Speech made by Dr. Assefa Abreha Minister Plenipotentiary Ethiopian Permanent Representation Office Embassy of the Federal Democratic Republic at the opening of the exhibition of Aksum rediscovered: the re-instatllation of the obelisk

Thank you Your Excellency Mr. Pietro Sebastiani

Permanent Representative of Italy

Excellency Senator Alfredo Mantica

Italian Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs  

Excellency Dr. Jacques Diouf

Director General of FAO  

Excellency Mr. Francesco Bandarin  

Director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre  

Excellency Mr. Mounir Bouchenaki

Director General of ICCROM  

Excellencies Ambassadors/Permanent Representatives to FAO

Members of FAO Staff   

Invited Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen  

We thank you all ladies and gentlemen for gracing this opening of the Aksum Obelisk Re-installation Exhibition by your presence.

On behalf of the Ethiopian Permanent Representation to FAO, I am honoured to welcome you all to the Exhibition of the Aksum Re-discovered: The Re-installation of the Obelisk.  As a result of the friendly and successful cooperation between Ethiopia and Italy and the important facilitation role played by UNESCO, the return and reinstallation of the Aksum Obelisk, one of the country’s most cherished cultural treasures, was celebrated in Ethiopia on September 4, 2008.  And the Exhibition that is being opened today is going to illustrate the reinstallation process.  

Some of you, Ladies and Gentlemen, may wonder where Aksum is; what the Obelisk is all about and what relevance it has to FAO.  In the interest of clarity, I would like to briefly take you to a journey in history to give you some background information.  Aksum is a north Ethiopian town, and was the capital of what the archaeologist Neville Chittick described as “the last of the great civilizations of Antiquity to be revealed to modern knowledge”.   In the third century, Persian writer Mani classified Aksum among the world’s four greatest kingdoms, along with Rome, Persia and China.  In 1980, the ancient town of Aksum was inscribed in the World Heritage List by UNESCO.

The Obelisk, which is one of many in Aksum, was erected over 1700 years ago, and is the second largest weighing 153 tons and standing 23.4 meters high.  Now, some of you might be wondering how an object of this magnitude ended up in Rome.

Like other colonial powers of the time, Italy attempted to colonize Ethiopia in the late 1900’s but Ethiopia managed to protect its independence at the Battle of Adwa in 1896.  Italy again renewed its effort to colonize Ethiopia when Mussolini’s modern and well-equipped forces invaded Ethiopia in 1935.  During this time, it looked like Mussolini wanted a trophy for his triumph over the occupied land and ordered his forces to bring the Aksum Obelisk to Italy, which was then hauled from Aksum to Rome in 1937.  It was erected outside the former Italian Ministry of Colonial Affairs, the present FAO Headquarters, and Mussolini referred to it as “the source of power and pride”.

It had all the time been the desire of the people and successive governments of Ethiopia to get back the Obelisk to its original home.   In fact, at the end of the Second World War the return of the Obelisk, among others, was called for by the peace accords of 1947.  However, it took extensive negotiations and three successive bilateral Agreements, in 1956, 1997 and 2003, were required between Italy and Ethiopia to take the Obelisk back to Aksum.

In the framework of a memorandum of understanding, the Italian Government agreed in 2004 to cover the entire cost of returning and re-erecting the Obelisk.  And at the request of both Ethiopia and Italy, UNESCO took the responsibility for coordinating the re-installation of the Obelisk in Aksum in close cooperation with the Ethiopian Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage.  The process began in 2005, which was considered most delicate and difficult technical operation of its kind, after the Abu Simbel and Philae Temples re-positioning in Nubia, Egypt.  The ICCROM also worked with the Ethiopian Committee for the Restitution of the Obelisk and undertook research and technical analyses to prepare the segmentation and transportation to Ethiopia. Reinstallation began in July 2007, and inauguration took place on 4^th September, 2008. 

The Obelisk is a symbol of identity and pride not only for Ethiopians but for all Africans and indeed Africans in the Diaspora.  The African Union has been fully behind Ethiopia’s efforts for the restitution whose support was expressed in very clear resolutions.  The return of the Obelisk is the result of more than six decades of relentless effort carried out by both Ethiopians and non-Ethiopians alike.  Many scholars, historians, academics in many parts of the world, including Italy, supported the efforts for restitution.

Our gratitude goes to the government of Italy, and especially to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for his farsighted leadership in the process of the return of the Obelisk. Thanks are also due to His Excellency Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs Senator Alfredo Mantica for the positive role he played in the process and for leading the Italian delegation to the inauguration ceremony at Aksum.  Also to other Italian politicians, academics and citizens who supported our quest for the return of the Obelisk.  We congratulate the people and government of Italy for being the path blazers by returning the Aksum Obelisk to its original home.  We hope that others will learn from this friendly and courageous act and restitute many cultural heritages to their original homes.

UNESCO inaugurated on 23 April, 2009 an exhibition at its Headquarters in Paris celebrating the successful reinstallation of the Aksum Obelisk in the presence of the Ethiopian and Italian Ambassadors and permanent delegates to UNESCO; we thank them for that.  And it is fitting that FAO inaugurates this same success at its Headquarters for the Obelisk has been a guest of this building for over six decades.  We thank H.E. Director General Diouf for the permission to house the exhibition here.

We would like to express our gratitude to the Italian government for funding this Exhibition.  We also thank H.E. Mr. Pietro Sebastiani for organizing the Exhibition. Finally, we would like to express our appreciation to Ms. Nada Al Hassan and her associates for their hard work in putting up the exhibition.