Ethiopia, the Aksum Obelisk, and the Return of Africa's Cultural Heritage

Author(s): Richard Pankhurst

Source: African Affairs , Apr., 1999, Vol. 98, No. 391 (Apr., 1999), pp. 229-239
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/723628

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African AJfairs (1999), 98, 229-239

ETHIOPIA, THE AKSUM OBELISK, AND THE

RETURN OF AFRICA'S CULTURAL
HERITAGE

RICHARD PANKHURST

ABSTRACT
Ethiopia, an ancient African state, has suffered from extensive foreign
looting twice in modern times. Firstly, in 1868, when the British
expedition against Emperor Tewodros II looted crowns, crosses and
religious manuscripts from his mountain fortress of Maqdala. The
second occasion was during the Italian Fascist occupation of 1936-1941,
when the invaders seized crowns, state papers, and one of the famous early
fourth century obelisks of Aksum. Both acts of looting are relevant to
current discussion on the return to Africa of artifacts looted during the
colonial era, for which they provide precedents. The looting of Maqdala
was followed, in the ensuing century, by the British Government's gradual
restitution to Ethiopia of several looted artifacts though the lion's share
still remains in Britain. Fascist Italy's defeat in the Second World War
was followed in 1947 by an Italian Peace Treaty with the United Nations,
in which Italy agreed to return all loot taken from Ethiopia. Most, but by
no means all, articles were returned. The Aksum obelisk, however,
remained in Rome. This led to Ethiopian, and international, agitation,
after which the Italian Govemment agreed to the obelisk's return. This
has, however, still to be effected.

ETHIOPIA, FOR OVER A CENTURY, has been involved in what is now termed
the question of the return of Africa's cultural property. The country,
despite its long history of independence, was looted in the last century and
a half on two notable occasions, by the British in 1868 and by the Italians
in 1935-41. Ethiopia, over the years, succeeded, however, in obtaining at
least partial restoration of its looted property, and further important
restitution, the return of the Aksum obelisk, is expected in the near
future. Ethiopia's on-going struggle for the return of its cultural heritage,
though far from complete, has thus established interesting precedents of
relevance to the Aftican continent as a whole.

The Maqdala expedition

The first of the two acts of looting under review resulted from the
attempts by Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros II (reigned 1855-1868) to
modernize and unify his country. Faced with persistent Egyptian inroads
Richard Pankhurst, founder and first Director of Addis Ababa University's Institute of
Ethiopian Studies, is Research Professor of Ethiopian Studies at that Institute. He has been
involved in Ethiopian historical studies for over 40 years.

229

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 230 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

on his northern and western frontiers, and acutely aware of his countr
technological backwardness, he wrote in 1862 to Queen Victoria proposi
the opening of friendly relations with Britain. The British Governmen
however, feared that this might alienate Egypt, then one of Britain's
principal sources of cotton, and therefore left the Ethiopian monarch
letter unanswered. 1
Tewodros, a proud monarch, felt bitterly insulted by Britain's failure
answer his letter. He was, however, uncertain whether this discourtes
reflected official British policy, or was somehow the result of malice on the
part of the British consul Duncan Cameron, whom he mistrusted. The
Ethiopian ruler accordingly responded by imprisoning Cameron and a
handfill of other Europeans, who had for one reason or another displeas
him. He had them detained in his mountain fortress of Maqdala (bette
known in England as Magdala). The British Government, which fe
bitterly affronted by this almost unimaginable act of defiance on the part o
an African ruler, replied, in 1867, by dispatching an armed expedition
Tewodros, a monarch concerned with centralization as well as reform, ha
by then collected many treasures at Maqdala. These included a thousan
of the country's finest manuscripts, written in the Ethiopian ecclesiastic
language, Ge'ez. The royal treasury, according to the British geograph
Clements Markham, an eye-witness, thus contained 'tons' of'manuscrip
books', besides other treasures.3
In the decisive battle with the British, fought below Maqdala mountain
on 10 April 1868, Tewodros defended himself bravely, but his forces were
easily crushed by the superior fire-power of the invaders. Recognizing his
defeat he at once freed his European prisoners, and attempted to sue for
peace. The British, however, insisted on his unconditional surrender,
which he proudly refused. They thereupon launched a final attack on the
citadel. Tewodros, unwilling to fall into the hands of his enemies,
committed suicide, whereupon resistance came to an end, and British
troops quickly occupied the fort.

