What: Gold disc “from the cross on the altar at Magdala” showing an angel, bought from Col W J Holt
Where: The British Museum, Great Russell St, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3DG
Photo: The British Museum charges people to reproduce images of things in its collection, even plundered things. My budget won’t stretch that far, so you’ll have to go to the museum website to see the disc as it looks today – https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1900-0711-3
Provenance: One of three gold discs described in the museum’s temporary register as “from the cross on the altar at Magdala”
Details and references: Museum number: Af1900,0711.3 See AOA Archive – letters from Colonel Hunt regarding the purchase, 9 June, 3 & 14 July 1900 According to The New Annual Army List, Militia List, and Yeomanry Cavalry List – 1890, “Colonel W. J. Holt … Served in the Abyssinian campaign in 868, as Provost Marshal at Zoula, and subsequently in the Transport Train ; was attacked by a large force at Belago Pass whilst in charge of Convoy and his conduct on the occasion met with the entire approval of Lord Napier.”
What: Gold disc “from the cross on the altar at Magdala” showing the crucifixion, bought from Col W J Holt
Where: The British Museum, Great Russell St, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3DG
Photo: The British Museum charges people to reproduce images of things in its collection, even plundered things. My budget won’t stretch that far, so you’ll have to go to the museum website to see the disc as it looks today – https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1900-0711-1
Provenance: One of three gold discs described in the museum’s temporary register as “from the cross on the altar at Magdala”
Details and references: Museum number: Af1900,0711.1 See AOA Archive – letters from Colonel Hunt regarding the purchase, 9 June, 3 & 14 July 1900 According to The New Annual Army List, Militia List, and Yeomanry Cavalry List – 1890, “Colonel W. J. Holt … Served in the Abyssinian campaign in 868, as Provost Marshal at Zoula, and subsequently in the Transport Train ; was attacked by a large force at Belago Pass whilst in charge of Convoy and his conduct on the occasion met with the entire approval of Lord Napier (Medal and promoted to Captain, unattached).”
What: A 12cm-long piece of cloth cut from the Emperor’s coat on the day he died
Where: The Cameronians Regimental Museum (Scottish Rifles), Mote Hill, off Muir Street, Hamilton, Lanarkshire, ML3 6BY, UK
According to many accounts, British soldiers swarmed around the body of Emperor Tewodros on Magdala and cut off pieces of his clothes for souvenirs.
The museum entry, which has two pictures, describes: a “small scrap of material with handwritten note” on a piece of paper.
A note on the paper reads: “A piece of the coat King Theodore had on the day he was killed. A piece of the coat was given to one of the 26th Cameronians by a French Colonel who took it off his coat – He [?] cut this off their piece”.
Accession No: CAM.G308
The 26th Foot (The Cameronians) were a Scottish regiment which arrived too late to take part in either of the main battles in the Abyssinian Campaign.
Britain was so thrilled by its 1868 military escapade in Ethiopia/Abyssinia that it set it to music – repeatedly. See links to the scores for two of the pieces inspired by the invasion below. A free copy of my book to the first person who can reclaim the music, record a substantial part of it and post it online. Please post links in the comments section.
Abyssinia fever burned bright across Britain – from its music halls to its parliament – after the news of the victory came pulsing over the telegraph wires in 1868.
Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli stood up in the House of Commons in early July to praise ‘one of the most remarkable military enterprises of this century’. He gave a colourful account of the campaign, right up to its climax where ‘the standard of St. George was hoisted on the mountains of Rasselas’ – a slightly confusing mashup of references as St George is as venerated in Ethiopia as he is in England, if not more so. The expedition, Disraeli said, would ‘add lustre to the name of this nation, and … beneficially influence the future history of the world’.
At the Theatre Royal, Holborn, The Abyssinian Duet sung by Miss Fanny Josephs and Mr G. Honey was ‘rapturously encored’ night after night. A whole musical extravaganza, The Fall of Magdala, performed at London’s Agricultural Hall, promised a grand descriptive quadrille, with military effects, imposing martial marches and four military bands backed by a great orchestra performing pieces evoking scenes from the ‘warriors of Britain and the martial sons of India encamped on the plains of Hindostan’ through to ‘the revels of the African savages in the wild fastness of their native land’, climaxing with the victorious assault on the mountain fortress.
Another piece The Abyssinian Expedition, had musical passages representing mortars, Snider rifle fire and the “Abyssinian war cry” (Yah ha yah ha yah ha). You can still pick up the sheet music, arranged both for piano and for violin and cello, for about a tenner on eBay and put on a performance of your own.
Alternatively you can download the music in PDF form by clicking on the images above or the links below.
As I said at the top, a free copy of my book to the first person who can reclaim the music, record a substantial part of it and post it online. Please post links in the comments section.
