Bold British Way British Museum considers loan of ‘invisible’ objects back to Ethiopia | Source: The Art Newspaper Country has requested return of 11 tabots held in sealed storeroom that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church believes should only be viewed by its priests The British Museum is to consider returning a group of “invisible” objects to Ethiopia. These are tabots (Christian plaques), which symbolically represent the Ark of the Covenant—the wooden chest that is said to have held the Ten Commandments. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church believes that tabots should never be viewed by anyone other than its priests. There are 11 tabots in the British Museum. Although the storage arrangements are confidential, they are believed to be kept in a sealed storeroom in the basement of the Bloomsbury complex. Even Lissant Bolton, the museum’s keeper of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, has never set foot in the room, let alone seen the tabots. The Art Newspaper unders
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