The loot from Maqdala

Though the prisoners had been released, and Tewodros was dead, the
victorious British troops 'dispersed over the amba', or mountain-top of
Maqdala, as Markham notes, 'in search of plunder. The treasury was
soon rifled'.4 In the course of this operation the soldiers also broke into
1. On the tortuous history of the relations between Tewodros and the British Government
see, inter alia, Percy Arnold, Prelude to Magdala. Emperor Theodore of Ethiopia and British
diplomacy (Bellow, London, l991).
2. On the history of this expedition see Clements R. Markham, A History of the Abyssinian
Expedition (Macmillan, London, 1869), and Frederick Myatt, The Abyssinian War 1868 (Leo
Cooper, London, 1970).
3. Markham, History, pp. 357-8.
4. Markham, History, p. 359.

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 THE RETURN OF AFRICA S CULTURAL HERITAGE 231

Maqdala's principal church, Madhane Alam, which was dedicated to the

Saviour of the World, and, though this was an act of sacrilege, looted its
eqa-bet, or store-house. Virtually everything they found in the palace and
church was taken as booty. The American author H. M. Stanley recalls
that the loot was soon 'scattered in infinite bewilderment and confusion
until they dotted the whole surface of the rocky citadel, the slopes of the
hill, and the entire road to the [British] camp two miles off'.5 One of
those present at this large-scale looting was Richard (later Sir Richard)
Holmes, Assistant in the British Museum's Department of Manuscripts,
who had been appointed the expedition's 'archaeologist'. He stated in an
official report that the British flag had 'not been waved . . . much more than
ten minutes' before he himself entered the fort. Shortly aftervvards, as
night was falling, he met a British soldier who was carrying a crown, which
he assumed to have been that of the Abun, or head of the Ethiopian
Church, and a 'solid gold chalice' weighing 'at least 6 lbs'. Holmes's
assumption that the crown had belonged to the Patriarch was probably
incorrect, for it seems on examination to have been what was more likely a
royal crown. Be that as it may, Holmes succeeded in purchasing both
artifacts for ?4. He was, on the same occasion, offered several large
manuscripts, but states that he declined them because they were too heavy
to carry.6 The city of Maqdala was then burnt to the ground by British
engineers on 17 April.
The British military authorities, in accordance with the custom of the
day, accepted the principle of looting, but sought to regularize it (and thus
to transfer the booty from the ordinary soldiers to the officer class.) The
loot collected by the troops was accordingly collected, and transported, on
15 elephants and nearly 200 mules, to the nearby Dalanta plain. There,
on 20 and 21 April 1868, the army held a two-day auction to raise 'prize
money' for the men. 'Bidders', Stanley states, 'were not scarce', for 'every
officer and civilian desired some souvenir', including 'richly illuminated
bibles and manuscripts'. Holmes, acting on behalf of the British
Museum, was one of the principal purchasers. Stanley describes him as
'in his full glory', for, 'armed with ample funds', he outbid all other
would-be purchasers 'in most things'. The sale raised a total of ?5,000,
which gave each soldier 'a trifle over four pounds'.7
As a result of the Maqdala campaign and Holmes' energy and
funds the British Museum (today the British Library), the South
Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), and several
other British institutions, became the receivers of a vast quantity of artifacts

5. Henry M. Stanley, Coomassie and Magdala (Samson Low, Marston, Low and Searle,
London, 1874), pp. 457-9.
6. British Museum, Original Papers, XCIV, Registered no. 5184.
7. Stanley, Coomassie, pp. 470-1.

