From Mr. Stephen Bell
Sir, Professor Richard Pankhurst (letter, September 7) draws attention to Italy s unfulfilled commitment, dating from her 1947 peace treaty with the United Nations, to restore to Ethiopia the 2.000-year-old Aksumite obelisk within 18 months of the signing of that treaty.
There is an additional and urgent dimension to this long overdue legal obligation. The 24-metre-high granite obelisk, re-erected in 1937 in the Piazza di Porta Capena in Rome on the 15th anniversary of Mussolini s seizing of power, is now showing the effects of serious pollution from traffic fumes. Being carved on all four sides, the obelisk is, incidentally, a particularly fine example of the genre.
The cost of its transport back to Ethiopia and the frailty of its condition have been deployed by Italian officialdom as arguments against its restitution. Earlier this year, however, Dr Vincenzo Francaviglia of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (National Council of ResearCl) published his conclusion that it could be redivided without difficulty into the five pieces into which it had broken when it was toppled, probably when the Falasha Queen Gudit sacked Aksum in the 10th century.
Yours faithfully,
STEPHEN BELL,
2 The Row,
Spalford, Newark, Nottinghamshire.
September 8.