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Two letters from the Emperor Yohannes of Ethiopia to Queen Victoria and Lord Granville

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Edward Ullendorff  and
Abraham Demoz
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Extract

Among the Ethiopic manuscripts in the British Museum, which originate from the Emperor Theodore's Magdala collection, were two copies of the Kebra Nagast ‘Glory of the Kings’, the Ethiopian national saga, catalogued as Orient. 818 and 819 (=Wright, Catalogue of the Ethiopic MSS in the BM, NO. CCXCI). But Orient. 819, written during the reign of the Emperor Iyasu I (1682–1706), was returned to Ethiopia in circumstances which throw a dramatic light on the paramount importance of this work. In August 1872, the Emperor Yohannes of Ethiopia wrote to Queen Victoria and to Earl Granville, the British Foreign Secretary, and requested the return of the Kebra Nagast which had been taken to England by the Napier expedition in 1868.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , February 1969 , pp. 135 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1969

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References

1 A short descriptin of this manuscript was published in ZDMG, xxxv, 1870, 614–15. See also Wright, op. cit., p. 297, footnote.Google Scholar

2 The Queen of Sheba and her only son Minyelek, pp.xxxiv–ccv; idem, Amulets and talismans, 197–9.

3 Budge does not refer to the rather more detailed letter to Queen Victoria.

4 It must remain a matter of speculation whether the Trustees of the British Museum would so readily have complied with the Emperor‘s request had they known that the English translation went a good deal beyond the original phrasing of the Imperial missive.

5 FO 95/731. This unpublish Crown-copyright material in the Public Record Office has been reproduced by kind permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.

6 At that time Mercha Mission School at Bombay. For a time he served as an interpreter at the Court of the Emperor Theodore, and later, under Yohannes, was sent on missions to Egypt and England. See Markham, , The Abyssinian expedition, 165.Google Scholar We are greatly obliged to Dejazmatch Zewde Gebre Sellasse for the information contained in this and the following footnote.

7 John C. Kirkham (d. 1876) served as a steward with the P & O line and soldiered in China under Gordon. In 1868 he joined the Napier expedition and, on its departure from Abyssinia, he offered his services to Dejazmatch Kassa (later Emperor Yohannes). He was employed as an army instructor and took an active part in several battles. It appears that the title of ‘General ’ was conferred on him by the Emperor Yohannes. Acknowledgements to Dejazmatch Zewde and Sir Duncan Cumming.

8 i.e. Yohannes.