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232 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

stolen from Ethiopia. The British Museum/Library acquired no fewer

than 350 of Ethiopia's finest manuscripts, many of them beautifully
illuminated, while a further six exceptionally well decorated specimens
were retained in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, where the Emperor's
cap and imperial seal were also deposited. Sir Robert Napier, the British
commander, later presented a manuscript to the Royal Library in Vienna,
while two others reached the German Kaiser, and a further two the
Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Almost 200 other volumes looted from
Maqdala were subsequently acquired by the Bodleian Library in Oxford,
Cambridge University Library, the John Rylands Library in Manchester,
and several smaller British collections. Several of these manuscripts,
significantly, are inscribed with the words Madhane Alam, i.e. the name of
the principal church at Maqdala.8
The majority of these manuscripts, like most Ethiopian literature of
former days, was ecclesiastical. The Maqdala loot, which contains many
virtually identical texts, thus includes numerous Bibles, theological treat-
ises, and lives of saints, not a few of them beautifully illustrated, which are
of fundamental importance for the study of Ethiopian art and culture.
There was, however, also a considerable amount of secular material,
notably marginalia containing records of land grants and sales, and
marriages, as well as the tax documents of Emperor Tewodros, the only
such Ethiopian data known to exist for the period prior to the twentieth
century.9
Many other valuable articles were also brought to Great Britain. They
included two crowns, one of them the artifact purchased by Holmes, which
was made of high carat gold, the other silver gilt; also a golden chalice, and
a number of beautiiful silver and other processional crosses. Most of
these treasures ended up in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Two of
Tewodros's remarkably fine tents, made of gaily coloured cloth, are now in
the Museum of Mankind.l? The loot reaching the British Museum also
included ten tabot, or holy altar slabs, presumably seized as part of the loot
from one or other of Maqdala's two churches. One of these tabots is
inscribed, significantly enough, with ie name Madhane Alam, the church
from which it was taken.l 1 Such looting, it may be contended, was in no

8. On the diffusion of the manuscripts from Maqdala see Rita Pankhurst, 'The Library of
Emperor Tewodros II at Maqdala (Magdala)', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African
Studies 36, 1 ( 1973), pp. 15-42 .
9. For the text of these documents see Richard Pankhurst and Germa-Selassie Asfaw, Tax
Records and Inventories of Emperor Tezvodros of Ethiopia (1855-1868) (School of Oriental and
African Studies, London, 1978).
10. For descriptions of these two tents see Richard Pankhurst, 'The Tents of the Ethiopian
Royal Court', Azania, 18 (1983), pp. 181-95.
11. Charles F. Beckingham and George B. Huntingford, The Prester3tohn of the Indies Vol. II
(University Press, Cambridge, 1961), pp. 546-8 .

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 THE RETURN OF AFRICA S CULTURAL HERITAGE 233

way justified, either by Tewodros' imprisonment of the European captives,

or by his subsequent resistance to the Napier expedition.

First requests for repatriation and the mystery of the Kwer'ata Re'esu

The sudden, and unexpected, death of Tewodros was followed by three

years of chaos, in which various Ethiopian chiefs, as was predictable,
struggled for the succession. One of them duly emerged as Emperor
Yohannes IV. On 10 August 1872, barely half a year after his coronation,
he dispatched letters to Queen Victoria and to the British Foreign Secre-
tary, Earl Granville, requesting the return of a manuscript and an icon,
both of which had been removed from Maqdala. 12 This was, as far as we
know, the first request for the restitution of cultural property ever made by
an African ruler. The manuscript, a Kebra Nagast, or 'Glory of Kings',
embodying the legend of the origin of the Ethiopian ruling dynasty, was of
major importance. Beside a text of considerable cultural significance, its
marginalia contained 'historical and other documents relating mostly to the
City of Axum and its church', as John Winter Jones, an official of the
British Museum, was later to note.l3 The icon, a Kzver'ata Re'esu, or
painting of Christ with the Crown of Thorns, was also of crucial signifi-
cance in Ethiopian history. Since at least the seventeenth century it had
been carried by the country's rulers on campaigns, and was an emblem
before which courtiers swore loyalty in times of trouble.
The British Government was at that time anxious to remain on good
terms with Emperor Yohannes, who had co-operated with Napier's forces
during the Maqdala campaign. The Foreign Office accordingly informed
the British Museum that it would be a 'gracious and friendly act' to comply
with the Ethiopian ruler's request. The Museum, which possessed two
copies of the Kebra Nagast, both looted from Maqdala, agreed to return
what it considered the inferior copy. The return of this manuscript set an
interesting precedent, for it was the only British Museum acquisition thus
far ever to be returned to a Third World country.
Search for the icon was on the other hand unsuccessful. Queen Victoria
accordingly wrote to Yohannes, on 14 December 1872, declaring: 'Of the
picture we can discover no trace whatever, and we do not think it can have
been brought to England'.l4 In this Her Majesty, as we now know, was
much mistaken. The picture had in fact been acquired, like so much else,
by the indomitable Richard Holmes, who, by curious coincidence, had by
this time become her Librarian at Windsor Castle. He had appropriated
the highly prized relic for himself. This was not, however, publicly
12. Edward Ullendorff and Abraham Demoz, 'Two letters from the Emperor Yohannes of
Ethiopia to Queen Victoria and Lord Granville', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African
Studies 32, 1 (1969), pp. 138, 141, and plates 1 and 2.
13. Public Record Office, Kew (PRO) FO 1/29, Jones to Granville, 18 December 1872.
14. FO 1/27B, Victoria to Yohannes, 18 December 1872.

