A collaboration between The Scheherazade Foundation and the Ethiopian Embassy in London has resulted in the single most significant restitution in Ethiopia’s history, a “treasure trove” almost equivalent to all the returns made from private collections since the battle of Maqdala in 1868, said a member of Ethiopia’s National Heritage Restitution Committee.

The results of this collaboration were handed over to Ethiopia’s Ambassador, Teferi Melesse Desta, at a ceremony organised by The Scheherazade Foundation and held at the Athenaeum Club in London last Wednesday.  The event was  attended by numerous supporters of Ethiopian restitution.

The Foundation, led by its CEO the author Tahir Shah, is a UK not-for-profit private charity that has set out to track down and acquire culturally significant objects for return to Ethiopia.  After the Embassy was alerted last June to the sale at a Bridport auctioneers of a set of three inscribed horn beakers, a leather-bound Coptic bible and an Ethiopian cross, collected by Major-General William Arbuthnot during the British Army’s Abyssinian campaign of 1867/68, the Embassy arranged for the sale of these items to be halted. At this point, Tahir Shah stepped in to purchase the objects. The inscription on one of these beakers (This Horn Taken at Magdala) provides a direct link with the Battle of Maqdala, the concluding event of this little-known and inglorious British campaign that sealed the fate of Emperor Tewodros II and led British troops on a rampage of looting.

Not all the 16 Ethiopian artefacts handed over at the ceremony, including handwritten religious texts, crosses, a magical scroll, a crown and an Imperial shield, can be firmly linked to Maqdala. But all date to the same era and most were likely acquired during the same 1867/68 British expedition. Similar looted artefacts originating from Maqdala are now being identified in collections all around the world. The Foundation's aim is to recover as many of these objects as possible, using a crowdfunding campaign to finance their acquisition. Thirteen of the objects handed over at last week's London ceremony were acquired by the Foundation from the UK, the other objects came from the Netherlands and a private collector in Belgium.

Thanking the Foundation for their work in acquiring these artefacts, Ambassador Teferi Melesse Desta added his country still mourns the artefacts they’ve lost as a result of Britain's Abyssinian campaign, but believes their return can serve to strengthen relations between the UK and Ethiopia.

“It is my hope that in the Maqdala returns to come, the relations between our two nations and people can deepen and grow from strength to strength.”

Ethiopia believes these returns will lead to further restitution initiatives, “especially at a time when retaining artefacts, notably human remains such as those of Prince Alemayehu in Windsor Chapel or sacred objects such as the holy Tabot Arks of the Covenant in the British Museum is becoming increasingly anachronistic, irrelevant and embarrassing”, added Dr Alula Pankhurst, a member of Ethiopia's National Heritage Restitution Committee.

Ethiopia's prospects for the return of these items do seem brighter than other contested objects.  Prince Alemayehu was the son of Emperor Tewodros. At the age of seven he was taken by the British Army immediately following his father's death at Maqdala and sent to Britain where he was presented to Queen Victoria. After his death eleven years later, the Queen wrote in her diary: 'It is too sad! All alone in a strange country, without a single person or relative belonging to him..... His was no happy life'. He is buried in the crypt of St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, a 'Royal Peculiar' where the authority of the monarch can supersede the authority of the diocese.

The case for returning the eleven sacred Tabots, concealed within the vaults of the British Museum, is equally strong. It requires nothing more than the Museum's trustees to acknowledge that items acquired as a result of a violent act of sacrilege that never have or ever will be exhibited or be made available for study, meet the Museum's own criteria for 'unfit to be retained'.  As ReturningHeritage has highlighted in the past, returning the Museum's collection of Tabots requires trustees merely to comply with the Act. It does not involve a breach of the Act.

After this was written

Thirteen artefacts handed over to Ethiopia's Ambassador in London arrived at the Addis Ababa Bole International Airport on 20 November 2021, where they were received by government officials, including the new Minister of Tourism Nansi Challe.

Photo: A collection of Ethiopian artefacts from the Maqdala era on display in London before their return to Ethiopia