France on Saturday began the return of some 3,500 archaeological artefacts to Ethiopia, which Paris held since the 1980s for study. This came during a visit to the region by the new Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot handed over two prehistoric stone axes, called bifaces, and a stone cutter to Ethiopia's Tourism Minister Selamawit Kassa, during a visit to the national museum in Addis Ababa.
The tools are "samples of nearly 3,500 artifacts from the excavations that were carried out on the Melka Kunture site", a cluster of prehistoric sites south of the capital that were excavated under the direction of a late French researcher, Barrot said.
France and Ethiopia hold a longstanding bilateral agreement on cooperating in the fields of archaeology and paleontology.
A handover, not a restitution
The artifacts, currently stored at the French embassy in Addis Ababa, will be delivered in their entirety to the Ethiopian Heritage Directorate on Tuesday.
"This is a handover, not a restitution, in that these objects have never been part of French public collections," Laurent Serrano, culture advisor at the French embassy, told AFP.
"These artifacts, which date back between 1 and 2 million years, were found during excavations carried out over several decades at a site near the Ethiopian capital," he added.
'Titanic' task of finding plundered African art in French museums
Barrot's visit to Ethiopia was part of his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa which began on Wednesday.
The main topics on the agenda were the humanitarian crisis in Sudan and the future of French military presence in the region.
In Ethiopia, home to the African Union (AU) headquarters, his focus was on international institutional reforms, particularly regarding the United Nations Security Council.
France supports the AU's campaign for better representation at the UN, backing proposals for two permanent African seats on the UN Security Council.
(with AFP)
