Tribute to Ras Seymore McLean

VI. British Museum and other British Library acquisitions

As a result of Holmes, the British Museum, now the British Library, became the receiver of 350 Ethiopian manuscripts, many of them finely illuminated. A further six exceptionally beautiful specimens were acquired by the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.

Sir Robert Napier later presented another manuscript to the Royal Library in Vienna, while two others reached the German Kaiser, and a further two the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris

Almost 200 other volumes were subsequently acquired by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Cambridge University Library, the John Rylands Library in Manchester and several smaller British collections.

Several of these manuscripts contain extensive archival material, including Tewodros’s tax records, which have been edited by Professor Richard Pankhurst in his Tax Records and Inventories of Emperor Téwodros of Ethiopia (London, 1978), constitute data essential for the study of Ethiopian history, including that of the history of the country’s art.

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