The Fetha Nagast, or The Law of the Kings, is the foundation of Ethiopian law, and was perhaps the first written law of sub-Saharan Africa. Derived from Roman Law and church canons of the Eastern Rite, it was brought up the Nile in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and there translated into Ge?ez, the local church language. While its early use is uncertain, by the end of the nineteenth century it had become the basis for the development of national...