The British Government has already resisted one attempt to restore this gold crown to Ethiopia in 1923.

State official started a search for an appropriate present for Ras Tafari Makonnen (the future Emperor Haile Sellassie) when he visited Britain.

They applied to the Victoria & Albert Museum which they found had two crowns taken at Maqdala. (Find out more here).

After some debate they decided to keep this highly valuable gold crown and return a silver gilt one.

At the time they said: "The second crown, though less showy, is from an artistic point of view the superior article. It is listed in the Museum as the crown of the Abouna [sic]."

They added that it could not be returned because"nothing short of an Act of Parliament could get it out of the possession of the Museum; besides to restore it would create a very difficult precedent. We would be bebattled with demands to restore the Elgin marbles to Greece, not to mention other objects of interest which have been acquired from time to time as a result of military operations".

This latter crown, according to Sophia Shirley of today’s Victioria and Albert Museum, is made "mainly of high carat gold (more than 18 carat) alloyed with silver sand copper", and, according to Louise Hofman, also of the V. & A., weighs no less than 2,488.8 grammes.