ETHIOPIA: Italy returns ancient monument

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

AXUM, 20 Apr 2005 (IRIN) - A section of a giant stone obelisk, taken from Ethiopia by Italian troops 68 years ago, was finally returned home on Tuesday, ending decades of dispute between the two countries.

"This is an historic moment for all Ethiopians," Teshome Toga, Ethiopia’s culture minister, said, as the plane carrying the 1,800-year-old artifact landed in Axum, northern Ethiopia.

The 24 m-high stele was seized by Italian troops in 1937, on the orders of Italian leader Benito Mussolini, and has resided in Rome ever since. Italy’s ambassador to Ethiopia, Guido La Tella, said he hoped the restoration would open a new chapter in relations between the two countries.

Weighing 58 mt and wrapped in steel casing to prevent it fracturing, the middle section of the intricately carved Axum obelisk will now remain under guard at the airport until it is joined by the two other giant sections and re-erected.

The next piece will arrive on Friday, followed three days later by the final stone. All 180 mt will then be transported on three separate trucks to its final resting place, some 5 km from the airport. It will be erected alongside six other obelisks which once dominated the skyline of the Axumite Empire – now a small, windswept town of 60,000 people.

Ethiopia’s minister for information, Netsannet Asfew, said: "We have waited a long, long time for this. This is a proud moment for us."

Ethiopia’s ancient city of Axum, legend has it, was the site of the queen of Sheba’s biblical realm and the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. Towering funeral stones are what remain of its past glory. It lies in the shadow of the Adwa Mountains, 850 km north of Addis Ababa, where Emperor Menelik II defeated the Italians in 1896.

Italy first agreed to hand back the obelisk in 1947, again in 1957 and once more in 1997, but diplomatic wrangling delayed its eventual return.

[ENDS]