THE PRINCE AND THE PLUNDER: How Britain took one small boy and hundreds of treasures from Ethiopia.

• Author: Kember, James

Author: Andrew Heavens Published by: The History Press, Cheltenham, 2023, 272pp, 22.90 [pounds sterling].

The British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Westminster Abbey and the National War Museum of Scotland all figure amongst tens of institutions in Britain and other countries in Europe and North America that hold religious artefacts, manuscripts and other items seized in a raid by British forces on the citadel of King Tewodros II at Maqdala (today: Amba Mariam) in the highlands of Ethiopia in 1868. Many of these items are in storage; and under the British Museums Act of 1963 and later legislation, they cannot be exchanged, given away or otherwise disposed of, except in the most exceptional circumstances. Many more items, known to have been taken and seen publicly in Britain in the late 19th century, have disappeared from view.

One or two items have been returned relatively recently (in the early 2000s). These included two tabots (the holy tablets representing the Ark of the Covenant that in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church are kept out of sight of all except the priests of the church in which they are held). The one tabot still in possession of Westminster Abbey would require royal approval to be returned, something which the former archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, has advocated in line with Ethiopian government wishes. As recently as 2022, a pressure group in Britain has called for the return of the eleven tabots held by the British Museum, in part because they cannot be viewed, even by museum staff. Amongst the items that have been repatriated is a copy of a major 14th century text, the Kebra Negast, that describes how the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia. It is now in a church in Entoto, one of the hills surrounding Addis Ababa, and somewhere we used to take visiting New Zealand dignitaries (though the text itself was not on display).

The difference from other such raids, and amassing of war booty, is that the British took back with them the six-year old son of Tewodros. Prince Alamayu, who was to spend the rest of his remaining twelve years outside his native country, lived an extraordinary life, educated at Cheltenham College and Rugby School (the front cover of the book pictures him in Rugby uniform), and briefly at Sandhurst (he proved a poor scholar, possibly due in part to dyslexia, that was not itself a diagnosis in vogue until some years later). He not only met Queen Victoria on several occasions: he was also...