The Prince and the Plunder: How Britain took one small boy and hundreds of treasures from Ethiopia

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For the first time, The Prince and the Plunder tells the whole story of Alamayu, from his early days in his father’s fortress on the roof of Africa to his new home across the seas, where he charmed Queen Victoria, chatted with Lord Tennyson and travelled with his towering red-headed guardian Captain Speedy.The orphan prince was celebrated but stereotyped and never allowed to go home. What: A 6th century column capital with acanthus leaves, made of white marble, taken during Britain’s Abyssinian Expedition during a hit-and-run archaeological dig at Adulis in modern day Eritrea Returning Heritage “A deeply moving account of a life cut short and the fate of a kingdom’s treasures … Heavens’ book tells this remarkable and unhappy story with authority and skill … surely the most definitive study of Alamayu and Maqdala to date … tragic, authoritative and deeply moving.” In this fascinating, haunting book, which takes us from a high mountain plateau in Ethiopia to Osborne on the Isle of Wight where Prince Alamayu met and charmed Queen Victoria, and all too soon to the catacombs of St George’s Chapel Windsor, Andrew Heavens tells the astonishing story of the uprooting of this lost boy.”

They were part of the original haul of manuscripts given to the British Museum in the aftermath of the campaign. Museum staff selected the six most beautiful volumes and presented them to Queen Victoria.For the first six years of his life, Alamayu lived in Maqdala. As Andrew Heavens tells us in The Prince and the Plunder: How Britain took one small boy and hundreds of treasures from Ethiopia, Maqdala was an Ethiopian mountain-top fortress-prison and stronghold of the King: Tewodros II. His mother, Tirunesh, was the King’s reluctant wife and daughter of his great rival - who lived in Maqdala as well. Alamayu’s grandfather was housed in the prison, along with two of Alamayu’s uncles on his mother’s side. Also held captive were a handful of British citizens whom Tewodros had detained up to 4 years ago. Complicated family politics aside, it must have been a secure, comfortable and sheltered existence. Alamayu never had the chance to write his own memoirs so almost all of the time we see Alamayu through other people’s eyes - whether they are British journalists, members of the public, or his classmates speaking on his behalf. All we have directly from Alamayu are a few scraps of writing and letters written for the moment. What: Fragment of a white marble relief sculpture carved with a cross in a circle, taken during Britain’s Abyssinian Expedition during a hit-and-run archaeological dig at Adulis in modern day Eritrea

Heavens is a good storyteller and guides us with a sure pen through the events of 1868 and beyond. He sprinkles in first hand sources throughout the book so that people who met or knew Alamayu, like Queen Victoria, can speak to us directly. This may sound a bit dry but it is actually fascinating because it allows us to see how central this story of Tewodros and Alamayu is to modern Ethiopians and how much these artefacts mean to them - and how incidental they are to most people in Britain. 2 Part revisionist history, part treasure hunt, this is the forgotten story of Ethiopia's 'Elgin Marbles' and a young prince taken out of Africa to live in Victorian Britain The [Meqdela] collection includes ceremonial crosses, chalices, processional umbrella tops, weapons, textiles, jewellery and archaeological material, as well as tabots (altar tablets that consecrate a church building that are highly sacred objects within the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition).’’’As shown on the plan, the building was erected east and west; at the last end there are the remains of may once have been an altar, and the masonry exposed leads to the supposition that the last end was shaped in the form of an apex. Mr Franks has the honour to report that two cases have been received from the India Office, containing various fragments of marble excavated by the British troops in Abyssinia. They appear to have been chiefly found amid the ruins of a church at Adulis, near Annesley Bay, a view of which has been published in the ‘Illustrated London News’ for September 5, 1868. Too bad: the palace wants Alemayehu kept where he was put, on Queen Victoria’s instructions. Since it can hardly say the request is over-ambitious – Philip’s mother’s body was flown from Windsor to Jerusalem 19 years after her death – its refusal, reported by the BBC, cites both practical and propriety-related objections. “It is very unlikely,” the palace says, “that it would be possible to exhume the remains without disturbing the resting place of a substantial number of others in the vicinity.” It said the chapel authorities had “the responsibility to preserve the dignity of the departed”. Before his death Alemayehu had “hankered”, Heavens writes, for Ethiopia. During his lifetime his plight touched some would-be protectors, including Victoria (his Windsor burial was a respectful gesture), while one of her prime ministers, William Gladstone, condemned the removal, at the same time as the child, of Abyssinian spoils. He “deeply lamented”, Hansard recorded, “that those articles, to us insignificant, though probably to the Abyssinians sacred and imposing symbols, or at least hallowed by association, were thought fit to be brought away by a British Army.” The book is extremely well researched and is compelling in its very honest and compassionate take of the life of the king of kings' heir and his ultimate fate. It clarifies the relationship Britain established with Abyssinia and its current ambivalence over this legacy. Particularly abhorrent are the findings that Alemayu's last wish to return to Ethiopia was denied by the British to satisfy the new Ethiopian ruler, Yohannes, who was worried Alamayu might usurp his reign. A life lost, a life wasted. His remains should indeed be sent home to Ethiopia.