In 1868, at the conclusion of the British Expedition to Abyssinia, British forces attacked the then Ethiopian capital of Magdala. Victorious soldiers and officers looted more than 400 priceless artifacts from Orthodox churches, including many carved wooden tabots, which are about six inches square and modeled after the biblical Ark of the Covenant, according to Christianity Today.
Cathedral of Our Lady Mary of Zion,
built by Emperor Haile Selassie in the
1950s
According to The Guardian, hidden in a storeroom in the British Museum for the past 146 years and never displayed are 11 remarkable religious objects. They are called tabots replica tablets on which the Ten Commandments are written, and which were nicked by the Brits after the battle of Magdala. So sacred are they that they can only be viewed by Ethiopian Orthodox priests. Without wishing to sound facetious, there are not very many such clerics in and around London to see them.
the reign of Emperor Fasilides. The original
church is believed to be built during the reign of
Ezana in the 4th century.
In Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, Tabot is a tablet that symbolically represents the Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments or the presence of God. Every Ethiopian Orthodox Church houses covered Tabot, which is regarded as sacrosanct and must be seen only by priests. The tablets, which are made of wood or stone, are believed to be inscribed with a cross and the name of a saint, reported the Art Newspaper.
According to Ethiopian tradition, the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba bore a son whose father was King Solomon. The son swapped the Ark with a full-size replica and brought it home after a visit to the Jerusalem temple, the legend says. The Orthodox believes that the Ark remains there, under Orthodox protection.
In recent years, requests for the permanent return of items taken during the imperial era without their owners’ consent have gathered pace
of the
Tablet
Today, Ethiopia is asking once again, yet even in the case of the tabots which are of limited use to the U.K., since literally nobody is allowed to see them the answer is no reported The Atlantic. The British Museum’s best offer, made last month, was that it would consider the possibility of a long-term loan.
For many Ethiopians, the items seized at Maqdala are of vital importance “a fundamental part of the existential fabric of Ethiopia and its people,” The Atlantic quoted Hirut Kassaw, Ethiopia’s culture minister, who visited the U.K. in March and requested their return. To Britain, as with many of the objects gathered for its museums during the era of imperial expansion, the tabots mean relatively little by themselves until, that is, someone asks for them back.
A few months before Hirut’s visit to the U.K., the governor of
Easter Island, the Chilean territory, gave an emotional press conference on the
steps of the British Museum asking for the return of a stone moai head taken by
a British warship in 1868 and given to Queen Victoria; indigenous islanders
believe the head is the reincarnation of their relatives.
Museums all over Western Europe are full of items obtained during the age of empire and colonization. Many of the most important treasures from Maqdala are held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, another major London institution, which specializes in art and design. Some, like the Maqdala treasures, were taken by outright force. Others were bought in conditions where the sellers didn’t have much choice and many more artifacts ended up in collections with no clear account of their provenance.
Some European countries have decided it’s time to discuss giving items back to the countries and communities that have asked for them. Germany, for instance, recently sent a 15th-century stone cross back to Namibia, as part of a wider effort to make amends for its genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in the early 1900s, and has issued guidelines to public museums on the restitution of other colonial-era objects, according to the Atlantic.
The Netherlands has drawn up similar guidelines, and some of its leading museums are in discussion with Sri Lanka and Indonesia about restitution. In France, President Emmanuel Macron recently endorsed a report that recommended the return of some museum objects to the country’s former colonies in Africa.
Museums in the U.K. generally decline to follow suit, claiming that their hands are tied by the law, which forbids them to send valuable objects out of the country. Instead, they point to the benefits of loans and other forms of collaboration. The British Museum, for instance, told the Atlantic that it was “committed to sharing objects from the collection” and wants to “develop and build long-term equitable relationships” with overseas institutions.
Christianity is the largest religion in Ethiopia, and its people place great value in religious items. That’s why Ethiopia is asking to return her citizens or Orthodox Church items and it has emotion and spiritual values.
Hartwig Fischer, the British Museum’s director, has told the Guardian he is going to Ethiopia later this year, where he will discuss the tabots, while the museum’s chairman, Richard Lambert, says the Museum trustees will take a decision on them “within the next six months”, on what would most likely be called a long-term loan . But why not simply make the obvious call, take them out of storage immediately and fly them to Addis Ababa so they can be placed in the relevant churches, permanently? asks The Guardian.
The Ethiopian Herald July 25/2019
BY ESSEYE MENGISTE