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234 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

revealed until 1890, the year after the death of Emperor Yohannes, and no
photograph of the painting appeared until 1905, when the Burlington
Magazine, a journal on whose consultative committee Holmes was a
member, published one, with the revealing title 'Head of Christ forrnerly in
the possession of King Theodore of Abyssinia, now in the possession of Sir
Richard Holmes, KCVO.'.l5 The late Emperor's request for the return of
the icon had by then conveniently been forgotten.

The return of Tewodros's artifacts

The question of the loot from Maqdala, however, came to the fore again
a generation later, in 1924, when the then Ethiopian Regent, Ras Tafari
Makonnen (later Emperor Haile Sellassie), undertook a state visit to
Britain. On that occasion the British Government felt it desirable to
honour the then Ethiopian monarch, Empress Zawditu. Since the prin-
cipal British state decorations were available only for males, it was decided
at the last moment, and almost as an afterthought, to present her with one
of Tewodros's two crowns, then housed at the Victoria and Albert
Museum.l6 As in the case of the Kebra Nagast half a century earlier, the
British Govemment's generosity was not unbounded. The authorities
thus decided to send the Empress the silver gilt crown, and to retain the
infinitely more valuable gold crown, which Holmes had acquired, and
which weighed about two and a half kilos.l7 Tewodros's gilt crown was
thus the second piece of loot from Maqdala to be returned.
The question of the loot from Maqdala came to the fore again forty years
later, during Queen Elizabeth II's state visit to Ethiopia in 1965. On the
eve of her departure from the country, she presented Emperor Haile
Sellassie, in Asmara, with two items which had been kept at Windsor Castle
for close on a century: Tewodros's cap and imperial seal. These she
returned 'as a token of our gratitude and esteem'. By restoring these two
further artifacts, the third and fourth objects from Maqdala to be repatri-
ated, the principle of the piecemeal return of Ethiopian loot was thus in
effect accepted.

The Italian fascist invasion

The Italian fascist invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-6 led to further extensive
looting. This was carried out in part to gratify the desires of the fascist

15. 'A Flemish Picture from Abyssinia', The Burlington Magazine, 7 (1905), p. 394. For a
detailed account of the icon, and its history, see Richard Pankhurst, CThe Kwer'ata Re'esu:
The history of an Ethiopian icon', Abba Salama, A Review of the Association of Ethio-Hellenic
Studies 10 (1979), pp. 169-87.
16. For the formulation of British policy on this issue see FO 371/9991, 88-9, 156; 9992/2,
25, 197, 199; 9993/34; and 10872; and for reproductions of the crown selected for restitution
see The Sphere and The Illustrated London News, both of 26 July 1924.
17. Information kindly provided by the Victoria and Albert Museum. See also R.
Pankhurst, 'The Story of Ethiopian Looted Crowns', Addis Tribune, 25 December 1998 and
I January 1999. (On web: http://Addis Tribune.EthiopiaOnline.Net/).

