A rare and important 19^th century gold hairpin once owned by Empress Tiruwork, wife of the Abyssinian Emperor Tewodros II, will be returning to Ethiopia following negotiations led by the Royal Ethiopian Trust with the Rome auction house Bertolami Fine Art.

The hairpin is one of several personal items belonging to Tiruwork that ended up in the hands of the British army after the defeat of her husband Tewodros at Maqdala in 1868.

Empress Tiruwork, also known as Tirunesh, was the emperor’s second wife who lived with their only son Alamayu in the mountain fortress of Maqdala. After the defeat of his army, Tewodros took his own life and Tiruwork, along with Alamayu, became the responsibility of the British forces, led by Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Napier. En route to a transport ship where both were to be transported to England, Empress Tiruwork died. Her possessions, including books, clothes and jewellery, were either boxed up along with the rest of the expedition’s baggage as the property of Britain to end up in London’s South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), or removed by soldiers and brought home in their personal baggage.

An inscription on the hairpin’s original velvet-lined presentation box indicates this very precious and personal item of the Empress was acquired by a soldier serving on the Maqdala Expedition named James Sinclair, Surgeon General of the British 33^rd Regiment. Archival sources suggest that Sinclair may have been present during the Empress Tiruwork’s final days.

The hairpin, a rare surviving example of 19th century Ethiopian Imperial craftsmanship, has remained in private collections for more than 150 years, before it resurfaced this year at an auction held by Bertolami Fine Art in Rome. The Royal Ethiopian Trust (RET), a non-profit organisation, established by the grandson of Emperor Haile-Selassie I, Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie Haile-Selassie, negotiated donor support to acquire and repatriate the hairpin to Ethiopia. They plan for it to be housed permanently at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, where it can be exhibited alongside the Maqdala Shield, another culturally significant Ethiopian artefact recovered by RET earlier this year.

“This repatriation demonstrates what can be accomplished when we choose to build bridges,” said Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie. “Through collaboration grounded in trust and mutual respect, we can continue to ensure that significant Ethiopian cultural treasures are accessible for all Ethiopians – and for the world – to study, appreciate, and learn from.”

It is hoped the repatriation of the hairpin, planned for 2026, will contribute to broader scholarship surrounding the Maqdala Expedition, Tewodros’s Imperial court, and the displacement of Ethiopian treasures during that period.

At the same time, Prince Ermias has also extended his “deep gratitude to Professor Weiss and the Weiss family for their extraordinary generosity in donating to Ethiopia a dozen cultural artefacts that had been gifted to and collected by the family.” The items comprising shields, crowns and paintings were originally collected in the 1920s by Germany’s then envoy to Ethiopia Franz Weiss and his wife Hedwig. They were handed over last month to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University.

Photos: Empress Tiruwork’s Hairpin, 19th cent.

Courtesy of Bertolami Fine Art