Building up Ethiopian heritage institutions

For centuries knowledge of Ethiopian history was produced at royal courts and in religious institutions, both of which have contributed to laying the foundations of a modern, essentialist tradition of national historiography. Written accounts of political events in the Aksumite kingdom date back to the seventh century BC and include factual as well as entirely celebratory stories. The supposed genesis of Ethiopian history from a civilising mission of the Semitic Arabian kingdom of the Sabaeans around 1000 BC is the grand narrative conveyed by this mainstream historiography. By the beginning of the twentieth century it would come to dominate the self-perception of Ethiopians as well as the world’s image of the country. Thus, Ethiopian historiography of the early twentieth century was in large parts based on and continuing this imperial tradition. Many of the historical writings that appeared during this period were centred around “celebrating the agents, values, and institutions of the Solomonid imperial order”.286

Christian manuscripts.²⁸⁸ ManyW estern scholars wereintrigued by the existence of an enclave of earlyC hristian tradition on the African continent,w hile also drawingonthe classical trope of Ethiopia as the farawayland of earlyEuropean historiography,which has found its classicalexpression in the writingsofHomer and Herodotus, who had alreadyreported on apowerful, wealthyand impressive empire. Accordingt ot his historiography,f rom the origins of this Nubian kingdom the Ethiopian Empire developed, first,i nto the Aksumite empire and then into the Abyssinian kingdom of medieval times, while at the sametime resisting the rise of Islam in the surroundinga rea. Allo ft his came to be viewed as the continuous story of the Ethiopian Empire from ancient times to the present, with particularemphasis placed on the Christian undercurrent in Ethiopian history.The legendary origin of Aksum was attributed to the story of the Queen of Saba, King Solomon of Israel, and their son, Menelik I, who stole the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem to found Ethiopian Christianitya nd lend its name to the SolomidDynasty.Among Europeans the "Prester John" myth was repeatedly associated with Ethiopia from the fourteenth century onward. Accordingt ot his legend, an idealised version of unspoiled Christian tradition had miraculously been preserved in ar emoteA frican location.²⁸⁹ Places, events and traditions deemed historicallyr elevant by Ethiopian elites did not differ much from those cherished by Western scholars but,rather,seemed to confirm their preconceivedi deas.²⁹⁰ Western research interests from the seventeenth century elaborated an "orientalist-semiticist" paradigm, which not onlyreflectedthe Great Tradition of the Ethiopiane mpire but argued for raciala nd ethnic origins of Ethiopia in the Middle East.²⁹¹ This genealogy, in the eyes of Ethiopianist scholars, explained the supremacyo fE thiopianC hristian culture internally, towards other population groups,a nd externally, towardsB lack African people.²⁹² Western EthiopianS tudies actualised and complementedt he Aksumite paradigm of EthiopianO rthodox ecclesiastical scholarship, that tied Ethiopianh istory to the dominating trajectories of biblical mythology, atradition of scripture and relative geographical isolation of the highland communities.²⁹³ Closelyc onnected to this grand narrative was the proclaimed exceptionalism of Ethiopian historical development,w hich had resulted in the emergence of what Westerners and Ethiopiane lites considered Africa'so nlya dvanced civilisation.
