Museum ‘can use loophole to return relics’
THE British Museum should use a legal loophole to repatriate sacred tablets, according to campaigners.
Despite the museum being legally bound to retain objects for the British public, actors Stephen Fry and Rupert Everett – and a coalition of peers – have said that discretionary powers would allow the return of artefacts acquired during the height of the British Empire.
They have demanded that Hartwig Fischer, the British Museum director, exploit these powers to repatriate sacred Ethiopian tablets by branding them officially “unfit” for its collection.
Mr Fischer yesterday met a delegation from Ethiopia to discuss the loophole and the return of the 11 “tabots”, most of which were seized by British imperial forces in the 19th century.
A letter to British Museum trustees, signed by Fry and Everett and seen by The Daily Telegraph, states: “We believe that today the British Museum has a unique opportunity to build a lasting and meaningful bridge of friendship between Britain and Ethiopia by handing the tabots back to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.”
Legislation dictates that objects in national collections must be retained for the public and not arbitrarily given away. But barristers have argued that the British Museum Act of 1963 would allow the institution to dispose of objects it believes are useless to it. Campaigners argue that the tabots, which are kept in storage and hidden from public view
due to their sacred significance for the Ethiopian church – which believes they are so holy they cannot be handled or viewed except by a priest – could easily be deemed officially “unfit” as they have never been displayed or studied. This would allow them to be removed from the museum’s collection and repatriated.
The museum has not commented on the potential use of such a loophole, which has been backed by seven peers including former deputy chief whip Baron Foster of Bath, along with former British Ambassador to Ethiopia Sir Harold Walker.
Such is the significance of the tabots to the Ethiopian Orthodox church that a national holiday was declared in 2002 when the Scottish Episcopalian Church returned a single tablet in its possession.
A museum spokeswoman said the Ethiopian delegation enjoyed a tour of the collection and “held cordial discussions on future possibilities for collaboration in the area of museums and on the tabots in the museum’s collection”.