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A rare and sacred eighteenth-century Ethiopian manuscript plundered by British imperial soldiers nearly 160 years ago has ignited a fierce ownership dispute after surfacing in a European commercial sales catalogue with a $250,000 price tag.
The sacred text, known as the Gondarine Gospel, once formed part of the royal collection of Ethiopia’s Emperor Tewodros II. It recently reappeared in promotional material issued by Inlibris, an antiquarian book dealership based in Vienna, Austria, which presented the volume among items slated for the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
The revelation has provoked swift condemnation from Ethiopian heritage officials, who have formally demanded the immediate withdrawal of the item from commercial circulation and its unconditional repatriation on ethical and moral grounds.
The unfolding controversy has also intensified broader demands across Africa for the return of hundreds of thousands of historical artefacts looted during colonial-era military expeditions and currently held in Western institutions and private hands.
In an official letter sent to Inlibris, Abebaw Ayalew, the director general of the Ethiopian Heritage Authority, stressed that prominent art merchants face profound reputational and ethical risks when attempting to profit from items with documented histories of wartime plunder. Ayalew emphasized that dealers have a clear moral duty to refrain from handling cultural treasures taken under violent circumstances.
Inlibris, however, firmly rebuffed the Ethiopian government’s restitution claims. The dealership contended that no binding legal framework obligates the current possessor to surrender the text, citing the historical absence of international conventions prohibiting the wartime seizure of cultural property prior to the eighteenth century.
Speaking on the dispute, Inlibris director Hugo Wertscherk stated that handing over the volume to Ethiopian officials without the consent of its current owner would constitute an illegal act. While asserting a personal desire to see historical texts reunited with their original communities, Wertscherk maintained that as a commercial intermediary, he is bound by existing property laws rather than ethical sentiments.
Wertscherk also disputed allegations that the dealership attempted to finalize a direct sale of the gospel during the Abu Dhabi event, asserting that the sacred volume had merely been included in the catalog to serve as an illustrative prop.
The Gondarine Gospel is an exceptional example of Ethiopian craftsmanship, bound in polished leather decorated with intricate gilded patterns. The manuscript is inscribed in Ge’ez, an ancient South Semitic liturgical language, and features 235 vivid illustrations depicting scenes from the Gospels of Luke and John in striking shades of red, green, and yellow.
Scholars believe the gospel was originally commissioned in the historic cultural hub of Gondar between 1730 and 1734. Its value extends well beyond its material beauty, serving as an irreplaceable record of regional manuscript traditions and eighteenth-century Ethiopian religious scholarship.
Abreha Kiros, an art history professor at Aksum University in northern Ethiopia, explained that the volume’s importance lies not only in its connection to the imperial court but also in its representation of Gondarine artistic heritage and early Ge’ez literature. Kiros maintained that the lack of explicit legal mechanisms should not prevent constructive dialogue or preclude the possibility of restitution.
The manuscript’s modern trajectory is intimately tied to one of the most painful episodes in nineteenth-century Ethiopian history. Emperor Tewodros II, who ruled from 1855 until 1868, had assembled an expansive treasury and imperial library at his fortress in Magdala, an institution regarded by several contemporary historians as Ethiopia’s earliest modern museum.
During the mid-1860s, facing territorial threats from the Ottoman Empire and challenges from regional rivals, Tewodros appealed for diplomatic and military backing from Britain’s Queen Victoria, invoking their shared Christian heritage. When the British crown failed to respond to his letters, an insulted Tewodros imprisoned several British envoys and consular officials.
The diplomatic breakdown culminated in a massive punitive expedition in April 1868, in which 13,000 troops dispatched from British-administered India assaulted the mountain fortress of Magdala, overwhelming 4,000 Ethiopian defenders. Rather than submit to foreign capture, Emperor Tewodros took his own life on the battlefield.
In the aftermath of the battle, British forces thoroughly sacked Magdala, carting away hundreds of illuminated manuscripts, religious regalia, and personal possessions belonging to the monarch. The Gondarine Gospel was seized directly by the expedition’s commanding general, Robert Napier, before circulating among various British colonial officers and cultural repositories, eventually passing into private ownership roughly a decade ago.
The current clash over the gospel unfolds against a shifting international landscape, as governments across Europe—including Britain, Germany, France, and Belgium—face mounting pressure to address colonial-era dispossession through permanent restitutions or structured loan agreements. In a notable gesture earlier this year, British authorities repatriated a preserved lock of Emperor Tewodros’s hair alongside a piece of cloth stained with his blood.
Despite that development, the fate of the Gondarine Gospel remains unresolved. Wertscherk noted that while communications from Ethiopian authorities have carried a confrontational tone, his firm remains open to facilitating discussions around an institutional purchase at a preferential price, though ultimate authority rests with the manuscript’s private owner.
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