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Uganda welcomes return of 39 artefacts from Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Headdress and pots among colonial-era objects sent back in ‘landmark’ loan agreement
The Uganda Museum, in the country’s capital Kampala, held a welcome reception this week to celebrate the return of 39 artefacts from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
The items were taken from Uganda during the 1890s and early 1900s by British colonial administrators, anthropologists, missionaries and soldiers. Many of them were given to British museums by Reverend John Roscoe, an anthropologist and missionary from the UK. They arrived back in the country on Saturday 8 June.
The artefacts, which come from the whole of Uganda, include a head-dress made of human hair, acquired from Lango in 1937, decorated pots from Ankole, acquired in the 1920s, a Lubaale vessel from Buganda, acquired in 1907, and a collection of sacred figures with significant ritual importance in Buganda culture.
They are on loan for an initial period of three years and will remain part of the collection of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The deal is renewable and allows for the possibility of a permanent loan and local ownership.
The deal has been hailed by Uganda’s Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities as a “landmark achievement in the ongoing effort to repatriate Africa’s lost heritage”.
The president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, received the artefacts. He has asked curators to collaborate with local communities to deepen understanding of the items before they are publicly displayed.
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The Uganda Museum is expected to put on a temporary exhibition of the objects next year.
“This marks a significant step towards the repatriation of historical objects wrongly acquired during British colonial rule,” said Jackline Besigye Nyiracyiza, Uganda’s acting commissioner of museums and monuments.
“The ministry will continue to analyse the artefacts at the Uganda Museum and is organising an exhibition in the future when all Ugandans and foreign visitors will see the historical objects returned from Europe. This an important addition to boost tourism and cultural heritage of the country.”
The artefacts will initially be housed at the Uganda Museum to acclimatise to Ugandan conditions before being returned to their respective regions. The Buganda Kingdom is preparing to welcome a collection of “Sacred Twins”, which will be returned to their community of origin and placed in their previous resting place, the Wamala Tombs.
The deal came about thanks to the Uganda Museum’s initiative, Repositioning the Uganda Museum, which aims to repatriate objects to the east African nation. The project is funded with a $100,000 grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, an arts and humanities organisation.
Derek Peterson, a professor of history and African studies at the University of Michigan, who is the principal investigator for the Repositioning project, said: “We want to put these objects back into the hands of people who made them meaningful. We want them to live again, not only as museum pieces but as part of Uganda's public culture.
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“Colonial-era collectors took them out of Ugandans' hands and made them into specimens of ethnic identity. We want to put them back into the hands of the people who made them meaningful, to open dialogues about the onward course of families, clans, and professions.”
Ugandan authorities say they hope the repatriation will encourage other museums to “appreciate the value of returning artefacts from Uganda that they are still holding”.
The country is particularly keen to see the return of the Luzira head, a sculpture thought to be more than 1,000 years old, which was dug up in 1929 on the outskirts of Kampala and is now in the British Museum.
Other objects still in UK collections include a king’s throne taken from the Bunyoro kingdom in the late 19th century, pots from the Ankole kingdom, and headdresses from Acholi.
This is the second repatriation to take place between Cambridge and Uganda. The first happened in July 1962, during the country’s independence celebrations, when an artefact of the Buganda deity Kibuuka, a god of war, was repatriated. The Kibuuka is now one of the centrepieces of the Uganda Museum.