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

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Full Book Name: The Prince and the Plunder: How Britain took one small boy and hundreds of treasures from Ethiopia Provenance: One of three gold discs described in the museum’s temporary register as “from the cross on the altar at Magdala”

On informing the Commanding Engineer that I had been directed to apply to him for a working party to enable me to make excavations with a view to discovering some remains of ruins of ancient Adulis, I was told that owing to the amount of work in hand just at that time I could not have more than 25 men of the Madras Sappers and Miners; with this small party, however, I at once made a commencement. Three narrow trenches being cut into some of the tumuli the walls and foundations of old buildings were discovered. At one spot some cut stone columns were found, and this induced me to remove more of the debris in the immediate vicinity, when the outline of a building, as shown in the accompanying plan, was discernable. I also ascertained by excavation that the foundations of this building, in which the bases of the cut-stone columns were found in true position, were 13 feet deep.

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What: A fragment of a 6th century white marble column, taken during Britain’s Abyssinian Expedition during a hit-and-run archaeological dig at Adulis in modern day Eritrea

In the first part of the book, the prince’s short life and his times are covered. It traces the prince’s journey from the Red Sea port of Massawa (in present day Eritrea), through Suez, Alexandria and Malta, to his first landing on the shores of Britain at the Port of Plymouth. Three days after his arrival, he would meet Queen Victoria and the royal family at their summer home of Osborne House. Soon after, he would travel again. His guardian, who goes by the name of ‘’Speedy’’, would take him to The Crown Jewel of the British Empire, India. All About History magazine “Andrew Heavens has done an extraordinary thing for British history, which is to tell a story from our not-so-distant past which has been almost unknown to most of us who live in the UK, but is very well known indeed to the people of Ethiopia, whose story is told here. He covers his material with a depth of knowledge and an impressive thoroughness, but with a lightness of touch in the way he tells a story that is, at the same time, profoundly human, deeply political, highly engaging, and which reveals much about our imperial past and how it continues to resonate in our own day. A compelling and essential read!”

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What: Fragment of a 6th century 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 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