Emperor Menelik II, whose reign spannedthe period between 1889 and 1913, alreadyh ad av ery clear-cut vision of the Ethiopian Empire as am odern nation state, and followed a "politics of ruins"²⁹⁴ as part of his overall plan. He sought to complement the official and vernacular historicist writingsofEthiopian intellectuals with the material reality of historical monuments and sites reminiscent of the Christian empire. To this end he commissioned systematic research into church ruins. Such research extended in particularo vert hoset erritories, which werethe coreofthe renewed imperial expansion, but had apredominantly Islamic population. In some places,r uins weree xcavated and reviveda sp laces of faith, oftenaccompanied by the building of anew church near the remains of an old one. In otherp laces remnants of royal buildingsw eree xcavated and then connected to existing churches or monasteries in the vicinity.B ertrand Hirsch and François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar have provided an in-depth analysis of these and other policies implemented by Menelik II. They have also demonstrated parallels between his vision and the European model of creatingnational identitieswhich emergedduring the nineteenth century.Nationalist culturalpolitics fused language, folkloristic traditions, architecture and the conservation of antiquities into ac ollective patrimonya nd an ational identity,which were conceptualised in referencet oaconstructed communal past of all citizens. An important trait of this shared past was its relation to ac oncrete historical population, such as the Celts,t he Hellenic people, the Romans -or,i ntheE thiopian case, the Aksumites.²⁹⁵ Contrary to the European nations, however,Ethiopia was lacking the "ideological apparatus" of press,universal expositions and the communities and networks of collectors and invested bourgeoisie.²⁹⁶ At this point,the national project in Ethiopia and severalEuropean imperial projects crossed paths in theirshared interest in locating earlyt raceso fc ivilisation, whiteness and Christianityi n Ethiopia.²⁹⁷ In 1906,M enelik II requested the help of aG erman archaeological expedition to Aksum, which resultedi nt he first large-scale excavations of ancient monuments in Ethiopia.I nc onnection with the historiographical sources from earlier periods, archaeologists focused on exploring the monumental remains of these ancient and medieval empires.From aW estern viewpoint,the increase of archaeologicalresearch in Ethiopia equalled a "discovery of the Christian Ethiopia".²⁹⁸ From an Ethiopianv iewpoint,t hese research collaborations continued at radition of diplomatic relations initiatedb yE thiopians with European imperial powers,t urning European expectations of al egendary Christian kingdom in Africa to their own advantage.F or centuries,E thiopians had managed to realise theirinterest in technological exchangebycontributing to the creation of an "Ethiopianist library" in Europe.²⁹⁹ ManyE uropeans who travelled to Ethiopia undertook studies about the Ethiopianwildlife and naturalh istory in the broader sense, covering everything from animal and plantspecies, via geologyand geomorphological formations, to the exploration of natural resources.I nt he late nineteenth and earlyt wentieth centuries,manyresearchers practised ageneralist approach to studying and collecting,g uided by personal interests and chance encounters just as much as by specialisedscientific research questions. From the twentieth century on, anumber of US-Americana nd European Museuma nd exhibition projects expanded their systematic natural history collections. During 1926-27 Field-Museum-Chicago Daily News Abyssinian Expedition collected animal and plant specimens, among them 1000 bird skins alone,f ollowing the latest scientific practices,i ncludingobservation, preparation and painting and zoological and botanicalcategorisations. In the context of the French ethnographic Dakar-Djibouti Mission, which traversed northern and central Ethiopia between 1932 and 1933,a nimal specimens werec ollected to be exhibited in museums in France.³⁰⁰ In the first half of the twentieth century, the Western production of knowledge on Ethiopia was established more firmlyinthe institutional landscapeofEuropean academia, while the community of scholars grew constantly. After the Italian occupation of Ethiopia had ended in 1941, the activities of European, Americana nd Japanese researchers began to increase and expand beyond linguisticsand theology, traditionallyt he corea reas of EthiopianS tudies in the West.P rehistoric and paleo-anthropological studies identifiedp romisingt erritoriesw ith an abundance of pre-historic fossils to be explored in the Ethiopian part of the East African Rift Valley,wheresome of the earliest remains of human life on Earth could be found.Fromthe 1950s on, ethnographers and anthropologists started to study the cultures and societies of "ethnic units" or "tribes",inparticularinSouthern Ethiopia.³⁰¹ Thisisone of the reasons why, in the following decades, abroad institutional framework for conservation of both nature and culture was put into place. In addition to the archaeological sites from the classical and medieval periods, naturaland prehistoric sites now became part of the established national heritage. These new researchinterests went well with Ethiopia'sinternational political representation, in which the emphasis on Ethiopia'sexceptionalism as Africa'so ldest empire playedacrucial role.³⁰²

Establishing culturala nd natural governance in Ethiopia throughh eritage institutions
