The Prince and the Plunder

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

Author: Andrew Heavens

The emperor’s Thai slippers

Published June 18, 2024 / by Andrew Heavens / Leave a Comment

What: A pair of filigree gold and red leather slippers said to belong to Emperor Tewodros

Where: The Royal Collection, Britain

The database entry has a photo and describes “A pair of filigree gold (?) and red leather slippers, with upcurved pointed toes and pointed tongues; set with rose-cut amethysts; metal soles.”

Provenance:

“Belonged to Tewodros II, Emperor of Abyssinia. Taken after Tewodros’ defeat at the 1868 Battle of Magdala and sent by General Sir Robert Napier to Queen Victoria with Tewodros’ crown, seal and robes. Presented to the queen at Windsor Castle by Lieutenant Colonel T.W. Milward on 18 June 1868.

“Sent for inclusion in a display of ‘Royal Treasures from Abyssinia’ at the South Kensington Museum. During an event held by the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts at the museum, it was noted that the slippers had been ‘intended by King Theodore to be sent with an embassy to England as a present to Her Majesty’ (TheAntiquary, III, 17 May 1873, p.238).

“Illustrated in Edwin Arnold, ‘Theodore The King’, The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 225, 1868, p.381.

“Loaned to the South Staffordshire Industrial & Fine Arts Exhibition, Molineux House, Wolverhampton, in 1869 and to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1912.”

Posted In Royal regalia | Said to belong to Tewodros | The Plunder
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Three-panel silk church hanging

Published June 18, 2024 / by Andrew Heavens / Leave a Comment

What: A huge three-panel silk church hanging,  used to cover the entrance to the Holy of Holies of an Ethiopian church

Where: The Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queens Park, Toronto, ON M5S 2C6, Canada

A curtain made up of three panels of woven coloured silk was initially loaned to the museum before 1914 by Colonel George Augustus Sweny – an officer who had taken part in the Magdala campaign – according to Michael Gervers in his 1996 paper Four Eighteenth-Century Monumental Ethiopian Tabletwoven Silk Curtains.

It was then given to the museum in 1922 by his son, according to Martha H. Henze’s 2007 paper “Studies of Imported Textiles in Ethiopia” in the Journal of Ethiopian Studies.

It is made of the same coloured silk and with the same technique as a single-panel hanging in the British Museum, the paper added.

The curtain is made up of an essentially ‘royal’ central panel and ecclesiastical side panels, dated c.1730-38 and, in all, is 535 by 212 cm, according to Gervers’ article “The tablet-woven hangings of Tigre, Ethiopia: from history to symmetry” in The Burlington Magazine in September 2004.

Posted In Hangings | Sacred artefacts | The Plunder
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Tabot

Published June 18, 2024 / by Andrew Heavens / Leave a Comment

What: A tabot from the collection of “Colonel Mackie”

Where: The British Museum, Great Russell St, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3DG

British museum database:
Museum number: Af1968,0401.1
Purchased from: Miss Mackie in 1968
Previous owner/ex-collection: Col Mackie

There is no mention of Magdala in the database entry. But a Major Mackie served in the 1868 Abyssinian campaign with the Transport Corps, according to Hart’s Army List.

Posted In Sacred artefacts | Suspected Magdala plunder | Tabots | The Plunder
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