Axum Stele

Abstract

This chapter engages with the Axum Stele (or Obelisk, as it is popularly known), a large monument that originally sat in Axum, Ethiopia, as a memento of an old and powerful civilization. In the Italian Conquest of Ethiopia, it was taken to Rome by Mussolini’s troops, and it stood for several years in front of the Italian Ministry of the Colonies. Eventually, the monument was returned to Ethiopia, in a negotiation involving not only the governments of Italy and Ethiopia, but also, most notably, UNESCO and the African Union. This chapter examines discourses around the restitution, reassembly, and ‘reinauguration’ of the Stele in Ethiopia, as a means to showcase the ways international law interacts with the social life of an object, and particularly the field of international cultural heritage law, highlighting tensions involving colonialism, internationalism, expert rule, and the uses of internationalized objects in domestic politics.