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

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. 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.”

Kuper cites the more famous example of the Benin Bronzes, taken by British forces in 1897. The city-state of Benin was located in what is now Nigeria, though, as the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah writes, “One thing we know for sure is they [their creators] didn’t make them for Nigeria.” 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. 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).”The following is the report by the officer in charge of the Department of Antiquities of the British Museum, on the articles found at Adulis, which were presented to that Institution:- 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. 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 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. 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.