The British Museum has an opportunity to enhance its global reputation and demonstrate it’s alive to changing public perceptions. But to grasp it, the trustees need to comply with the Museum's own governing rules and acknowledge their collection of sacred Tabots is ‘unfit to be retained’ and should be returned to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. 

Following last Thursday’s meeting between Hartwig Fischer, Director of the British Museum, and Ethiopia’s Ambassador, Teferi Melesse Desta, it appears unlikely the pendulum has moved any closer towards a resolution. But this meeting was just one element in a two-pronged strategy. A second, potentially even more significant initiative, involves a written appeal made directly to the Museum’s trustees last week by a group of influential British supporters of Ethiopia’s claim to the Tabots.

Over the next few weeks, in the build-up to the next meeting of the trustees on October 4^th when George Osborne is appointed the British Museum’s new chairman, a trustee commitment to honour both the spirit and the letter of the Museum’s governing Act will be put to the test.

There’s a great deal at stake - for Ethiopia and for the integrity of the Museum’s trustees.

Tabots are sacred plaques of deep religious significance to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. A church deprived of its Tabot cannot function as a place of worship. The British Museum holds eleven Tabots, nine of which are directly linked to the looting that took place by British forces after the defeat of the Abyssinian Emperor, Tewodros II, at his mountain fortress at Maqdala in 1868. Since entering the collection, they’ve all remained out of sight, stored away under lock and key - never exhibited, never photographed and never available for study.

The Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church appealed for their return in 2002, but his appeal was left unresolved by the then Director Neil MacGregor. Two years ago, a new Ethiopian team picked up where the previous team left off. However, we understand their requests received exactly the same treatment as those of the Patriarch almost twenty years earlier. At the meeting with the British Museum last week, Ambassador Teferi Melesse Desta handed Fischer two separate letters – one from the Ethiopian Minister of Culture, the other from the current Patriarch – renewing the requests made two years ago but still to receive attention by the Museum’s board of trustees.

Ethiopia is not making a general call for the return of every looted object, but both parties do acknowledge that the Tabots are in a special category of their own. They don’t fall within the scope of the Museum’s purposes, will always be treated very differently to the rest of the collection and can be disposed of without detriment to the interests of students. In other words, as we’ve highlighted before in Returning Heritage, they meet the conditions of section 5(1)(c) within the British Museum’s governing Act. This gives trustees discretion to dispose of objects they consider ‘unfit to be retained’.

This is why the Ethiopian team believes progress should be possible in their discussions with the Museum and why the Ambassador, writing in his latest twitter post, believes returning the Tabots offers benefits to both parties:

“It remains my firm belief that the return of the Tabots would be a credit to the British Museum and a milestone in the longstanding, friendly and amicable relations between the governments and peoples of our two nations.”

However, we’ve learnt that throughout last week’s meeting the Director continued to be vague about future commitments, including whether he’s prepared to raise the issue with the Museum’s board of trustees.

That is why the second initiative may hold the key to moving this issue forward. A letter prepared by the not-for-profit private charity, The Scheherazade Foundation, and signed by over twenty high profile supporters, including former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, eight other members of the House of Lords, diplomats, literary figures and actors Stephen Fry and Rupert Everett, was sent to every British Museum trustee last week.

“You, as a museum trustee, have a clear opportunity to show sensitivity as regards these very sacred objects,” it reads, “which are entirely unique in the Museum’s collection given their accepted religious significance and the fact that they can never be exhibited”.

This is no attempt to circumvent the Director. It’s clear both from the Act and from the decision reached by the original Parliamentary committee that met to debate the Act that it is for the Museum’s trustees, not the Museum’s executive, to determine whether an object is ‘unfit’ within the context of the British Museum Act 1963.

In addition to the letter, trustees were also provided with a legal opinion for the return of the Tabots, commissioned by the Foundation and prepared by Samantha Knights QC, a leading human rights barrister at Matrix Chambers. After considering the legal framework and case law, her conclusion is unequivocal:

“In my view the Trustees of the Museum can, pursuant to s 5(1)(c) BMA 1963, quite properly decide to dispose of the Tabots. The circumstances of the Tabots are unique and physically they have no particular use or purpose for the Museum as they cannot be viewed, displayed, photographed, copied or made available for research or educational purposes.”

This is possibly the first time the Museum’s trustees will have seen a legal basis for returning the Tabots. So, when the trustees gather for their next meeting in October, the Ethiopian team and the British signatories to this letter hope their two-pronged efforts will lead the trustees to agree the trustees have no choice but to comply with their own Act. Otherwise, in the face of so much overwhelming evidence for returning the Tabots, the onus must fall on the trustees to show why they believe the Tabots are still fit to be retained.

We hope the trustees will rise to this opportunity and see the greater benefits to the Museum and both our nations. “Not only would the resulting bonds of friendship between Britain and Ethiopia be unbreakable,” states the trustee letter, “but the international reputation of the British Museum would be greatly enhanced – purely by complying with its own rules and regulations”.

Photo: Ethiopian Orthodox Priests carrying Tabots

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons