The Plunder of Maqdala: Ethical Concerns Around Belongings and Ancestral Remains in Museums

Abstract

During the colonial period, museums did not just passively benefit from the plunder of human remains and culturally sacred items. When Britain sent a punitive military expedition to Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1863, it was accompanied by Richard Holmes, a staff member of the British Museum, whose purchase of loot from the expeditionary force institutionalised the plunder of cultural heritage. His inclusion in the expeditionary force was carefully planned, though the belongings he took — mainly manuscripts, religious items and emblems of power belonging to the Ethiopian royal family — were not the intended focus of his participation. Whilst the UK’s 2004 Human Tissue Act had a beneficial impact on the treatment of human remains in museums, objects belonging to colonised people are often still positioned as artworks or artefacts, evidencing ignorance of the deep personal and spiritual links that connect them back to their communities of origin. This article draws on our professional experience of curation and research in museums and libraries, as well as the impact of ICOM’s new Museum Definition on our practice. Joint research on the Maqdala expedition led us to question assumptions about the legacy of empire in museums and to scrutinise unexpected connections in the history of museum collections. This article addresses the problematic relationship between collecting and imperial power, the false dichotomy between ‘artefacts’ (belongings) and ‘human remains’ (ancestors) and the need to decolonise collections through further research and the recognition of ongoing cultural and physical violence.