What: A book of Psalms, belonged to Queen Tirunesh, the wife of King of Kings Tewodros II and mother of Prince Alamayu
Where: The British Museum, Great Russell St, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3DG
Photo: There is no picture in the British Museum catalogue entry – https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1912-0410-37-b
With this book, a fable comes to life on a museum shelf. There was one story that everyone knew about Alamayu’s mother: the story about the time Tewodros interrupted her as she was reading the Bible’s Book of Psalms.
The queen turned to him coldly and told him to go away, saying she was conversing with a greater king than him. The story was repeated so often, and made its point so clearly, that it must have been a parable. But again, there it is, her actual copy of King David’s hymns and laments, in the British Museum.
Someone who visited Alamayu on the Isle of Wight described how the queen’s wood-covered Psalter was one of the boy’s most prized possessions. Here is the article in the Oct. 29, 1869 issue of The Star newspaper:
The Star, Oct. 29, 1869, Page 4
The British Museum doesn’t make a lot of the book. There’s no picture on its website and, like Alamayu’s necklace, it is not on display. That is hardly surprising. Ethiopian Books of Psalms are relatively common, one of the best-represented classes of sacred literature in collections of Ethiopic manuscripts. Most of them aren’t meant to be rarefied treasures. They are books for regular readings, daily devotions and prayers. Many, like this one, come with a leather carrying case and shoulder strap so people can lug them around with their baggage.
This one’s real value is in the story and in the details that must have reminded Alamayu of his mother – the small motifs next to the black and red text, the ‘square of red damask silk with floral designs in yellow and green’ set into the back. A small square mirror set in the inside cover would have caught the reflections of his mother’s face. It was not there for cosmetic reasons. Mirrors, which appear on a number of Ethiopian manuscripts, can be symbols of transcendence, of looking through something to something else or somewhere else.
‘It shows the importance of a prayer book,’ the Rev. Belete Assefa, a London-based priest from the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, told me. ‘It’s a reflection of the Kingdom of God, a reflection of heaven.’
Details:
The British Museum catalogue entry reads: “Book of Psalms previously belonging to Emperor Tewodros II’s wife. The pages are made of vellum and the text is hand written in black and red ink with occasional decorative panels of floral motifs. The book is bound in red leather covered wooden boards. The front and back covers are finely tooled with borders of diamonds, circles and interlacing designs. A central panel contains a finely tooled hand cross inlaid with five metal (?) studs at the base and and eighteen silver (?) studs around the cross. The inside front cover of tooled red leather is inlaid with a small square mirror with a border of silver (?) decorated with punched designs. The back inside cover of tooled red leather is inset with a square of red damask silk with floral designs in yellow and green with some metalic threads.”
Museum number: Af1912,0410.37. Acquisition name: Donated by: Mrs Cornelia Mary Speedy Field Collection by: Capt Tristram C S Speedy Acquisition date: 1912
What: A necklace of silver and glass beads threaded onto blue silk cord, worn by Prince Alamayu. He was photographed and painted many times wearing it.
Where: The British Museum, Great Russell St, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3DG
Photo: The British Museum charges people to reproduce images of things in its collection, even plundered things. My budget won’t stretch that far, so you’ll have to go to the museum website to see the necklace as it looks today – britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1912-0410-7
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.
There it is on the British Museum website, that necklace, the one Alamayu wore in the first photograph the Royal Engineers took of him when he was still reeling from the shock of war. You can see him wearing it again and again in the black-and-white engravings and the staged studio photographs on his rush out of Ethiopia and his first years in Britain.
It is still a jolt to see it today, in three dimensions, in colour, like the jolt when the colour floods into the old First World War footage in Peter Jackson’s documentary film They Shall Not Grow Old, something out of distant history shifting into present reality.
Twenty-three teardrop or shell-shaped silver pendants, separated by bright red and white glass beads and threaded onto a blue silk cord. What had once been an emblem of rank for Dejazmatch Alamayu must have become something much more personal, something of home to hold on to as the world kept shifting from Ethiopia, to Britain, to India, back to Britain. He may have got a bit more tired of it as photographers kept insisting on him wearing it, even over his Western clothes.
It became a prop, a shorthand for the exotic, and disappeared from his portraits as he got older. The necklace ended up with Speedy – something of Alamayu for him to hold on to.
Details:
The British Museum catalogue entry describes a “necklace of silver and glass beads threaded onto blue silk cord, previously owned by Prince Alamayu , Son of Emperor Tewodros of Ethiopia”.
Museum number: Af1912,0410.7 Donated by: Mrs Cornelia Mary Speedy Field Collection by: Capt Tristram C S Speedy Acquisition date: 1912
