A grievous and perhaps unforgivable consequence of war is the senseless looting and plunder that victorious armies perpetrate on what is to the rampaging solider, ‘spoils of war’, but to the defeated side the very essence of their civilization and heritage. Magdalla – or to use Professor Pankhurst’s spelling Maqdalla – is remembered not only for the martyrdom of Emperor Teodros but also as an instance of cultural genocide on a mass scale. Welcome to Pankhurst’s Corner!
Historical Introduction
The seizure of Emperor Téwodros’s mountain fortress of Maqdala on 13 April 1868 was followed, as is well known, by extensive looting by British troops.
The British historian Clements Markham, describing the capture of the citadel, observes that the troops “dispersed over the amba [or mountain top] in search of plunder”, while the Anglo-American journalist Henry Morton Stanley reported that “over a space growing more and more extended, the thousand articles were scattered in infinite bewilderment and confusion until they dotted the whole surface of the rocky citadel, the slopes of the hill, and the entire road to the [British] camp two miles off!”.
The German traveler Gerhard Rohlfs, who accompanied the British troops, likewise noted that the surroundings of Maqdala were “strewn with books, loose leaves and fragments”.
British sentries were meanwhile stationed at the gates of the fortress to prevent the loot from being taken out of the area. This action was carried out because it was considered undesirable that such property should remain in the possession of any individual soldier who happened to have seized it, and that on the contrary the troops as a whole should share the benefit. The booty was accordingly auctioned to raise “prize money” – which was divided among the non-commissioned officers and men, each of whom, according to Stanley, received “a trifle over four dollars”. This arrangement had the additional advantage that officers and gentlemen unable to rummage for manuscripts and other spoil, who would have been left empty-handed, were enabled to bid for – and purchase – a considerable amount of loot. The ordinary British soldiers were on the other hand deprived of their share of the booty.
There is however reason to suppose, as Frederick Myatt, a recent British historian of the expedition, observes, that “easily concealed items were undoubtedly smuggled” though the sentries, and that such articles apparently included the Abuna’s cross, which was “never heard of again”.
Among the items which could not easily be retained by the troops were the many large Ethiopic parchment manuscripts, which often measured as much as 40cm. high by 30cm. wide, and in many cases contained beautifully illustrated pages. The latter, if extracted from the volumes they illustrated, could easily be concealed from the sentries, and then be transported, in a kit-bag, to the coast.
This would seem to explain the existence of a disproportionate number of detached fragments of Ethiopian manuscripts, which are to be found in Britain both in libraries and in private collections.
No Ethiopian Christian would – at least in hose days – ever have dreamt of tearing up a Bible or other religious text, whether to extract its illustrations – or for any other reason. One is therefore left with the hypothesis that the detached pages from Maqdala manuscripts were torn up by soldiers wishing to smuggle such works of art through the sentries expressly appointed to prevent their unauthorized sale – vandalistic, as you may regard it, dear reader.
It would in this respect seem revealing that we have evidence of a considerable number of the detached manuscript pages with illustrations. The source of many cannot of course be established with any certainty – but a significant number can be shown to have been taken from Maqdala.
I cite those I know of below.
The Detached Folios: Oxford, Manchester and Edinburgh
One of the earliest detached fragments thus far identified consists of four folios (2A, 2B, 3B & 4A) from the end of a copy of the Discourse of Cyriacus, probably dating from 17th. century, now housed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford (MS. Aeth. D. 1.). A revealing pencil note, on folio 1A, states that these pages were “said to have been taken from a church at Magdala in 1868”. This has caused Edward Ullendorff, the renowned British expert on Ethiopian manuscripts, to observe that they “no doubt formed part of a fine specimen kept in the Church of Madhane ‘Alam, and was brought to the country [i.e. Britain] by a member of Napier’s Expedition”.
Another Bodleain fragment (MS Aeth B 2) was detached from an apparently 19th century Ethiopic Codex of the Saints. Unlike the other fragments discussed in this article there is no conclusive evidence that the page was taken from Maqdala – but the fact that one of the illustrations was painted by Emperor Tewodros court artist, Liqa Guba’e Walda Giyorgis, would seem to point in that direction.
A fragment of a somewhat earlier manuscript containing a full page painting illustrating the miracles of the Archangel Mika’él, divided into two parts, was taken from a looted copy of the Miracles of the latter, dating from the reign of Emperor Dawit III (1716-1721). This fragment is now housed in Manchester University Library (Ethiopian no. 28).
Two other 18th. century illustrated folios (GD1/1317.1-2), containing four miniatures, probably from a volume of the Miracles of Mary, found their way to the National Archives of Scotland, in Edinburgh, where they were described as an “Abyssinian liturgical fragment”. It was, according to the Library, obtained by Lieut. H.H. Cole (1843-1916) “from a church in Magdala in 1868”.
The British Library
The “Magdala Collection” at the great British Library also contains its share of Ethiopic manuscript fragments. These comprise four late 18th or early 19th century items. They represent: (1) God the Father surrounded by emblems of the Four Evangelists; (2) an Archangel with attendant angels; (3) St. George slaying the Dragon; and (4) an unfinished picture of the Biblical Flight into Egypt delineated only in Indian ink. BL Orient 829*, folios 1, 2, 3, & 4).
And Addis Ababa
Two other folios from an 18th Century Ethiopic were recently acquired by the Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, through the good offices of AFROMET, the Association for the Return of Maqdala Ethiopian Treasures.
This beautiful fragment was obtained at Maqdala by a member of the Napier expedition, whose great-nephew, a benevolent member of the British legal profession, Robert Moxon-Browne Q.C., felt it wrong to retain any form of loot, and was keen to return it to its country of origin.
Moxon-Brown therefore went out of his way to have these folios repatriated to Ethiopia – and they now form a cherished part of the IES collection.
(Originally published in Capital newspaper)
Richard Pankhurst 
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