The Times 21 November 1998

THE promised return to Ethiopia of a monument looted by Mussolini in 1937 has focused attention on other priceless artefacts stolen from the country.

Foremost among these is a collection of sacred relics that were plundered by Britain during the Victorian era.

Encouraged by Italy's commitment to return an ancient obelisk, prominent Ethiopians are now calling for Britain to hand back hundreds of anti-quities taken by a British army expedition in 1868.

"Many Ethiopians feel there was no justification for the taking of this treasure," Professor Richard Pankhurst, a British historian who has lived in Ethiopia for more than 30 years, says. "There is a strong feeling it should now be returned."

The treasure consists of about 350 religious texts, a crown, a chalice and many other objects, such as silver processional crosses. Most of the
manuscripts, of which many are illuminated, are held by the British Library.

The crown, which belonged to the Abuna, or head of the Ethiopian Church, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Other British institutions also hold rare Ethiopian antiquities.

"You could say it was the national library of Ethiopia which was looted," said Professor Pankhurst, grandson of the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and an authority on Ethiopian culture.

"It was an act of sacrilege in that most of these treasures were taken from a church."

The artefacts were taken from Magdala, the former capital of Ethiopia, by members of an expedition that was launched to secure the release of two British envoys. They were being held captive with a group of European artisans and missionaries in the remote interior of what was then Abyssinia.

Their jailer and tormentor was the Emperor Theodore, an unstable ruler who was also the first great unifier of the country. Theodore had sent several letters to Queen Victoria, asking for her hand in marriage [This was later corrected. There was no proposal of marriage.]; when the letters went unanswered, he took the envoys hostage in an attempt to gain Britain's attention.

The expedition, which was led by General R.C.Napier, set off from its Red Sea base for Theodore's mountain fortress at Magdala in early 1868. It included various non-combatants, among them Richard Holmes, a representative of the British Museum.

Despite holding them in chains and torturing one of them in the early stages of captivity, Theodore seems to have treated his British hostages reasonably well.

However, as his moods swung between drunken defiance and conciliatory calm, the envoys more than once feared for their lives.

With the British troops on their final approach, the enraged monarch had 197 Ethiopian prisoners pitched over a precipice to their deaths.

The first shots were fired on Good Friday as thousands of chanting Ethiopian warriors charged Napier's force across a highland plateau. It was a massacre.

Most of the Ethiopians were cut down in their tracks by rifle fire. About 700 were killed; the British losses were two dead and 18 wounded.

Theodore, who watched the slaughter from afar, refused to surrender despite the desertion of many followers. The next day he released his European
captives, telling the two British envoys that he bore them no ill will.

On Easter Monday, the British force launched its final assault. The Ethiopians were speedily routed. Theodore committed suicide, shooting himself in the mouth with a pistol that had been given to him by Queen Victoria just a few years earlier.

The British casualties in the final assault were 15 wounded.

The looting began that afternoon in the treasury, the church and Theodore's palace. The pickings were rich, for Theodore had collected at Magdala much of the ancient treasure of the Ethiopian kings.

Henry Morton Stanley, on the threshold of his career as an explorer of Africa, accompanied the expedition as one of two war correspondents.

He wrote how the soldiers squabbled over gold chalices and jewel-studded crowns, goblets encrusted with precious stones, embroidered robes and ancient parchments. A few days later the loot, transported to the plain below on the backs of 15 campaign elephants, was auctioned. The £5,000 collected was distributed among the ranks of the victorious force. One of the chief bidders was Holmes, later to become Queen Victoria's librarian at Windsor Castle.

"Armed with ample funds," Stanley wrote, "he outbid all in most things".

Some artefacts have already been returned to Ethiopia. The lesser of two copies of an ancient legend, the Kebra Nagast, was restored during the
Victorian era.

Theodore's crown, one of two at the V&A, was given back by King George V after a visit to Britain in 1924 of the Ethiopian regent, Tafari Makonnen (later Emperor Haile Selassie). During her state visit to Ethiopia in 1965, the Queen handed over Theo-dore's cap and imperial seal "as a token of our gratitude and esteem".

But most of the plunder remains outside Ethiopia. Paulos V, the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, has made a personal appeal during an interview with The Times for the return of the remaining plunder. "I would like to ask Britain for these sacred objects, the property of our church and part of our history, to be sent home."