For the first time, Andrew Heavens tells the whole story of Alamayu, from his early days in his father's fortress on the roof of Africa to his new home across the seas, where he charmed Queen Victoria, chatted with Lord Tennyson and travelled with his towering red-headed guardian Captain Speedy. The orphan prince was celebrated but stereotyped and never allowed to go home. I have been unable to discover any capitals to suit the stone columns, nor is there any trace of how the roof of this building was supported. What: An Arabic manuscript found by a Mr. J.F.E. Prince “in the camp of the emperor Theodorus II in Magdala” The following is the report by the officer in charge of the Department of Antiquities of the British Museum, on the articles found at Adulis, which were presented to that Institution:- Alamayu never had the chance to write his own memoirs so almost all of the time we see Alamayu through other people’s eyes - whether they are British journalists, members of the public, or his classmates speaking on his behalf. All we have directly from Alamayu are a few scraps of writing and letters written for the moment.

This may sound a bit dry but it is actually fascinating because it allows us to see how central this story of Tewodros and Alamayu is to modern Ethiopians and how much these artefacts mean to them - and how incidental they are to most people in Britain. 2 Part revisionist history, part treasure hunt, this is the forgotten story of Ethiopia's 'Elgin Marbles' and a young prince taken out of Africa to live in Victorian Britain As shown on the plan, the building was erected east and west; at the last end there are the remains of may once have been an altar, and the masonry exposed leads to the supposition that the last end was shaped in the form of an apex.

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What: Fragment of a white marble relief sculpture carved with a cross within a wreath, taken during Britain’s Abyssinian Expedition during a hit-and-run archaeological dig at Adulis in modern day Eritrea What: A fragment of a 6th century white marble column, taken during Britain’s Abyssinian Expedition during a hit-and-run archaeological dig at Adulis in modern day Eritrea

All About History magazine “Andrew Heavens has done an extraordinary thing for British history, which is to tell a story from our not-so-distant past which has been almost unknown to most of us who live in the UK, but is very well known indeed to the people of Ethiopia, whose story is told here. He covers his material with a depth of knowledge and an impressive thoroughness, but with a lightness of touch in the way he tells a story that is, at the same time, profoundly human, deeply political, highly engaging, and which reveals much about our imperial past and how it continues to resonate in our own day. A compelling and essential read!” Restitution, of bodies and objects, is at the heart of Adam Kuper’s exploration of the history and current controversies surrounding anthropological and ethnographical collections. Most of this somewhat disjointed study is a competent, intermittently engaging, if somewhat laboured tale of the evolution of these now endangered disciplines and the institutions created for their exposition: the British Museum and its Museum of Mankind, Oxford’s Pitt Rivers, the Smithsonian, and the like.

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Nevertheless, Nigeria has been promised the return of most of the 39 bronzes held by the Smithsonian Museum, among others. Yet Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments is currently unable to display the 500 already in their collection. And would it be worth it, given that the National Museum in Lagos receives an average of 30 visitors a day? Presumably it’s the palace’s intention for Ethiopian petitioners to picture, as you do from euphemisms like “others in the vicinity”, scenes of such ghastly Hadean mayhem that they will tactfully withdraw. British subjects may, on the other hand, wonder if expert accounts, with diagrams, of what would become of the late queen’s body, disguised the fact that the royal vault is actually a chaotic ossuary in which unidentifiable parts of foreign princes are so carelessly jumbled up with those of Charles’s forebears that only DNA testing could positively tell them apart (some hair of Alemayehu’s father is in fact available, courtesy of Lord Napier’s pillaging Victorians). It would certainly accord with an earlier royal excuse for inaction that “identifying the remains of young Prince Alemayehu would not be possible”.