The Prince and the Plunder

A book on how Britain took one boy and piles of treasures from Ethiopia

Author: Andrew Heavens

Review: Barbara Blake Hannah on ‘The Prince and the Plunder’

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By Barbara Blake Hannah

Finally, the full story of the Ethiopian Prince Alemayu, the son of Emperor Tewodros, who was taken from Ethiopia to England after the Battle of Maqdala, has been told and told well. Andrew Heavens must be commended for using his literary talent to explain details of the life of the boy prince, completely clarifying the mystery that has always surrounded his name and describing his life with words so vivid and descriptive, that at times I felt I was watching a documentary film, not just reading a book.

Heavens begins by explaining that Emperor Tewodros was a brave soldier king who, in an effort to unite the nation under his leadership, led his army to conquer the many Rases who ruled other parts of Ethiopia. The fortress castle of Maqdala stood on top of a precipitous mountain that made it almost impregnable. Here was Prince Alemayu born, son of a beautiful wife who agreed to marry Tewdros in return for him freeing her father from among the many prisoners he kept chained in the castle. Tewodros had asked two British explorers who became his friends, to help improve his relations with Britain’s Queen Victoria by delivering to her a letter requesting a close military association to defeat his Turkish enemies. But after they died, this important letter was delayed by 15 months without an answer, making the Emperor so angry that he captured and imprisoned at Maqdala all the British and Europeans who were then in Ethiopia. It was this group of prisoners that Britain decided to send an army to rescue.

The details of the army sent under Robert Napier, are astonishing. Consider the 42 elephants that were just one small detail of the immense collection of items accompanying the soldiers. Food, clothing, even railway tracks to be laid from the port where the army landed, carrying men and armaments into and across Ethiopia, showed the strength of Britain’s military might. The truths Heavens uncovers with his detailed research show that, faced with the failure of his own cannons to do damage to the British army, and his impending defeat, Tewdros fires his pistol into his mouth. His still-bleeding body is immediately subjected to the first of hundreds of acts of the looting of Maqdala. his clothing is cut into shreds and locks of his long hair render him nearly bald. Halfway through this act of ghoulish theft, one man sketches a picture of Tewdros’s head, giving us the first close-up look at the historic Emperor.

After the battle and subsequent looting, Napier takes responsibility for little Alemayu and his mother, as the British army makes a rapid return to England. Though some stories of this departure gave the impression that the little prince and his mother were either kidnapped or trafficked, in fact Tewodros had several times in the past said he wanted his son brought up in England, to which his mother had agreed. She, sadly, died en route to Aden, and Alemayu was taken on board ship under the care of a very unusual Englishman, Captain Speedy, who becomes a central figure in his life.

Captain Speedy, another explorer who knew Ethiopia so well he spoke Amharic, became the prince’s official caretaker for several years thereafter, a relationship with which the child was happy and which Queen Victoria, to whom the royal child was presented, official approved of. While a previous impression had been given that the Queen had held Alemayu under duress, the book shows she treated him like a caring and loving grandmother, giving him — under Captain Speedy’s care — access to her summer home on the Isle of Wight and frequent visits to her at Windsor Castle. She was forever interested in his welfare, but in details Heavens reveals, the Queen had less power over decisions about life, than the government officials who ruled Britain.

Little Alemayu grows up in England under Speedy’s care. The book shares photos of the young prince, in each of which we can see unhappiness behind his quiet, sad eyes. Speedy and his wife move to India with Alemayu, but when Speedy wants to move to the Phillipines, that move is denied by government decisions, Alemayu is returned to England and efforts made for him to receive a proper English education. He is sent to Rugby school where he endures traditional bullying, then to Sandhurst military school where the bullying becomes brutal and cruel. His inability to acquire the desired level of English education causes those in charge of Alemayu to give up trying to qualify him for a proper job.

Sent to stay with a former tutor in a cold countryside house in the middle of winter, 18-year old Alemayu contracts a bad cold, refuses to eat food and, despite efforts by nurses, doctors and even a brief visit from Captain Speedy, he dies. Considering the boy’s story — the paradise life in which he spent his early years, the shock of witnessing the onslaught on his home Maqdala, the death of his father, then his mother, his move to the very foreign England where his colour and royal birth made him a constant source of attention and racism, his several moves from persons and places, and his eventual brutal experience at Sandhurst — his experiences in England must have made Alemayu decide that his life was no longer worth living. Refusing to eat must have been his easiest way out of all the sadness, mental and physical pain he had suffered in his short life and though various pulmonary diagnoses are given, it seems clear that suicide is the cause of Alemayu’s death. The photo of him in death shows his very handsome face, resting and finally at peace.

