandukht married King Atraka of the Cuman-Kipchaks. Atraka's daughter Gurandukht was the second wife of David IV King of the Georgians. David IV's daughter Gurandukht (Judith/Gudit) married Prince Mairari of Ethiopa (son of the Jewish Emperor Harbe of Ethiopia).
Prince Mairari of Ethiopa was the father of Duka or Judith (possibly Qirwerne) who married Andronicus Komateros Doukas (the Byzantine Ambassador to Jerusalem). The Doukas used in her husband's name refers to his wife Duka (or Judith) rather than the Doukas family. An earlier Andronikos Doukas was a son of Georgius Tzul (remembered as Gregoras Doukas in some genealogies) and Judith (Duka/Guran-dukht) Queen-Empress of Ethiopa. Andronikos was the father of Emperor Constantine X Doukas. The Kamateros family had long been associated with the Khazars since their ancestor was the chief engineer of the Khazar city of Sarkel.
Qirwerne (or Duka / Judith) is also said to be the second wife of Grand Duke Iziaslav II of Russia. Many genealogists state that she was the daughter of King Demetrius of Georgia whereas she was in fact his niece by his sister Gurandukht. In fact Princess Duka and Princess Qirwerne may not be the same person but two sisters or half sisters. Duka or Judith being the Emperor Lalibela's sister who went to Jerusalem and Constantinople with him and Qirwerne his half sister who tried to poison him.
Duka and Andronikos's daughter was Euphrosyne Kamertera Dukaina who married her kinsman the Byzantine Emperor Alexius III Angelos. Queen Charlotte of England the wife of George III is a direct female line descendant of Princess Duka of Ethiopia and Georgia. Euphrosyne's sister Clementia (Kamartera / Clemencia) married Aimon I Count of Faucigny and the direct female line ancestress of Mary Queen of Scots.
Another daughter of Duka (Gurandukt) was also called Gurandukt who married Khuddan the King of Ossetia. Their daughter Burdukhan (also called Gurandukt) married King George III of Georgia and she was the mother of the famous Queen Regnant St. Tamara (Tamar) the Great of Georgia ….
Had enough?
But it appears that some aspects of the real Judith history have also been dragged into the legends of Queen Tamara. For instance:
Tamar [Tamara] became the sole monarch in Georgia and was crowned a second time at the Gelati cathedral near the city of Kutaisi. She was called a “king” in their language as she ruled alone and not as a consort.
Cf. Judith 16:22: “Many wished to marry [Judith], but she gave herself to no man all the days of her life from the time her husband, Manasseh, died …”.
However, she was the first female rule in the country and that just stoked the fires of rebellion in the nobility. In several stories, this is glossed over in light of her later achievements. However, Tamar was forced in short order to deal with the rebels and she did so in a decisive manner. One legend tells of how she sent two women to stall the rebels by pretending to negotiate long enough for her to gather her army.
Cf. Judith 10:11 “As the two women were walking through the valley, an Assyrian patrol met them”.
They were eventually pardoned, but not until their titles and wealth had been stripped.
Despite this violent beginning, Tamar wanted to rule well.
….
With the Church firmly behind her, Tamar married. Unfortunately, the choice of Yuri, the son of Prince Andrei Bogoliubsky of Vladimir-Suzdal, was disastrous. …. After his marriage was solemnized, Yuri was never found sober and he was a mean drunk. Yuri was … constantly picking fights, sleeping with anyone he could [manage] to get into bed …. Worse, he was constantly trying to get the country into war with their Muslim neighbors for no other reason than he was bored.
Cf. Judith 3:8 “… Holofernes destroyed all their places of worship and cut down their sacred trees. He had been ordered to destroy all the gods of the land …”.
Judith 12:10, 11: “… Holofernes … said to Bagoas, the eunuch who was in charge of his personal affairs, ‘Go and persuade the Hebrew woman, who is in your care, to come to my tent to eat and drink with us. It would be a shame to pass up an opportunity to make love to a woman like that. If I don't try to seduce her, she will laugh at me’.”
Judith 12:20: “Holofernes was so charmed by [Judith] that he drank more wine than he had ever drunk at one time in his whole life”.
