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“They are so lavish as they were made for kings,” Ilana Tahan, lead curator of Hebrew and Christian Orient studies at the British Library, told me as she delicately turned the manuscripts’ pages, explaining the art and craft that went into producing them. In the British Library’s viewing room I saw nothing to contradict Pankhurst’s praise. Most Ethiopians have never seen manuscripts of that quality.” “The soldiers were able to pick the best of the best that Ethiopia had to offer. “It is not widely known what happened,” said Pankhurst, recognized as arguably the most prolific scholar in the field of Ethiopian studies. When I met Pankhurst his health was deteriorating but his eyes lit up whenever the manuscripts were mentioned. What all sides agree on is the manuscripts’ uniqueness. “We have the responsibility, as a public institution and national library, to research, make accessible and preserve the collections under our custodianship for people and researchers from all over the world, as well as encouraging and promoting international cultural exchanges,” says Luisa Mengoni, head of the library’s Asian and African Collections. A page from one of the Maqdala manuscripts. “These manuscripts are among the best in the world and one of the oldest examples of indigenous manuscripts in Africa, and they need to be studied carefully by historians here.”īut the British Library views its guardianship of the manuscripts for the sake of international research and access as equally necessary. “It’s true that the level of care and quality in Britain is much better than ours, but if you come to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies where we have a few Maqdala items previously returned you can see how well they are kept and made available to the public,” says Andreas Eshete, a former president of Addis Ababa University-which houses the institute-and who co-founded the Association for the Return of the Ethiopian Maqdala Treasures (AFROMET).
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Ilana Tahan, Lead Curator of Hebrew and Christian Orient studies at the British Library, demonstrates the craftsmanship and attention to detail that went into making the manuscript bindings. Now other voices are continuing the cause.
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Pankhurst campaigned for the return of the manuscripts to Ethiopia but hadn’t succeeded before his death in 2017. A two-day auction of the spoils of war among the victorious troops resulted in more than a thousand predominantly religious manuscripts making their way to Britain-15 elephants and hundreds of mules carried them along with other cultural treasures to the coast-with 350 manuscripts ending up in the British Library. In 1868, a British expeditionary force laid siege to the mountain fortress of Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros in what was then Abyssinia. In that home, over strong Ethiopian coffee and English biscuits, Richard Pankhurst, who dedicated his life to documenting Ethiopian history, told me the story of the ancient manuscripts looted at the end of the Battle of Maqdala. In the basement of London’s British Library I was led into a small well-lit room, marking the end of a journey that began in the Ethiopian Highlands at the Addis Ababa home of a remarkable British historian. One of the manuscripts from the Battle of Maqdala, now housed in the British Library.