The history of the Ethiopiannatural and culturalheritageinstitutions illustrates the need for as trategic integration of foreign expertise and knowledge production into the nascent institutional landscape of the modern Ethiopian state and the important role UNESCO playedi nt his process. In the context of strategic state transformation under Haile Selassie Itowards abureaucratic, constitutional monarchy, new institutions wereestablished for manyareas of government responsibility. Between 1943a nd 1966,f ourteen new state ministries werei nstalled. They weres oon to be complementedb yalarge number of specialised agencies for intersectoral concerns which required more technicale xpertise, such as highways, aviation, electricity or tourism.³⁰³ The cultural and natural heritage-related institutions thatw erec reated during this time should be analysed not onlya sp arts of the transformation of government,b ut also as part of am oree ncompassingc ulturalg overnance system. Thomas Schmitt has analysed how the gradual institutionalisation of conservation of cultural heritage in the Algerian M'zab Valley,and the globalinstitution UNESCO (and eventually the World Heritage programme)h aves tructured political changea tt he local  Levine, Greater Ethiopia,19; Gascon and Pourtier, La Grande Éthiopie,1 4.  Perham, TheG overnment of Ethiopia,x lix, l; Delphine Lecoutre, "L'Éthiopiee tl ' Afrique", in L'Éthiopie contemporaine,e d. Gérard Prunier ( level. Building on this, as imilar analyticala pproach is useful to gain ab etter understanding of the genesis of Ethiopian heritagesites.Inadditiontothis interdependence,o ri nS chmitt'sw ords "dialectic",o fg lobal-local, in Ethiopia the national level has to be included as another level of analysis.³⁰⁴ Studying the actors and mechanisms beyond nationalstate institutions makes the wider societal and political regulation of culturaland natural heritagevisible. Forthis cultural and natural governance in Ethiopia, akey element was to institutionalise knowledge production as astate domain in the educational, scientific and culturalsectors and to bring in technical expertise from Western countries.Tracing the construction of Ethiopian national heritagea sp art of this institutionalisation over several decades until the 1970sa llows us to observeh ow foreign researchers, an emerging Ethiopian elite, ag rowingb ureaucratic apparatus and UNESCO all contributed to install heritage-making as astate domain, to define which historical remains and natural sites werec onsidered nationalh eritage, and which weren't.
The research expeditions of the nineteenth century also marked as tarting point for aproject of political and technological modernisation in Ethiopian history,a si nternational technicalc ooperation projects took place in relation to these expeditions. In order to obtain the imperial permission for expeditions of this kind,intensive diplomatic efforts werenecessary.Since the Ethiopian imperial governmentwas interested in technical cooperation of anykind, European states sent high-ranking experts to evaluate the possible economic potential and establish ap ositive relationship with the Ethiopiani mperial government.³⁰⁵ European researchers, missionaries and civilservants worked as consultants for the imperial government and served in diplomatic missions for their respective countries of origin. As part of these diplomatic exchanges, support for the creation of state culturalinstitutions was negotiated, meaning thatthe first national museum and other cultural institutions had been established in the context of diplomatic strategies and with the help of foreign expertise from around 1900 on.
Existing religious and culturalt raditions of conserving and declaring heritagew erec ontested and claimed as an imperial state affair duringt he government of Emperor Menelik II, whose policies werem otivated by his dual attempt to consolidateimperial power while also creatingamodern nation state. The national archive was foundedi n1 908, together with am inisterial system as an el- ement of the imperial government,and later mergedwith the government library whose establishment goes back to the Italian occupation government.³⁰⁶ The first diplomatic collaboration engaged upon by the Ethiopian imperial government was with the French Archaeological Institute in Cairo. Between 1922 and 1926, the French Capuchin François Bernardin Azais negotiated, on behalf of the French government,a na greementb etween the two states in which the French side was granted permission for archaeological excavations in the empire in exchangef or setting up an Ethiopian national museuma nd establishing as ystem of classification and collection of objects at the imperial court.T hese negotiations took place in 1930,u nder the aegis of Ras Tafari,t he future Emperor Haile SelassieI .R as Tafari had ac lose-knit relationship with the French Capuchins, some of whom had served as his privatet eachers.³⁰⁷ The museum never took shape in its intended form, as the Italian invasion and the following years of occupation forced the emperor into exile whereh er emained until 1941. While the Italian government had created some culturali nstitutions and also undertaken some restoration works in Gondar,i th ad also removed an umber of valuable antiquities from the country,the most notable being alarge stela from Aksum (also known as the AksumObelisk). Therestitution of culturalh eritageitems was part of the 1947peace treaty Italysigned between Ethiopia and a number of others tates,but the economic situation of Ethiopia and lack of adequate state institutions made it difficult to realise the restitution, which would onlyt akep lace manyd ecades later, in 2005.