The Addis Tribune 28 November 03

Professor Richard Pankhurst traces the history of the royal drums that were taken at Maqdala and split between the invading British troops.

Drums, as we all know, have been used in Ethiopian festivals, both secular and religious, as well on the occasion of the issuance of proclamations of state, since time immemorial. Many such drums made of skin fitted to a base of wood or baked clay, can be inspected at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies Museum, as well as in innumerable churches over the length and breadth of the country.

Unique

What were more unique - and no longer to be seen in the country – however, were the royal silver drums. Such drums played a major role on occasions of state, at least since the founding of the great city of Gondar in the early seventeenth century.

James Bruce

The best description of such drums is provided by the eighteenth century Scottish traveller James Bruce of Kinnaird. Writing of Gondar and its castles in his famous work, TRAVELS TO DISCOVER THE SOURCE OF THE NILE (Edinburgh, 1790) he recalls, in Volume I, page 602:

"There are two kettle-drums of large size placed one on each side of the outer gate of the king's house [i.e. palace]. They are called the lion and the lamb. The lion is beat at the proclamations which regard war, attainders of conspiracies and rebellions, promotions to supreme commands, and such-like high matters. The lamb is heard only on beneficent, pacific occasions, of gifts from the crown, of general amnesties, of private pardons, and reversals of penal ordinances".

To his reference to the drum called the lamb, Bruce adds an interesting foot-note, which reads:

Beaten Silver

"This drum is of beaten silver; the Abyssinians say, that this metal alone is capable of conveying the sweet sound contained in a proclamation of peace".

Maqdala

There is every reason to believe that these drums, or at least one of them, remained in Ethiopia until the looting of Maqdala, by British troops, in April 1868.

Henry Morton Stanley

The extent of that looting was later described by the American author Henry Morton Stanley. Referring to the vast amount of items looted, he, in his classic work COOMASSIE AND MAGDALA, observes, on pages 457-9:

"There were ... an infinite variety of gold, and silver, and brass crosses... heaps of parchment royally illuminated; stacks... of bibles; missals and numberless albums... Over a space growing more and more extended, the thousand articles were scattered in infinite bewilderment and confusion as 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".

Stanley, we may note, wrote in only general terms. His purpose was not to produce a full inventory of the loot, which would have required not a few pages, but a whole book.

What we do know, however, that at least one of the famous silver drums was among the loot. It was regarded by the British troops not as a cultural treasure, but, in accordance with the thinking of those days, merely as an item of booty, and was treated as such.

Hacked to Pieces

The victorious British troops thus proceeded to hack the drum into three pieces These were then divided among three of the Regiments concerned.

Divided among Three Regiments

These were (1) the 3rd Dragoon Guards (Prince of Wales's, now the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, based in Edinburgh; the Kings Own Royal Border Regiment, now the Kings Own Royal Border Regimnet. based in Carlisle; and the Duke of Wellington's (West Riding) Regiment, now the Duke of Wellington's Regiment (West Riding). based in Halifax.

All three Regiments, it is true, have preserved their fragments of the drum, but only as old trophies of war.

The three pieces remained separate until they were brought together for a few ours at London University's Warburg Institute on the occasion of the First International Conference on the History of Ethiopian Art, organised by the present author in October 1986.

Th Time has Surely Come

The time has surely come when the three silver drum fragments, which are of little interest in the three British military museums and/or stores, should finally be united: and should be returned to their country. There they would be seen, and treated, as a cultural treasures - an expression of the grandeur of the Gondarine monarchy and the skill of old-time Ethiopian silversmiths.

Perhaps then, with the three fragments at last played together it would at last be possible to see if the Ethiopians of the eighteenth century were correct in saying, in the words of Bruce, that a silver drum alone was "capable of conveying the sweet sound contained in a proclamation of peace".

AFROMET, the Association for the Return of Maqdala Ethiopian Treasures, formally requests the restitution of these three silver fragments of drum.