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Emperor Menelik's phonograph message to Queen Victoria1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Abraham Demoz
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Extract

In 1898 Queen Victoria sent a recording of her voice to the Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia and his Queen, Itege Taitu, together with some phonograph apparatus. The following year Menelik and Taitu returned the compliment by making recordings of their voices and sending them to Queen Victoria. The latter recordings have been preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, but Queen Victoria's recording was later destroyed on her instructions. The text of her message has, however, been preserved and is reproduced here. The message was dated Osborne, 8 August 1898:

‘I, Victoria, Queen of England, hope your Majesty is in good health. I thank you for the kind reception which you have given to my Envoys, Mr. Rodd and Mr. Harrington. I wish your Majesty and the Empress Taitou all prosperity and success, and I hope that the friendship between our two Empires will constantly increase’.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 1969 , pp. 251 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1969

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References

2 The recordings were brought to my attention by Professor E. Ullendorff to whom I am most grateful. (Acknowledgements and thanks are due to Mr. Robert Mackworth-Young, M. V. O., Her Majesty… Librarian, who wrote to me about these cyliners in March 1967 and has since been most helpful in all the arrangements leading eventually to the publication of this article. Edward Ullendorff.)

3 Mr. Rennell Rodd was the leader of mission that negotiated a treaty between Ethiopia and Britain in 1897. See Marcus, H.G., ‘The Rodd mission of 1897’, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, III, 2, 1965Google Scholar, and Ulendorff, E., ‘The 1897 treaty between Great Britain and Ethiopia’, Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, 1XXII, 1966, 116–34.Google Scholar

4 Lt. Col. Harrington, John Lane, previously consular officer at Zeila, was appointed on November 1897Google Scholar to be the British Agent in Ethiopia (cf. Ullendorff, E., ‘The Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1902’, BSOAS, xxx, 3, 1967, 641–54.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 From Letters of Queen Victoria. Third series, 1886–1901, III, London, 1932, 263. VOL. XXXII. PART 2.

6 ibid., 310–11.

7 Nicholson, T.R., A toy for the Lion, London, 1965, 121.Google Scholar

8 Although the first crude recording machine was constructed by Edison, Thomas A. as early as 1877, it was not until 1888 that an improved phonograph, suitable for production on a commercial basis, was first exhibited. The improvement included, among other things, the us of wax on the recording surface of the cylinder rather than tinfoil as previouslyGoogle Scholar (see Chew, V. K., Talking machines, London, HMSO, 1967).Google Scholar

9 The cylinders had to be played at the Science Museum in London on one of the instruments in their unique and extensive collection. My sincere thanks are due to Mr. V. K. Chew of the Science Museum for his indispensable help in making it possible for me to hear the recordings played many times over. [The quality of the recordings is such that at times I found it hard to establish even the identity of the language. Dr. Abraham Demoz deserves much credit for his acumen and perseverance. Edward Ullendorff.]

10 See Marcus, H. G., ‘Ethio–British negotiations concerning the western border with sushan, 1896–1902’, Journal of African History, IV, 1, 1963, 81–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ullendorff, E., BSOAS, XXX, 3, 1967.Google Scholar

11 Letters of Queen Victoria. Third series, III, 394.Google Scholar

12 [Dr. Abraham Demoz does not, perhaps, make full allowances for the flavourof the term ‘curious’ in the Queen's vocabulary which appears to have connoted a mixture of ‘interest’ and ‘Strangeness’. Edward Ullendorff.]

13 In current Amharic a monarch would not be referred to by the term but rather by

14 There is a clear hesitation in Menelik's reading at this point. He says: (hesitation) . He was obviously misreading his text because the phrase as it stands does not make sense. Could the text have read If so, the translation would be ‘…Victoria, Empress of the English people’. In some other documents (see, for instance, Ullendorff, RSE, xxii, 1966, 127) the Queen is referred to as It is possible that the reading in the present text could have been similar to this.

15 The form used nowadays in such a context would be rather than

16 lit. ‘of the honoured Queen’.

17 The use of the word from ‘to praise’, ‘to thank’ here is peculiar. One would have expected or from ‘to give’, ‘to reward’ in accordance with commonly accepted Amharic usage. [See, however, Guidi, Vocabolario amarico, col. 77. E. U.]

18 Emperor Yohannes IV (1872–89) who fell fighting the dervishes at the battle of Matamma.

19 the word here translated as ‘zeal’, would nowadays rarely, if ever, be used in this sense but in the meaning of ‘spite’, ‘stubbornness’.

20 Harrington confirms this. He states that Menelik said to him ‘I merely ask your government, for friendship's sake, to let me have Matamma, on account of the Christians there. King John was killed there, and the blood of many of my people has been spilt there, and it is for these reasons we wish to have it’ (from FO 403/284, Harrington to Cromer, 26 May 1899, as quoted in H. G. Marcus, JAH, iv, 1, 1963, 90).

21 ‘Light of Ethiopia’ is the legend on Taitu's seal. See Guebre Sellassie's Chronique du règne de Ménélik II, Paris, 1930, I, 273

22 In the phrase the position of the is certainly unusual. The normal order is as in Menelik's message above.

23 I have been unable to identify from the recording the word between and The context would seem to suggest in which case, of course, the word before it would have to be emended to

24 The use of ‘I declare’ or ‘I notify’ here is rather odd. One would expect in such a context a word like ‘I wish’. There is another unidentifiable word here, but the context does not give much help.