Fifteen years earlier, watching the coronation of Haile Selassie as King of Kings of Ethiopia, I had been fascinated by the continuity, however tenuous, which linked that ceremony with Solomon and Sheba. Now watching these half naked, indigo-smeared figures, sitting beneath the dying palms of the Wadi Jiza, discussing our movements in a language which had once been spoken b y Menaeans, Sabaeans, and Himyarites, I realized that here was a link with the past even older and more authentic, for scholars believe that the Mahra are descended from the ancient Habasha, who colonized Ethiopia as long ago as the first millennium b.c. and gave their name to the Abyssinians.