Tamar was quietly consolidating her power, and soon had had enough of her drunken ass of a husband and did the unthinkable. In a devoutly Christian country where divorce was considered illegal, Tamar convinced the Orthodox Church to give her a divorce from Yuri. He was accused of addiction to drunkenness and sodomy and packed off to Constantinople.
Cf. Judith 13:8: “Then Judith raised the sword and struck him twice in the neck as hard as she could, chopping off his head”.
[Yuri] attempted a couple of coup d’etats by raising mercenary armies made up of wayward Vikings, Turks and disgruntled nobles.
Cf. Judith 2:14-18:
“So Holofernes … called together all the commanders, generals, and officers of the Assyrian army … he chose 120,000 of the best infantrymen and 12,000 of the best mounted archers and arranged them in battle formation. He also took along a very large number of camels, donkeys, and mules to carry the equipment, as well as many sheep, cattle, and goats for food. Every soldier received plenty of rations and a large payment of gold and silver from the royal treasury”.
All [Yuri’s] attempts were put down by his ex-wife’s army, which was headed by her new husband Prince David Soslan. ….
Cf. Judith 15:4-5:
“Uzziah sent messengers to the towns of Betomesthaim, Bebai, Choba, and Kola, and throughout the land of Israel to tell everyone what had happened and to urge them to join in pursuing and destroying the enemy. When they received the message, they all attacked the Assyrians and chased them as far as Choba, slaughtering them as they went. Even the people of Jerusalem and others living in the mountains joined the attack when the messengers told them what had happened in the Assyrian camp. The people of the regions of Gilead and Galilee blocked the path of the retreating Assyrians and inflicted heavy losses on them. They pursued them as far as the region around Damascus”.
Queen Tamara has to do it all over again:
Under her rule, the Georgia began reclaiming fortresses and districts which had been previously conquered by the Ildenizids and the Shirvanshah. Georgia’s military successes were so great, the Islamic world decided to send a unified force to defeat them. It was led by Sultan Rukn al-Din, and to say he was arrogant was an understatement. He sent Tamar a lovely letter stating his intentions. He started off with a bang saying “every woman is feeble of mind,” and went onto demand Tamar immediately surrender and either convert to Islam to become his wife or stay Christian and become his concubine.
Shades of Judith and Holofernes again.
Well. Isn’t he sweet? The Georgian court wasn’t pleased with this message, and in fact one of the nobles present when it was delivered hauled off and punched the messenger. Despite these demands, Tamar did neither of these things and promptly handed him his ass at the battle of Basiani.
Between battles, Tamar influenced much of Georgian culture. The national Georgian epic, The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, was said to be inspired by her. The capital of Tblisi was flooded with gold and silver pouring in from their conquered lands, and became an important crossroads between East and West.
Cf. Judith 15:11: “It took the people thirty days to finish looting the camp of the Assyrians. Judith was given Holofernes' tent, all his silver, his bowls, his couches, and all his furniture. She took them and loaded as much as she could on her mule; then she brought her wagons and loaded them too”.
Judith 16:21, 23-24: “For the rest of her life [Judith] was famous throughout the land of Israel….. Her fame continued to spread …”.
[Tamara] also endowed many churches and monasteries, and in the new monasteries the captured battle flags from the Muslim armies she conquered hung as trophies.
Cf. Judith 16:19: “Judith dedicated to God all of Holofernes' property, which the people had given to her. And as a special offering in fulfillment of a vow, she presented to the Lord the mosquito net which she had taken from Holofernes' bed”.
However, despite her warlike nature she was very concerned with doing charitable works for her people.
Cf. Judith 16:23-24: “Before she died, Judith divided her property among her husband's and her own close relatives and set her slave woman free”.
[Tamara’s] burial place is also a mystery …. Other legends say her body was taken to the Holy Land ….
Cf. Judith 16:23-24: “When she died in Bethulia at the age of 105, she was buried beside her husband, and the people of Israel mourned her death for seven days”.
Judith was certainly buried in the Holy Land. We learn from 8:3 where was buried her husband, Manasseh, beside whom Judith was buried:
“Manasseh had suffered a sunstroke while in the fields supervising the farm workers and later died in bed at home in Bethulia. He was buried in the family tomb in the field between Dothan and Balamon”.
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