Cyber Ethiopia

We have been looking, in the last two weeks, at unpublished letters written to the British Museum by Richard Holmes, whom it had sent to accompany the British Expedition of 1867--8 against Emperor Tewodros. Holmes, as we have seen, had purchased for the museum part of items looted from Maqdala, most notably the golden crown and chalice, the future which was discussed in the House of Commons three years later, in 1871. Lord Napier of Maqdala We turn now to another letter of the period, from Lord Napier of Magdala to the Military Secretary of the India Office, on 30 July 1868. In this letter Napier reports on his seizure of the Maqdala manuscripts, and explains that, at the capture of Maqdala, on 13 April 1868, "a

large number of Ethiopian manuscript books" had been found. Discussing what he had done with them, he states that his main preoccupation had been to save them from the Muslim Oromos, or, as he calls them in accordance with the then current European usage, the "Gallas", and declares: "Necessary to Provide for Safety" "On finding that Magdala would have to be abandoned to the Gallas it became necessary to provide for the safety of these volumes which would otherwise have been destroyed by the Mahomedans. "About nine hundred volumes were taken a far as 'Chelicut' [in Tigray] and there about six hundred volumes were delivered to the priests of that church which is one of the most important in Abyssinia. "About three hundred volumes [this figure was in fact an underestimate] were retained for the purpose of scientific examination and in the hope that some light might be thrown by them through the labours of the learned men of Europe on the ancient history of Ethiopia and even on the records of Christianity. These manuscripts have been carefully examined by Mr Munzinger and the name written in each volume. "I regret to say that the list has been temporally mislaid but a new one can be made out from the entries in the volumes. I presented a specimen for the Museum of Calcutta and for some of the foreign Governments but these are only duplicates of works sent to England". Diffusion of Manuscripts A number of manuscripts from Maqdala, for this and other reasons, are now found in several places outside Britain. There are thus two in Germany, France, India, and the United States, at least one in Ireland, and one each in Austria, and the Vatican. The British Museum? Napier concluded his letter by suggesting that the Secretary of State for India should give the remainder of the looted Maqdala manuscripts to the British Museum. "The Secretary of State", he declared, "would perhaps consider that the British Museum would be the most suitable place for the reception of the manuscript books The India Office This suggestion by Lord Napier, the victor of Maqdala, was duly accepted by the India Office. It accordingly requested the British Museum, on 3 August 1868, to send a representative to inspect the manuscripts, and some other "Abyssinian antiquities". That done, the Secretary of State wrote to the British Museum, on 26 August, to state that he had "given instructions for the Ethiopian manuscripts and Abyssinian antiquities" to be sent to the British Museum "for the purpose of examination". The Queen wanted to have "some of the books" The letter went on to state that since Queen Victoria had "expressed a wish to have some of the books", the Secretary of State "would be glad if a selection of the more valuable were made for presentation to the Queen". The Museum subsequently reported, on 29 September, that, in two consignments, it had received on 27 August and 23 September, a total of "nineteen chests" "containing altogether 359 volumes of Abyssinian MSS". The above figure of 359 was, it should be noted, considerably in excess of the "three hundred" earlier cited by Holmes, a figure later copied and Napier. A fortnight or so later, on 10 October, the British Museum Trustees passed a resolution, declaring: "That the best thanks of the Trustees be conveyed to the Secretary of State for India for the interest he has shown in the British Museum", together with "an expression of the wish of the Trustees that the suggestion of Lord Napier that the collection of [Ethiopian] Manuscripts should be deposited in the British Museum, be adopted, and that the [Abyssinian] Antiquities etc. should also be allowed to remain at the British Museum". The Trustees further agreed that "the Principal Librarian request the instructions of the Secretary of Sate for India as to the sixteen volumes of illuminated manuscripts set apart in order that a selection might be made from them for the Queen". Queen Victoria subsequently selected six of the sixteen volumes, and was "graciously pleased to present the remaining ten to the National Collection". The manuscripts were duly stamped with the following insignia: PRESENTED BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA AUG [ust] 1868 The Letter's Significance The significance of the above letter from Lord Napier, taken with those of Richard Holmes - and the above-mentioned India Office stamp, lies in the fact that they establish that the bulk of the Ethiopian manuscripts acquired by the British Museum were not purchased by that institution, as is sometimes asserted, but were presented by the India Office, albeit at Napier's suggestion. Most, if not all, the looted Maqdala manuscripts in other libraries in Britain and elsewhere were, however, in fact purchased. It should be noted that it is not always possible to establish which Ethiopian manuscripts in such collections actually came from Maqdala. It is, however, estimated that the Bodleian Library in Oxford acquired anything between 5 and 34 Maqdala manuscripts; Cambridge University Library between 10 and 47; the John Rylands Library, in Manchester, between two and four; and the National Museum of Antiquities, in Edinburgh, two. A Word of Caution It should, however, be noted that the number of manuscripts looted from Maqdala can never be established exactly. Those given, as mentioned above, by the India Office to the British Museum, later the British Library, to the Royal Library in Windsor Castle, and to a few European libraries, are of course precisely known, and have been officially catalogued as coming from Maqdala. Some other manuscripts, notably at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, are annotated as having belonged to the church of Medhane Alem, or the Saviour of the World, at Maqdala. Many other manuscripts from Maqdala were, however, not annotated at all. They were apparently looted by the soldiers, who instead of handing them over to the Prize Committee, smuggled them to England, and sold them there privately. Thus was it that several British and other European libraries, which had never before acquired Ethiopian manuscripts suddenly began acquiring them in the late 1860's and early 1870s. Revelation of St. John the Sivine from an early 19th century manuscript looted from Maqdala, now in the Brithish Library. Restoration Demands for the return of the loot from Maqdala, and allegations that the loot was an act of sacrilege, have been made with increasing frequency over the last few decades, both by Ethiopians and British people. The question of the restitution of Ethiopian loot, and the advocacy thereof, has indeed become a matter of academic as well as popular concern. A scholarly paper, by Stephen Bell, on "Culture Treasure Looted from Maqdala", was thus presented in a conference held in Addis Ababa University on the anniversary of Tewodros's death, and was published, in 1990, in the Institute of Ethiopian Studies' publication "Kasa and Kasa", which is still in print. There is likewise Italian academic interest in the struggle for the return of the Aksum obelisk. This was recently the subject of an Italian thesis, "Un ritorno contrastato: il caso del'obelisco di Axum fra storia e diplomazia", presented at the University of Pavia. This work was written by Georgia Ghegorini, under the supervision of Professor Gian Paolo Calchi Novati. And on the agitational level? AFROMET, the Association for the Return of Ethiopian Maqdala Treasures recently received a letter from none other than Mr Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, in which he wrote: "I support your campaign since it will stand to preserve the cultural heritage of Ethiopia by creating historical links with the past. I would like to wish you and AFROMET all the best in the campaign for the restoration of Ethiopian Magdala Treasures".