Emperor Tewodros' Magdala Crowns - Reconstruction of an Odyssey.

In 1868, Queen Victoria's government sent a military expedition to Ethiopia/Abyssinia to liberate a group of Europeans, notably the British consul, who had been put in chains by Abyssinia Emperor Tewodros II in his mountain fortress Magdala. After an arduous 400 mile march to the Abyssinian highlands, the troops fulfilled their mission, liberated the captives, looted the treasury of Tewodros who had committed suicide, and burned the settlement to the ground. Thousands of valuable articles of Tewodros' treasure were shipped to England and ended in museums and collections all over the world. This article describes the cultural and political context of the expedition as well as the enormous cultural damage inflicted on the country which is impossible to assess: while the fate of a few objects of particular historical/artistic value has been described by others, the present article attempts to reconstruct the complex odyssey of a gilded silver crown from Magdala to Addis Ababa via Berlin and London, and, potentially, its end in the context of Mussolini's capture in Dongo near the Swiss-Italian border in 1945. This odyssey is discussed on the background of the long interaction between Europe and Ethiopia and, in particular, the roles played by crowns in the different cultural traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]