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 THE RETURN OF AFRICA S CULTURAL HERITAGE 235

leadership, in part to remove symbols of Ethiopia's age-old independence,

and in part because Mussolini, seeking to establish a new Roman Empire,
sought to emulate the rulers of ancient Rome, who had brought much
booty to that city. The principal fascist leaders were all involved in
looting. Pietro Badoglio, the first Italian viceroy, appropriated half the
1,700,000 Maria Theresa dollars found in the Bank of Abyssinia. This
enabled him to build a villa in Rome, in which he reportedly installed 300
cases of boocy flown from Ethiopia by the Italian Royal Air Force. The
second viceroy, Rodolfo Graziani, likewise took back 79 cases of loot, while
Attilio Teruzzi, the Minister of Italian Africa, on one visit in 1939, no less
than four truck-loads.l8
Among articles of historical importance seized in Addis Ababa between
1936 and 1937, and taken to Italy, was a statue of the Lion of Judah, long
the country's national emblem; a number of royal and ecclesiastical
crowns; several paintings from the walls of the Ethiopian Parliament; the
Ethiopian state archives; and one of pre-war Ethiopia's few dozen or so
aeroplanes, called after Emperor Haile Sellassie's daughter Princess
Tsehai. Other loot included a number of crowns, apparently taken from
the important medieval monastery of Dabra Libanos, and one of the
famous obelisks of Aksum, which dated back to around the early fourth
century AD. The removal of the Lion of Judah statue, and a statue of
Emperor Menilek, the founder of modern Ethiopia, was ordered by
Mussolini in person, immediately after the occupation of Addis Ababa in
May 1936. The dismantling of the Menilek statue was opposed by
Graziani, who argued that it would lead to rebellion.l9 The Duce,
however, insisted, and the statue was accordingly taken down one night in
October, in the presence of the fascist Ministers of the Colonies and Public
Works.20 When in the morning the citizens of the capital learnt of the
statue's removal there were loud lamentations, and cries of'Menilek is
no more. They have stolen our Menilek in the night.' Carabinieri,
Graziani reported, were then placed on duty to prevent any protest
demonstrations.2l It was widely believed that the monarch's statue had
been taken to Italy, but it had in fact only been hidden away. The Lion of
Judah statue, which was pulled down shortly afterwards, was on the other
hand shipped to Rome. When it was re-erected there, in June 1938, a

18. A. Sbacchi, Ethiopia under Mussolini. Fascism and the colonial experience (Zed Books,
London, 1985), pp. 47, 63.
19. Captured Italian fascist documents filmed in the USA. National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA), Washington D.C. Microcopy no. T. 821, 472/89-90, and 472/
263-4; Alessandro Lessona, Memorie (Sansoni, Florence, 1958), p. 308.
20. NARA. 472/300-2; Lessona, Memorie, p. 308.
21. L. Sava, 'Ethiopia under Mussolini's Rule', New Times and Ethiopia Nezvs, 7 September
1940. For Graziani's assessment of 'native' reaction see NARA. 472/304-5.

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236 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

young Eritrean, Zerai Deress, staged a one-man demonstration of protest

in full view of the fascist police.22
The transportation of the obelisk from Aksum, likewise on Mussolini's
personal orders, took place in the previous year, 1937.23 It was also
erected in Rome, to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of the Duce's
'March' on the city, and was placed opposite the Ministry of Italian Africa
building (after the Second World War the headquarters of the Food and
Agriculture Organization, FAO). The removal of the monument created
considerable consternation in Ethiopia. The exiled Emperor Haile
Sellassie, then in Britain, referred to its removal, in an address to the World
Council of Churches, as one of the eleven main 'outrages' committed
against his country.24 Information on the Ethiopian crowns looted during
the occupation is, unfortunately, still not fully documented. It is, how-
ever, known that several were seized by Graziani, who presented them to
Mussolini, who placed them in the Italian Colonial Museum in
Rome.25 A few years later when Mussolini was captured by Italian
partisans, at Dongo near the northern Italian frontier in April 1944, three
Ethiopian crowns, apparently made of gold, were found and
photographed among the valuables with which he was attempting to
escape to Switzerland.26

The peace treaty zvith Italy, 1947

The question of the loot taken during the Italian fascist occupation was
not forgotten by the Ethiopian Government after the Second World
War. The Ethiopian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1946,
where the United Nations Peace Treaty with Italy was drafted, insisted that
all loot should be returned. The Italian Government was accordingly
obliged to agree, in Article 37 of the Peace Treaty, of 1947, that:

Within eighteen months . . . Italy shall restore all works of art, religious objects,
archives and objects of historical value belonging to Ethiopia or its nationals and
removed from Ethiopia to Italy since 3 October 1935.

This treaty was important in that it firmly established the principle of the
return of cultural property, at least as far as Italy and Ethiopia were
concerned. The Italian Government accepted Article 37 only with the
worst of bad grace, and implemented its provisions with remarkable sloth.

