[CPProt.net] Motivations get tangled as countries tussle over the return of artifacts. A telling case in point: the Obelisk of Axum.

[Museum Security and Cultural Property Protection (Ton Cremers)]

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MUSEUMS
This could be monumental
Motivations get tangled as countries tussle over the return of artifacts. A
telling case in point: the Obelisk of Axum.
By Christopher Reynolds
Times Staff Writer

January 6, 2006

Elias Wondimu has heard that Italian leaders want North America's museums to
hand back dozens of artifacts that came from Italian soil, and he's not
ready to argue about that.

In fact, says Wondimu, a 32-year-old Ethiopian expat, Hollywood resident and
publisher of history books, he'd rather be talking about peacemaking and
good government than cultural tugs of war. But if there's going to be a
global debate over Italy and cultural patrimony, he has three words to
contribute:

"Obelisk of Axum."

The Obelisk of Axum is an elaborately inscribed stone monolith, 78 feet from
base to tip, that spent most of the 20th century in the middle of a busy
Roman piazza. In the eyes of many an Ethiopian, it's 180 tons of evidence
that 20th century Italy snapped up treasures in Ethiopia, then resisted
their return for half a century with the same lawless zeal that Italian
leaders accuse U.S. museums of displaying.

In early 2005, after nearly 60 years of promises deferred, Italian leaders
delivered the obelisk back to its homeland, where it awaits reconstruction.

"We were very, very happy to return the obelisk," said a spokeswoman at the
Italian Embassy in Washington, citing "our important and excellent
relationship with Ethiopia." Some scholars have hailed the event as a
crucial international precedent.

But many Ethiopians contend that Italy is still holding other stolen
treasures from the 1930s, including pages from Ethiopia's national archives
and Ethiopia's first airplane, now apparently held by an Italian aviation
museum outside Rome.

"It's quite ironic for me to see them try to reclaim what they've lost while
they are keeping others from reclaiming stolen property," Wondimu said.

The Italian spokeswoman declined to comment on the other contested items. In
holding the obelisk over the years, Italian officials have cited many
factors, including Ethiopia's political instability and the logistical
challenges of returning such a massive object.

In many respects, the case of the prodigal obelisk is a bit of singular
history. But it's also a potent reminder that the more time you spend
counting up claims of archeological injustice, the harder it gets to
separate victims from villains.

"It is easier to ask for something that belongs to you than to return what
belongs to someone else," says Richard Pankhurst, a professor at the
Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University, who has been
calling upon Italy to return items for more than 20 years.

"This not an easy issue for the world to resolve," says Ronald Olson, the
Los Angeles attorney hired by the Getty Trust to help make peace between the
Getty and the Italian and Greek governments. "How many times have you
visited the British Museum?"

For decades, Greek officials have been demanding that the British Museum
return the Elgin Marbles, a series of sculptures taken from Greece in the
19th century.

In North America, arguments over museum pieces have flared for nearly as
long. The center of controversy now is the J. Paul Getty Museum and dozens
of objects it bought or was given in the 1990s. Getty leaders and former
antiquities curator Marion True say they never bought anything they knew had
been illegally collected. Italian prosecutors, now trying True and dealer
Robert E. Hecht Jr. in Rome, say they'll produce evidence showing that they
did know.

One key to that case is an Italian law, passed under fascist dictator Benito
Mussolini in 1939, that bans export of objects excavated since that year.
But in Los Angeles, on the stretch of Fairfax Avenue known as Little
Ethiopia, it's other deeds of Mussolini in the 1930s that many Ethiopians
prefer to talk about.

"Ah, that war," said Alem Abebe, behind the counter of the Safari Ethiopian
Store, when asked about Italy's 1935 invasion and later withdrawal. "You
hear about it all the time, how they beat the Italians. The Italians came,
they bombed, they gassed.... But in the end, the Ethiopians won."

Next door at Nile Services, owner Meshesha Biru, 55, knows all about the
obelisk - he has a master's degree in international relations - and is eager
to see what comes next. "Once you whet your appetite, you go for all the
things that have been taken by force," Biru said.

"It's a calculated amnesia," said Wondimu, marveling at Italy's posture as
he tucked into a traditional Ethiopian dinner at Meals by Genet.

