Priceless 18th-century crown will be returned to Ethiopia after being HIDDEN in a Dutch apartment

Priceless 18th-century crown will be returned to Ethiopia after being HIDDEN in a Dutch apartment for 21 years by a man who found it in a suitcase

  • Sirak Asfaw found crown in suitcase left behind in his Dutch apartment in 1998
  • Object is currently being stored at a high-security facility in the Netherlands
  • Experts believe gilded crown commissioned by Ethiopian warlord Welde Sellase

A priceless 18th-century Ethiopian crown is set to be returned home to Addis Ababa after it was hidden in a Dutch apartment for more than two decades.

Sirak Asfaw, who fled Ethiopia and settled in the Netherlands in the late 1970s, said he stumbled across the crown in a suitcase left behind by a visitor in April 1998. 

Mr Asfaw had hosted Ethiopian pilots, diplomats and refugees as they passed through Rotterdam after he escaped the ‘Red Terror’ purges and found a home in the city.

‘I looked into the suitcase and saw something really amazing and I thought “this is not right. This has been stolen. This should not be here. This belongs to Ethiopia”,’ he said. 

Sirak Asfew (left), who discovered the crown, and Dutch art expert Arthur Brand (right) pose with the 18th-century Ethiopian crown

Mr Asfaw then confronted the suitcase’s owner – whom he did not identify – and told him that the crown ‘will not leave my house unless it goes back to Ethiopia’. 

Shortly afterwards, Mr Asfaw posted a message on a message board asking what people thought he should do with ‘an Ethiopian artefact’.

But he did not get a satisfactory answer ‘and I did not want to return it to the same regime that had made it possible for the crown to get stolen,’ he said.

The former refugee thus decided to become the crown’s de facto guardian ‘until such time it could go back’.

For 21 years the crown has been hidden in his apartment as Ethiopia continued to be ruled by an iron-fisted one-party government.

During this time, Mr Asfaw was pressured by Ethiopians who knew he had the crown and wanted to force him to give it back.

‘But I knew if I gave it back, it would just disappear again,’ he said.

The ornate gilded copper crown (pictured) features images of Christ and the Twelve Apostles

The ornate gilded copper crown (pictured) features images of Christ and the Twelve Apostles

When Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office last year, Mr Asfaw felt things had changed enough in Ethiopia for him to finally be able give the crown back.

It was then that he contacted Dutch ‘art detective’ Arthur Brand, and told him he was in possession of the ornate gilded copper headgear, which features images of Christ and the Twelve Apostles.

Mr Brand, dubbed the ‘Indiana Jones of the art world’ for his discoveries of missing works, said the crown would soon be handed to the Ethiopian authorities.  

‘It turns out that Sirak Asfaw had been the custodian of a rare 18th-century Ethiopian crown for the past 21 years and wants to give it back,’ said Mr Brand. ‘It was a story straight from a crime thriller’. 

The crown is currently being stored at a high-security facility in the Netherlands.

Jacopo Gnisci, a research associate at Oxford University who also examined the object and confirmed its authenticity, said there were less than two dozen of these crowns in existence.

‘These crowns are of great cultural and symbolic significance in Ethiopia, as they are usually donated by high-ranking officials to churches in a practice that reaches as far back as the Late Antiquity,’ he said.

The crown has an inscription dating back to 1633-34, but Mr Gnisci said it was more likely to have been commissioned by Ethiopian warlord Welde Sellase a century later.

Mr Gnisci said Sellase likely donated the crown to a church in a village called Cheleqot near the city of Mekelle in northern Ethiopia.

The last time the crown was seen in public it was worn by a priest in a photograph taken in 1993, said the researcher. An investigation was launched at the time but the culprits were never found.

‘These crowns are of priceless symbolic value and it is important that they be retuned to Ethiopia,’ he said. 

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