Over 15 months in 2018-2019, London’s Victoria & Albert Museum put on a special exhibition titled Maqdala 1868, dedicated to the artefacts in its collection linked to Britain’s Abyssinian “expedition”.
It included a glorious golden crown, a dress and jewellery once worn by Alemayehu’s mother, and this photo of the prince himself, taken weeks after his first arrival in Britain with his then guardian, Captain Speedy.
“The inclusion of this photograph in the display juxtaposes Alemayehu with some of the other great treasures taken from Ethiopia, reminding us that not only material possessions were lost to the British forces,” V&A Director Tristram Hunt wrote in a blog post at the time.
The curator of Maqdala 1868, Dr Alexandra Watson Jones, wrote about it at greater length in this fascinating paper: “Ethiopian Objects at the Victoria and Albert Museum.” African Research and Documentation 135 (2019): 8-24
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