|
Ethiopia wants prince's remains
26/07/2007 09:20 - (SA)
Addis Ababa - Ethiopia has never forgotten its boy prince, captured by the British Army and taken to England, where he died more than a century ago, a lonely, royal orphan and curiosity who still lies entombed in Windsor Castle.
As the country approached millennium celebrations, officials in Addis Ababa had stepped up a push to have the remains of Prince Alemayehu repatriated.
Mulugeta Asarate, vice-president of Ethiopia's millennium committee, said: "There is no way that this generation would allow for an Ethiopian prince and a prisoner of war to remain on foreign land as we close the second millennium."
Because Ethiopia followed its own "Ethiopic" calender, this ancient land on the Horn of Africa, one of the first kingdoms to adopt Christianity, would celebrate the year 2000 on September 12.
Meaningful symbol
The prince spent barely a brief decade in his country of exile, arriving at age seven and dying at 18. He was looked upon kindly by Queen Victoria but never quite managed the conversion to English gentlemen his guardians had tried.
Mulugeta said Ethiopia's President Wolde-Giorgis Girma had written a letter to the queen of England requesting the repatriation.
He said: "When we look at our past, we see wrongs that need to be put right", adding that the prince's return would be a meaningful symbol for Ethiopia as it reflected on its history.
The president's letter, he added, "was reflecting the wishes and desires of the people of Ethiopia to see the remains of a one-time prisoner of war return and unite with his father in burial".
Prince Alemayehu, born in 1861, was the son of the Empress Tiruwork and Emperor Tewodros, in a royal lineage that claimed to go back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Prince 'pretty polite boy'
When British forces conquered the imperial fortress of Magdala in 1868, the emperor committed suicide rather than turn himself in.
The British, who carried back numerous treasures and war trophies, decided to bring the prince and his mother to England reportedly as hostages, but the empress died during the trip due to reasons that remained unclear.
According to a book by Ethiopian academic Mandefro Belayneh, The Turbulent Life and Death of Prince Alemayehu, Queen Victoria described the youth as "a pretty, polite, graceful boy with beautiful eyes and a nice nose and nice teeth, though the lips are slightly thick ... There is nothing whatever of the Negro about him".
The queen was quoted as writing in her diary, the young prince became a student at Sandhurst, the prestigious military academy, but "his was no happy life, full of difficulties of every kind, and he was so sensitive, thinking that people stared at him because of his colour, that I fear he would never have been happy".
Alemayehu died of pneumonia in Leeds in 1879 at the age of 18. At the request of Queen Victoria, he was reportedly entombed in the royal crypt at Saint George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.
|
News
