In 1270, an Amhara nobleman named Yekuno Amlak defeated the last Zagwe king and took the throne. He claimed descent - through the Aksumite royal line - from the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The Kebra Nagast, compiled in the 14th century, told the story: the Queen of Sheba visited Jerusalem, conceived a son with Solomon, returned home and bore Menelik I, whose descendants ruled Ethiopia until the Zagwe usurpation. Yekuno Amlak presented his accession as a restoration rather than a new founding. The dynasty that followed - the Solomonic line - would hold the throne for most of the next 700 years. Yekuno Amlak himself ruled with unusual pragmatism, maintaining good relations with the neighboring Muslim Makhzumi and writing to the Mamluk Sultan about protecting Muslims in Ethiopia.

The worst hour came in the 16th century. Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi - called Ahmad Gragn, 'Ahmad the Left-Handed' - rose to power in the Adal Sultanate and, stockpiling firearms and cannons imported from the Ottoman Empire, invaded Ethiopia in 1529. By the mid-1530s, most of the empire was under his occupation. Churches burned. Christians were killed or forcibly converted. The aged Emperor Dawit II fled from mountain fortress to mountain fortress until he died in exile. His son Gelawdewos, only 18 years old, rallied what remained of the army. In 1541, 400 Portuguese musketeers arrived at Massawa - a small force but decisive in a war where firearms were still rare. At the Battle of Wayna Daga in 1543, Gragn was killed. His army dissolved. The Portuguese had lost their commander Cristovao da Gama in the same campaign, but the empire had survived. The cost was enormous: centuries of art, manuscripts, and churches destroyed in a single generation.

In 1636, Emperor Fasilides broke an old Ethiopian tradition. Rather than move his court perpetually through the provinces, he built a permanent capital at Gondar, in the fertile country north of Lake Tana. The Royal Enclosure, Fasil Ghebbi, rose in brown basalt with wine-colored tuff ornaments. An Indian architect named Abdal Kerim designed the main castle; an Ethiopian architect named Walda Giyorgis built the later palaces. Subsequent emperors added their own castles, churches, and banquet halls inside the same 900-meter curtain wall. A Yemeni ambassador who visited Fasilides' castle in 1648 called it 'one of marvellous of buildings, worthy of admiration, and the most beautiful of outstanding wonders.' Gondar's population climbed past 60,000 in the late 17th century. The empire reached its Gondarine golden age - churches with painted ceilings, illuminated manuscripts, a court that received embassies from Louis XIV's France.

The 18th century ended badly. After the death of Emperor Iyasu II in 1755, power fragmented. Regional warlords - Ras this, Ras that - fought for control while emperors became puppets. Ethiopians called this period the Zemene Mesafint, the Era of the Princes. It ended only when a rebel named Kassa Hailu crowned himself Emperor Tewodros II in 1855, reunified the empire, and died during a British punitive expedition in 1868 rather than surrender. His successor Yohannes IV fought off Egyptian and Mahdist invasions before dying in battle against the Mahdists in 1889. Then came Menelik II. Under his leadership the empire pushed south, east, and west, incorporating the Oromo, Sidama, Gurage, Wolayta, Dizi, and Kaffa peoples into what would become modern Ethiopia. And then Italy arrived, and Menelik defeated them at Adwa, and the empire entered the 20th century unconquered.

Ras Tafari Makonnen, crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I in November 1930, inherited a feudal empire and tried to modernize it without unmaking it. He abolished slavery in 1942. He made Ethiopia a charter member of the United Nations. He presided over the formation of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963 in Addis Ababa and served as its first chairperson. Along the way he survived Mussolini's invasion in 1935 - fleeing to exile in Bath, England, returning with British forces in 1941 - and rebuilt the empire again. But the same modernization that brought in educated classes also brought in students who had read Marx. Drought, famine in Wollo in 1973, and mounting unrest emptied what little support Selassie had left. On 12 September 1974, the Derg, a committee of army officers, deposed him. Monarchy was formally abolished in March 1975. The emperor died under mysterious circumstances on 27 August 1975, probably killed by Mengistu Haile Mariam. Seven hundred years ended with an old man suffocated in his palace.