22. The Times, 16 June 1938; Alazar Tesfa Michael, 'Eritrean Heroes', New Times and
Ethiopia News, 2 July 1948. For an obituary of Zerai see The Ethiopian Herald, 22 October
1945.
23. NARA 472/159, 173, 304, 327, 329, 331. Forphotographs ofthe transportation ofthe
obelisk see Gli Annali dell'Africa Italiana 3, 1 (1940), plate opposite p. 964.
24. Haile Sellassie, My Life and Ethiopia's Progress. Vol. Two (Michigan State University
Press, East Lansing, MI, 1994), p. 27.
25. GliAnnali dell'Africa Italiana 2, 2 (1939), plate opposite p. 702.
26. R. Lazzaro, sUn passo versa la verita sulla morte di Mussolini', Epoca, 25 August 1998,
p. 48.

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 THE RETURN OF AFRICA S CULTURAL HERITAGE 237

Tardy implementation of the Italian peace treaty

Efforts meanwhile began to be made to have the loot from Ethiopia
returned irl accordance with Article 37 of the Italian Peace Treaty of
1947. The Italian Government proved exceedingly unco-operative. The
Ethiopian Ambassador to Rome, Ato Emmanuel Abraham, recalls in his
memoirs that when he raised the matter of the return of the Lion of Judah
statue with two functionaries of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Ambassador Magistrati and Minister Cardio, they 'claimed that they had
no knowledge of its whereabouts'. He had to explain that since the statue
had been appropriated by the Allied Control Commission for Italy, all they
had to do was to inquire of members of that organization.27 On another
occasion when he tried to raise the question of the Aksum obelisk with
Signor Mendola, the Italian Director-General of Foreign Affairs, the latter
merely 'stared at the floor for about one minute but could not bring himself
to utter one word'.28 Ato Emmanuel was later handed a memorandum,
which claimed that the obelisk 'would be of little use if it were dismantled
again, and that its return to Ethiopia would "distress the Italian
people" '. The document therefore proposed that the obelisk be retained
in Rome, and an inscription be placed beside it to say that it was,
'Presented by the people of Ethiopia to the people of Italy in token of
friendship'.29

Despite such intransigence Italy gradually returned most, though not all,
of the Ethiopian Government archives; the paintings from the Ethiopian
Parliament building; and the Lion of Judah statue.30 The latter was not,
however, sent back until 1969, no less than twenty-two years after the
signing of the Peace Treaty. Some other treasures, including the crowns
Mussolini had with him at the time of his capture, on the other hand
disappeared.

The 1956 Italo-Ethiopian Agreement

Though the conflict between Ethiopia and Italy had been brought to an
end by the Peace Treaty of 1947, relations between the two countries were
not regulated until the signing of an Italo-Ethiopian treaty on 5 March
1956. This was an essentially 'unequal treaty'. Ethiopia was at that time
facing major economic and financial difficulties, as a result of which its
Government made some concessions which obviously would not otherwise
have been made. The agreement thus relegated the question of the
obelisk to an appendix, Appendix C, which was deliberately left somewhat
ambiguous. The text stated (1) that the obelisk was 'subject to restitution
to Ethiopia', (2) that the Italian Government undertook to transport it from
27. Emmanuel Abraham, Reminiscences of My Life (Lunde, Oslo, 1995), p. 119.
28. Abraham, Reminiscences, p. 105.
29. Abraham, Reminiscences, p. 188.
30. 'The Lion of Judah Returns', Addis Reporter, 11 April 1969, pp. 9-10.

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238 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

Rome to Naples, and (3) that it could 'be freely and without charge or
hindrance exported from Italy on such a vessel as the Imperial Ethiopian
Government may choose'. Nothing, however, was said as to who should
pay the cost of the stele's transportation from Naples to Aksum.
This Appendix, in which Italy undertook to transport the monument
only as far as the Italian port, was thus at variance with both the words
and the spirit of the Italian Peace Treaty of 1947, in which the Italian
Government had agreed to unqualified restoration, in that it had
shouldered the responsibility of returning the loot all the way to Ethiopia,
not merely of transporting it from one part of Italy to another!

