Heraclius II of Georgia
The closest parallel to the Georgian Bagratid experience is that of Ethiopia. The medieval Ethiopian historical work "Kebra Nagast" claims that the Ethiopian rulers were the direct descendants of the biblical Solomon's first born, Menelik. The Georgian and Ethiopian dynasties may have been aware of each other's claims; the Georgian Bagrationi prince Ioann in his didactic encyclopedic novel "Kalmasoba", written between 1817 and 1828, cites a 1787 letter sent by the Ethiopian emperor—"also descended from David the Prophet"—to Ioann's grandfather, King Heraclius II of Georgia, in which the Georgian monarch was reportedly addressed by his Ethiopian counterpart as "a beloved brother and the one related through the common bloodline".