When Mussolini's troops invaded Ethiopia, their leader wanted to pick up a
few tons of souvenirs, just as Roman emperors did on their adventures into
Egypt and Mesopotamia in days of old. So in 1937, when Italian troops came
across the monolith in the city of Axum (or Aksum), they brought it back to
Italy. Then they put it up in the Piazza di Porta Capena, not far from the
Colosseum, where it stood as a reminder of Italian colonial ambition, just
across the street from the Ministry for Italian Africa.

In 1941, Italy withdrew from Ethiopia. In 1945, Mussolini was assassinated.
In 1947, as part of a peace treaty, Italy's postwar government agreed to
return the monument and "all works of art, religious objects, archives and
objects of historical value belonging to Ethiopia." In 1956 the Italians
promised again. And again in 1997. Yet in Rome the obelisk remained.

In Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, the complaints continued, often
overshadowed by other troubles.

Though Ethiopia prides itself as the only sub-Saharan African country never
colonized by a European power, the country's domestic and border politics
are unstable. Apart from the notorious famine it suffered in the 1980s, it
remains one of the world's poorest nations. Its relations with neighboring
Eritrea remain touchy following a border war in the 1990s, and the hotly
contested elections in May, just the third in the country's history, were
followed by a government crackdown that has left at least 82 dissenters
dead.

Nevertheless, many inside and outside Ethiopia suspected broader cultural
politics behind Italy's long hold on the obelisk. Rino Serri, then Italian
undersecretary for foreign affairs, acknowledged in 1996 that "perhaps
certain circles in Italy and abroad are afraid that a precedent will be
set."

Then in 2002, lightning struck.

Amid a Roman storm, a bolt from the sky struck the obelisk, which had no
lightning rod attached, breaking off several feet of granite in chunks. This
substantially undercut the argument that the Italians could better care for
the artifact than the Ethiopians could.

Later the same year, when global leaders gathered in Rome for a summit on
hunger in a United Nations building across from the monument, Ethiopian
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi seized the moment and excoriated Italian leaders
for putting up "one excuse after another" as Ethiopians pined for their
treasure and the Italian capital's smog ate away at the stonework.

"This," Zenawi said, "is nothing short of an outrage."

In late 2004, the Italian government got down to business: As part of a
series of agreements that included a major loan package to underwrite an
Ethiopian hydroelectric project, Italy agreed once more to send the obelisk
back.

In a series of three delicate operations in November and December, workers
took down a 40-ton segment from the top of the monument, then a 71-ton
segment, then the remaining 77-ton segment. In April 2005, a Russian-made
Antonov-124 cargo plane - one of the few aircraft in the world able to
handle such a heavy cargo - carried the first segment back to Ethiopia,
landing at Aksum shortly before dawn. Italian officials have estimated that
the obelisk's relocation cost $7 million or more.

Ethiopian officials, who first hoped to have the obelisk up by September,
have the three pieces in storage and are still discussing how they might be
re-erected without disturbing the many ruins still buried in the area.

The next task, Pankhurst says, is getting back the Tsehai, a plane built for
Emperor Haile Selassie, which some say could be the first plane built in
Africa.

"Its non-return is an example of the Italian Government's long refusal to
treat Ethiopia justly," Pankhurst wrote in a recent e-mail. "We will get the
plane back: I am confident of that!"

Meanwhile, there appears to be consensus in Little Ethiopia on how the Getty
should handle its own Italian troubles. If those contested items were stolen
from Italy under the terms of that 1939 law, said Biru, "I don't care how
much the Getty paid, they have to give them back.... The original owners are
the people who need to keep them."

"You can't have it both ways," added Fikre Mariam, 52, standing by. "You
give me mine, and you take yours."

Just as this conversation might seem to be drawing to a close, however,
further word comes from Africa, and a further hint at the hand-wringing now
in progress in museums and culture ministries around the world.

Late last year, Eritrea's national museum chief told reporters that his
country too would soon begin a campaign to regain lost artifacts. Some from
Italy, yes. But the rest, said National Museum chief Lebsekal Yosief, were
taken out by the government of Ethiopia in the 1960s, 30 years before the
war in which Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia.

Those items should be displayed in the Eritrean capital of Asmara, says
Yosief, not in Addis Ababa.

At word of this, Elias Wondimu sighed.

"It's a very tricky situation," he said.