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Ethiopia's earliest dynasties reigned when the pharoahs ruled Egypt, but few of these early kings and queens are known to us by name today. Historical tradition tells us the Imperial Family descends from Solomon and Sheba, but the same could be said of several other, extinct, Ethiopian lines. The actual recorded lineage of the Solomonic dynasty dates from 1268. A few Ethiopian dynastic practices remain unchanged over centuries. Ethiopia is a land of kings. The title negus literally means king, but in Ethiopia there was traditionally, since medieval times, a king of kings, who Europeans referred to as an emperor. A negus was not a mere vassal; he was a sovereign ruler of a territory whose ethnic history was unique. In more recent times, the imperial families had an Amharic heritage, but an emperor could just as likely have been from Oromo. If those of other nations, we would find it quite similar to those of Germany, whose "imperial" family, the House of Prussia, was one of numerous German royal families, or pre-Norman Ireland, where the kings were united under the House of Connacht. India, with its numerous princes, united at first under a native emperor and finally under Queen Victoria as Empress, also comes to mind. Imperial succession in Ethiopia requires the assent of a family council. One of an emperor's sons might be designated heir apparent, but he could ascend the throne only with the consent of a council of princes (including his brothers and cousins) and high clerics. In recent centuries, this group of family members evolved into the Crown Council, whose place is well-defined by the Ethiopian Constitution promulgated in 1955. The origins of the family council are rooted in ancient tribal law in eastern Africa and the Arab states.