the tradition of the Davidic origin as extant at the time of Ashot I, Adarnase's son and the first Georgian Bagratid monarch, whom the monk Grigol addresses as "lord, called the son of David, the prophet and God-anointed". Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus The legend became well known enough to feature in the 45th chapter of the treatise De Administrando Imperio, written c. 950 by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, whom the claim apparently reached through the Caucasians serving at the imperial court in Constantinople. According to Constantine, the Georgians believed they were scions of Uriah's wife Bathsheba, with whom King David committed adultery, and who had children by him. Thus, they claimed to have been related to the Virgin Mary, inasmuch as she was also descended from David. Constantine Porphyrogenitus's account betrays Georgian influence, but some of its details are uncorroborated elsewhere. It contradicts the Georgian historian Sumbat's more elaborated version by citing the genealogical line leading to the Virgin Mary instead of that leading to Joseph, the husband of Mary. Finally, Constantine's genealogy reaches the two brothers, David and Spandiatis, who had left Jerusalem at the advice of an oracle and settled at the boundaries of Persia, where they founded their kingdom in Iberia (i.e., Kartli) and increased their power through the help of the emperor Heraclius. Spandiatis was childless, but David had a son Pankratios, who had a son Asotios, whose son Adarnase was made curopalates by the emperor Leo, Constantine's father. Sumbat's chronicle The fullest expression of the Davidic claims of the Georgian Bagratids in Georgian literature is preserved in the 11th-century Life and Tale of the Bagratids by Sumbat Davitis-dze (Sumbat, son of David), who may himself have belonged to the Georgian Bagratid family. This work, which has come down to us as part of the larger compendium known as the Georgian Chronicles, contains the most elaborated version of the Bagratid family legend. Sumbat's history commences with a lengthy stemma, tracing the ultimate origin of the Georgian Bagratids from Adam through King David down to Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary; and then from Cleopas, brother of Joseph, to a certain Solomon, whose seven sons left the Holy Land and went to Armenia, where a certain queen Rachael baptized them. Three of them remained in Armenia and their offspring later ruled that country, while the four brothers arrived in Kartli. One of them, Guaram, was made