The book does not end there. We learn that Alemayu’s constant wish to be returned to Ethiopia was on the point of being granted, but he didn’t live to know that. The Ethiopians at home and abroad who have tried since then to have Alemayu’s remains returned are told that his tomb is inaccessible, but this is inaccurate. Ras Tafari Makonnen, later crowned Emperor Haile Selassie, visited St. George’s Chapel in 1924, examined his tomb and corrected the inscription by placing an Amharic version of his name on it. Clearly it is not buried and irretrievable. Those who love Ethiopia will not cease asking to have his remains returned. The book lists the various items of booty looted from Maqdala, identifying the British museums and libraries where they are located and how they came to be there. Not all have been found, and some are in private collections, while a few have actually been returned. Some, such as the Ethiopian Orthodox Tabots locked in secret rooms of the British Museum that cannot be seen except by priests, are part of the ongoing request for their return to Ethiopia, as they all should be. The book makes special mention of Rastafari in a chapter about Ras Seymour McLean, the Book Liberator, who removed hundreds of Ethiopian books from British museums and libraries, claiming that he was returning ‘stolen legacy’ to its original owners, and bringing Rastafari energy to the campaign to have all of the Maqdala treasures repatriated.

I deeply congratulate Andrew Heavens for writing this fascinating, well-researched and informative book. It gives a vivid picture of Ethiopia a century ago, providing a link through the young Prince to today’s Ethiopia. Prince Alemayu in life and death is a symbol of Ethiopia’s history and the treasures looted at Maqdala. The story is not over till he and the treasures looted from his father’s kingdom, are returned.

© Barbara Blake Hannah

Queen Terunesh’s golden hairpin

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Put up for sale by Bertolami Fire Art in its auction CURIOSITIES FROM EUROPEAN AND ORIENTAL ART SILVERS, IVORIES, CORALS, ICONS AND WUNDERKAMMER PALAZZO CAETANI LOVATELLI, ROME, WED 11 JUNE 2025

175

Gold hairpin that belonged to Tiruwork Wube, Ethiopia, 19th century

height x width x depth box: 3 x 21 x 7 cm. Total weight with box: 205 g.

in gold, housed in its original vintage box, lined with red velvet inside. The lid, fitted with a protective glass, allows the jewel to be admired without removing it. Applied to the glass, a contemporary descriptive cartouche reads:

“Hair pin – worn by Ioronech – wife of king Theodore X – daughter of the king of Tigre, bought from Abyginia by D. J. Sinclain, 33, Regt. 1868”. This inscription attributes the clasp to Ioronech, wife of king Theodore X of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and daughter of the king of the kingdom of Iigre, and links it historically to its purchase by a British officer, D. J. Sinclain of the 33rd regiment, during the 1868 British campaign in Abyssinia. The clasp has a multi-layered structure: it alternates smooth circular elements with decorated worked discs, creating an interplay of volumes and textures. Crowning the composition is an openwork spherical element. A transverse bar is welded onto these elements, to which hanging chains are welded, terminating in movable conical elements. 

There are no reliable historical sources on a figure called “Ioronech”, nor on a “King Theodore X”. It is most likely a reference to Theodore II, Emperor of Ethiopia from 1855 to 1868. His second wife, Tiruwork Wube, was the daughter of the governor of the Tigré region, so the indication in the cartouche “daughter of the king of Tigre” seems plausible and consistent with known historical facts.

During the British expedition of 1868 to Abyssinia, many objects belonging to the imperial court and the Ethiopian nobility were brought to England; the brooch in question could be one of these rare specimens, related to a Tigrean princess who became empress.

Estimate: € 700,00 / 900,00

Starting price: € 440,00

Speedy’s shield

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What: Shield that appeared in numerous contemporary photographs

Where: Current whereabouts unknown

Status: Strong link to Maqdala, though Speedy did also collect Ethiopian artefacts before and after the campaign

This shield appeared in many photographs taken on the 1868 campaign and in the years that followed. Almost all are associated with Captain Speedy who was part of the expedition’s intelligence team and became the first guardian of Ethiopia’s Prince Alemayehu in Britain. The design is distinctive through its use of unusually large silver panels, with triangles closely filling the space left by the rectangles.

Some of the photos are below:

Speedy, photo by the Royal Engineers, 1868
(more…)

The Kenyan shield

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What: Shield

Where: The National Museum of Ethiopia

Provenance: Strong link to Maqdala through museum labelling

Provenance: A note on the exhibit at the National Museum of Ethiopia says it was restituted by the Kenya National Museum in 1985 by Richard Leakey.

Research by Michael White (2009: 68) suggests it was bought by Captain Edward Roberts at the auction of plunder after the fall of Maqdala. A Captain Edward Roberts of the 4th King’s Own was listed as wounded at the Battle of Aroge in the official record of the campaign written by Captain Henry Hozier.

More research is needed to pin down the details of its journey from Maqdala to Kenya to Addis Ababa.

