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

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What: Fragment of a white marble relief sculpture carved with a cross within a wreath, taken during Britain’s Abyssinian Expedition during a hit-and-run archaeological dig at Adulis in modern day Eritrea

His revision of his mother’s decision would add a progressive flourish to an act requiring nothing more of the palace than is, when not actively mandated by the Geneva conventions, common decency. There could even be room for some tasteful restitution ritual, possibly involving uniforms, where Charles’s default expression of bemused gloom would be utterly appropriate. William and Kate, too, could do their mournful faces and fancy dress, welcoming this opportunity to show that animals and dancing are not the only thing royals love about Africa. Andrew’s absence might be approvingly noted. The story of John Bell and Walter Plowden is like a cross between Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King and a volume of the Flashman Papers (tellingly, both Kipling and George Macdonald Fraser have a firmer handle on the nature of empire than Heavens, who is too eager to pass judgement on those “brought up in the deep prejudices of their time” – presumably our prejudices are of a shallower nature). Bell, a British explorer who had gone native on his travels, teamed up with Plowden, the Consular Agent for Protection of British Trade in the region, and became allies of the anglophile Tewodoros, who declared that “For the love of Christ I want friendship”, when he wrote to Victoria. 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”.

There is a footnote saying Christopher Middlemass Davidson and Edmond Anderson Shuldham are linked through the South Cork Militia. It adds: The Economist “Heavens has produced an exceptionally fascinating, evenly balanced and moving account of Alamayu’s life. While there are scores of books recounting the story of Tewodros and the events at Maqdala, there are precious few biographies of this young prince… and none of them more rewarding to read than this one.“ If like me you didn’t know anything about Alamayu and the Maqdala treasures beyond some vague memories of a Flashman novel, this is a fascinating and eye opening account. It is also hugely relevant for today - particularly in Ethiopia, but also for many other countries that will have had similar dealings with Britain in the 19th Century.

The 1972 print Catalogue of Ethiopian manuscripts of the Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine in London says: For a service template, how about something like the memorial ceremony in 2013, when the Serbian royal family was allowed – Queen Elizabeth having authorised the exhumation – to repatriate Queen Maria of Yugoslavia from Frogmore? Few families can have devoted as much attention as UK sovereigns to re-arranging, rehousing and relocating ancestral bodies Provenance: One of three gold discs described in the museum’s temporary register as “from the cross on the altar at Magdala” The British Museum database entry has a picture and reads: “Copper alloy coin. (whole) Head and shoulders bust right, in circle. Area inside circle gilt. Cross at top. (reverse) Head and shoulders bust right, flanked by two wheat-stalks. Cross at top. (obverse).” Here are some of the photos and pictures of Alamayu wearing it – two in Ethiopia soon after the Battle of Maqdala, one on Malta and the rest soon after his arrival in Britain in 1868.For the first time, Andrew Heavens 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. 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.” 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 Few families can have devoted as much attention as UK sovereigns to re-arranging, rehousing and relocating ancestral bodies, with some batches transferred to Frogmore, all at no recorded cost to the “dignity of the departed”, albeit that community cannot speak for itself. What: Gold disc “from the cross on the altar at Magdala” showing the Virgin Mary and infant Christ, bought from Col W J Holt

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. Yet the book comes alive in its final third, when Kuper confronts the consequences for museums of the current obsession with identity politics – ironically, an import from the culturally colonising United States, to whose fads, pieties and loose relationship with facts Anglophone countries are especially susceptible. looted Maqdala and the orphaned Alemayehu (his mother died on the journey), was subjected to a fragmented upbringing that he spent largely, to judge by Heavens’s account and some piercing photographs, in forlorn misery. 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.” 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).’’’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.” Andrew Heavens takes us through the traumatic events of Alamayu’s early childhood and subsequent life in Britain as a ward of the state, where he was placed into the care of Captain Speedy, a 2 metre tall eccentric ginger Scottish adventurer. On one of the last slabs found there is a carved cross, which lends strength to the supposition that the building now exposed was one of the early Christian Churches, but whether it stands on the debris of still older buildings or not I have been unable to determine, as the excavations have scarcely been carried deep enough. 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 horn has a cover inscribed: “THE DRINKING HORN OF KING THEODORE’S WAS TAKEN FROM MAGDALA by Lieut C M Davidson ADJUTANT 4TH KINGS OWN ROYAL REGIMENT 13th April 1868”. There is a shied on the front inscribed: “TO Lieut Colonel Edmond A Shuldham OF COOLKELURE FROM HIS FRIEND Capt C M Davidson”. Nevertheless, Nigeria has been promised the return of most of the 39 bronzes held by the Smithsonian Museum, among others. Yet Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments is currently unable to display the 500 already in their collection. And would it be worth it, given that the National Museum in Lagos receives an average of 30 visitors a day? Tewodoros shot himself in the face of defeat, while his young wife, Tirunesh, was to die of disease barely a month later. This left their seven-year-old son, Alamayu, the subject of Andrew Heavens’ worthy if ultimately unsatisfying biography. It starts reasonably well, with the interesting – and thankfully well-documented – tale of Britain’s early engagement with Ethiopia, formerly a repository of fantasies inspired by tales of the Queen of Sheba and Prester John. Below is his report, as it appeared in the official record of the expedition, compiled by Holland and Hozier.One of those pairs of eyes staring out at Alamayu belonged to Queen Victoria, who he met three days after he arrived in England.