The Anglo-Ethiopian Society
Lecture - ONLINE - Finding the Lost Crown of Cheleqot
Jacopo Gnisci
Wednesday 26th August 2020
Online event starting at 19:00 BST - Public lecture (all welcome to join).
Note - Register for the event on Eventbrite and you'll be emailed a Zoom link shortly before the event.
Last year, AES member Jacopo Gnisci received an unexpected approach from an art detective in the Netherlands. A golden crown, believed to be Ethiopian, had been found inside an old suitcase in Rotterdam. Could Jacopo come and help identify it? What was it? Was it genuine? And -- most baffling of all -- where had it come from?
Jacopo will introduce us to Ethiopia's rich tradition of church crowns, and tell how he traced the history of the Rotterdam discovery, revealing it to be the crown stolen from a church near Mekelle, many decades before.
Update: We now hope to be joined by several guests, including Sirak Asfaw, who discovered the crown in a suitcase, the art investigator, Arthur Brand, a representative from Mekelle University, and Michael Gervers, who photographed the crown in the 1990s.
Jacopo Gnisci is an art historian specialising in medieval African art and manuscript illumination. He is a Lecturer in the Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South at UCL and a Visiting Academic at the British Museum.
Please reserve your place soon to avoid disappointment.