AFROMET press release 29 March 04

The death of the actor Sir Peter Ustinov is a great blow to film-lovers and campaigners for a fairer world, and it is a double blow for Ethiopians.

Not many people are aware of Sir Peter's Ethiopian ancestry of which he was very proud. His great grandfather was one of the hostages taken by Emperor Tewodros (Theodore) at Magdala in northern Ethiopia during the course of a disagreement with Britain concerning correspondence to Queen Victoria that had gone unanswered.

The British invaded Magdala on Easter Day 1868 destroying it entirely, killing much of its population and looting thousands of sacred items which still lie in institutions and in private collections mostly in Britain, some in Europe and elsewhere.

The Emperor committed suicide rather than be taken prisoner and British soldiers tore out his hair, which is on display in the National Army Museum in Chelsea.*

Sir Peter's ancestor was Moritz Hall (pronounced to rhyme with Pall Mall) who fled Poland to avoid conscription into the Russian army.

An adventurous sort, he ended up in Magdala where his metallurgy skills were of use to the Emperor who was having mortars built to defend Magdala.

While there Hall had married an Ethiopian woman, said to be an Oromo princess, and had a daughter – named Magdalena, after Magdala where she was born; the family history claims that Magdalena was born during the battle of Magdala when a vast explosion precipitated the birth.

His ancestry makes Sir Peter an eighth Ethiopian. In an Observer Up Front column Sir Peter said that his Ethiopian grandmother would sit him on her knee and tell him Bible stories, sobbing all over him which, he said, put him off religion for life.

* AFROMET (www.afromet.org) campaigns for the return of items looted by the British from Magdala. The UK Parliament's recent Human Remains Report recommends : "the establishment of a separate ministerial advisory group with a mandate to consider and make recommendations on the holding by museums of sacred objects" (Chapter 12, XVII, lvii).

AFROMET will be writing to the Chelsea Museum to request that the Emperor's hair be returned to Ethiopia.

Also see:

Ustinov, a man whose wit transcended all borders
The Independent (UK) 30 March 2004