Ethiopian parliamentary and popular demands

Negotiations for the return of the Aksum obelisk continued, but were so
protracted that in the spring of 1970 the Ethiopian Imperial Parliament
passed a resolution urging that:

Pressure should be applied, for the return of the obelisk and other historical
objects, by refusing permits to persons coming to the country, by the suspension
of trade, and as a last resort by breaking off diplomatic relations.

The parliamentarians, indignant at the failure to return their ancient

obelisk, also urged that the Emperor should not carry out a proposed State
Visit to Italy until it was returned.3l
The Ethiopian Parliament's initiative came to an end with the Ethiopian
Revolution of 1974, and the ensuing political struggles and civil war.
Demands in 1991 for the obelisk's return, voiced by the Italian scholar
Vincenzo Francaviglia and in the Italian left-wing newspaper l 'Unita,
nevertheless coincided with the growth of a popular movement in Ethiopia
itself. This was launched when a group of private Addis Ababa residents,
among them the present writer, organized a petition which was signed
by 500 prominent Ethiopians, among them a former Prime Minister,
Lij Mikael Imru; a former Foreign Minister, Dejazmach Zewde Gabre-
Sellassie; the principal historian, Ato Tekle Tsadiq Mekuria; the leading
artist, Mastre Afewerk Tekle; the well-known playwright, Tsegaye Gabre-
Medhin; and renowned poet, Assefa Gabre-Mariam. Other signatories
included many teachers, and students, of Addis Ababa University, and
scholars at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies.
A privately established Aksum Obelisk Return Committee held a public
demonstration in the city's stadium, in the interval between Jcwo inter-
national African football matches. This event was televised, thereby
bringing the demand for the return of the obelisk to television-viewers
throughout the country. Messages of support meanwhile were obtained

31. The only published text of this resolution is in an English translation in Dialogue, the
Publication of the Ethiopian University-Teachers' Association, 3, 1 (1970), p. 41.

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 THE RETURN OF AFRICA S CULTURAL HERITAGE 239

from scholars throughout the world. They included Professor Denis

Mack, the Oxford historian of Italian fascism; Professor Angelo Del Boca,
the Italian historian of Italian colonialism; many scholars of Ethiopian
affairs, among them Professors Christopher Clapham, Frederick Halliday,
and Richard Greenfield; Africanist authors, such as Wilfred Thesiger,
Thomas Pakenham, Ali Mazrui, and Colin Legum; and prominent anti-
fascist Italo-Americans, among them Professor Pascal Imperato. Support
was also expressed by the Ambassadors in Ethiopia of both Nigeria and
Zimbabwe, and by the Egyptian Antiquities Department.32
Early in 1996 the Ethiopian Federal Parliament held its first ever
public hearing on the obelisk, and shortly afterwards passed a unanimous
resolution instructing the Ethiopian Government to request its immediate
return. The people of Aksum likewise organized a petition, the largest
ever carried out in the country's history. Talks about the stele between
the Ethiopian and Italian Governments were duly instituted in early 1997,
as a result of which the Italian Government agreed, in a declaration of
4 March, to return the obelisk within the year. This was confirmed in
a joint Italo-Ethiopian statement, made at the time of Ethiopian Prime
Minister Melles Zenawi's visit to Rome, on 8 April.33
Implementation of this agreement, like those of 1947 and 1956, has, on
the Italian side, been remarkably slow, and several Italian anti-fascist
supporters of restitution have thrown doubt on the Italian Government's
sincerity on the repatriation issue. Technical studies of the obelisk have,
however, been undertaken; and the Ethiopian Ministry of Posts went so
far as to issue stamps commemorating the stele's anticipated return in
September 1998. The Ethiopian Government currently believes that
repatriation will take place, by air, as soon as the current unfortunate
conflict with Eritrea is concluded. The repatriation, after sixty years, of
the 170 ton obelisk, whenever it takes place, will doubtless set an
interesting precedent for the return of other loot, from Ethiopia, Africa,
and the Third World generally.

32. For the history of this agitation see Richard Pankhurst, 'The Aksum Obelisk in Rome',
Ethioscope, 3, 1 (1997), pp. 18-26, and 'The Unfinished Story ofthe Aksum Obelisk Return
Struggle', Addis Tribune, 13 June-1 1 July 1997.
33. The texts of these two agreements are reproduced in Addis Tribune of 16 May 1997.

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