The Newcastle shield

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What: Shield

Where: The National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. The shield was removed from an auction in Newcastle, England in February, 2024 and returned to Ethiopia in November through the mediation of the Royal Ethiopian Trust.

Status: Clear link to Maqdala. Among other indicators, the central boss of the shield is engraved “Magdala 13th April 1868”.

Provenance: This shield first appears in the British record in a 1932 sale of items from the collection of the Lambton family, through Anderson & Garland Auctioneers of Newcastle upon Tyne. The link to the Lambdons also strengthens the case for a link between the shield and Maqdala. To quote an essay published by the Royal Ethiopian Trust:

"It is notable that Sir Hedworth Lambton, the patriarch of the Lambton family, had a significant connection to Lady Valerie Meux, an aristocrat with a strong interest in Ethiopian culture. Sir Hedworth, a naval officer and the commander of the Naval Brigade at the Siege of Ladysmith, became the chief beneficiary of Lady Meux’s estate. This inheritance not only linked Sir Hedworth to Lady Meux’s wealth but also possibly to her collection of Ethiopian treasures, making it likely that the Shield of Magdala entered the Lambton Estate via Lady Meux. The shield’s back is marked with the word 'Tower,' suggesting its association with one of two towers on the Lambton Estate."

The shield was put up for sale again by the same auctioneer in February, 2024. Here is a link to an archived version of the auction page. This time, Anderson & Garland did not name the owner, but did mention the historical context, with a reference to the “expedition and its troops looting many local artifacts which they took back to Britian”.

The Ethiopian Heritage Authority – part of Ethiopia’s government – then contacted Anderson & Garland on Feb. 23 in a letter that said:

"Since the artefact has been wrongfully acquired in a context of a punitive expedition to Ethiopia in which these items were looted the sale of this item in your auction is inappropriate. As the legally mandated authority concerned with Ethiopian heritage in Ethiopia and abroad we would therefore strongly urge you to cancel the auction, and request that you contact the sellers to arrange for the restitution of this looted item and repatriation to its country of origin and its legally rightful owners, the Ethiopian government represented by the Heritage Authority under the Ministry of Tourism."

The auctioneer agreed to withdraw the shield from sale. It soon emerged that it had been contacted by the Royal Ethiopian Trust – a non-profit organization established by His Imperial Highness Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie Haile-Selassie, grandson of Emperor Haile-Selassie I – which offered to acquire the shield and arrange its return to Ethiopia.

“This shield is not just a historical artifact; it is a symbol of Ethiopia’s history and resilience,” said Prince Ermias. “Our efforts and success in regaining this treasure is a testament to our commitment to preserve our heritage and honor our ancestors who fought for our nation’s sovereignty.”

It was first taken in October to Toledo, Ohio, where it was displayed at the Toledo Museum of Art. Then campaigner and researcher Alula Pankhurst brought it to Ethiopia in November where it was greeted at the National Museum where it remains on display.

The Highlanders’ shield

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What: Shield

Where: The Highlanders’ Museum, Ardersier, Inverness, Scotland IV2 7TD

Status: Clear link to Maqdala. Among other indicators, the shield is marked: “Taken at Magdala by the British Troops 13th April 1868”.

Provenance: The shield is included on the Highlanders’ Museum website, in a post titled: “Ethiopian Shield taken from the Battle of Maqdala”. That post identifies the shield as plunder and discusses attitudes to looting then and now.

The shield is clearly linked to Maqdala through the two engravings that say: “Taken at Magdala by the British Troops 13th April 1868” and “Lieutenant General Sir Patrick Grant GCB GC MG from W Arbuthnot”.

William Arbuthnot was a Scottish-born officer on the Abyssinian Expedition and Aide-de-Camp to its commander, Robert Napier. He made a significant collection of artefacts from Maqdala, including the Edinburgh tabot, the Westminster Abbey tabot and some horn beakers, later decorated in engraved silver.

There is a good chance this “Highlanders’ shield” is the one in this photo of Arbuthnot’s Abyssinian collection from the time.

Patrick Grant was a senior Indian Army officer who did not take part in the Abyssinian Expedition, but had close links with its commander, Robert Napier. Grant was born in Inverness-shire, went on to become the acting Commander-in-Chief in India during the 1857 “Indian Mutiny”, and was a pall-bearer at Napier’s funeral. Grant is described as a friend in Napier’s biography, which also says that, at one point, Napier saved Grant’s life.

More research is needed on the circumstances around Arbuthnot giving the shield to Grant. There are examples of pieces of Maqdala treasure being presented to senior figures, including then US President Ulysses S Grant, in a sharing of the spoils.

This shield is very similar to other sheilds linked to Maqdala and listed on this website.

Materials: Leather, Silver

Size: 55cm