³⁰⁸ The National Library and Archives(NALE), foundedin1944,wereamong the first culturalgovernance institutions created by Haile Selassie Iinthe framework of his nation-building politics. It comprised archival functions, am useum and an archaeological section. During the 1950s and 1960s, several more museums and research institutions were created: the ethnological museuma nd the Institute of Ethiopian Studies (IES) wereestablished together with the first Ethiopian university,Haile Selassie IUniversity,later renamed Addis AbabaUniversity.The National Museum, the Natural History Museum in Addis Ababaand the Archaeological Museum and InstituteofEthiopian Studies in Asmara (Eritrea) also arose from these cultural institutionalisation politics. In parallel to the creation of cul- Solomon Gebreyes Beyene, AH istoryo fC ultural Heritage Management in Ethiopia (1944Ethiopia ( -1974: Aspects of Cultural Heritage Management in Ethiopia (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr.Müller, 2010), 18 -21.  Amélie Chekroun, "Un ArchéologueC apucin En Éthiopie (1922)(1923)(1924)(1925)(1926)(1927)(1928)(1929)(1930)(1931)(1932)(1933)(1934)(1935)(1936): François Bernardin Azaïs", Afriques,J anuary 27,2 011,5-6, http://journals.openedition.org/afriques/785.  RichardPankhurst, "Ethiopia, the Aksum Obelisk, and the Return of Africa'sC ultural Heritage", African Affairs 98, no. 391 (1999): 229 -39. tural institutions in charge of antiquities, legislation was introducedin1966 and complementedb yt wo executive orders in 1966 and 1974,toprovide al egal definition of antiquities and alegal ground to executively safeguard antiquities and prevent illicit trade. To increase capacities for monitoringand handling antiquities, the French-Ethiopian cooperation initiated at the beginning of the twentieth century was further advanced in 1952w ith the foundation, through ab ilateral agreement, of the "Institut éthiopien d'études et de recherches".The "Institut", although financed largely by the French government and hosted by the National Archives, was to be part of the Ethiopian government and its newlyf ormed archaeological section. The "Institut" was officiallyentrusted to establish acollaboration of French and Ethiopiana rchaeologists, paleo-anthropologists, arth istorians and historians. However,t he majority of researchers remained French for manyy ears. The "Institut"'sa ctivities covered all areas of research as well as the collection and exhibition of monuments and artefacts. Itsf oundation marked astarting point of the first systematic effort to survey Ethiopian archaeological sites.³⁰⁹ On the Ethiopian side, this research programme was part of an ewlyemerging school of Ethiopian state historiography, which aimed to write Ethiopianhistory into the Western, Eurocentric world history.T he leadinga rgument of this world history was that Western civilisation had been shaped by the antagonism of its superior philosophical ideals and its failed historical realities. Ethiopia, on the otherh and,was considered unequalledi nt erms of "moral civilization",³¹⁰ but in dire need of modernization to become an internationallyr ecognizedn ation-state, for which it depended on the studyo fW estern civilisation and the support of Western nations. Kebbede Mikael, the author of Ethiopia and Western Civilisation,the seminal book on new Ethiopian world history,would serveasthe first director of the "Institut"'sa rchaeological section and co-editor,a longside the French archaeologist Jean Leclant,o ft he "Institut"sa cademic journal, the Annales d'Ethiopie.³¹¹ The museums, the universitya nd research institutes werem odelled after European institutions and directed and staffed by al arge number of expatriate academics from Europe and the USAa nd by the first, small, cohort of Ethiopian scholars trainedi nW estern universities. Giovanni de Lorenzi understandst he 1950s as awatershed moment in Ethiopian Studies, for it was then that Ethiopian scholars begant oc ombine their Western training

Building up Ethiopian heritage institutions
with their intimate knowledge of Ethiopianlanguages and cultures to implement new methodsa nd research frameworks,thereby "indigenising" Ethiopian Studies.³¹² The evolution of the governance over natural resourcesismorefragmented, and also less documented to date. The environmental, wildlife and natural protection in Ethiopia concerned several branches of government and stretched over several institutions. More recently, scholars have suggested thatt he century-old tradition of church forests can be considered the origin of natural conservation institutions in Ethiopia. The groves and communities in the direct peripheryo f EthiopianOrthodox churches wereconsidered sacred ground, which brought Menelik II to pass comprehensive regulations of forest use when Ethiopia faced a firewood shortageatthe beginning of the twentieth century.³¹³ While the first regulations concerning the protection of wildlife and hunting regulations, especially for big game, date back to 1909,wildlife reserves wered elineatedf or the first time during the Italian occupation in 1930,and more elaborate game regulations wered efined subsequentlyb yH aile Selassie Ii n1 944.These regulations would eventuallyi nclude as election of endangered species that weree xcluded from game hunting.³¹⁴ In their designation and implementation, these controlled hunting areas resembled those of the neighbouring British colonies,i ndicating that the idea to install protected natural zones as part of the national project was conceivedo fd uringH aile Selassie'st ime in British exile from 1936 to 1941.³¹⁵ In 1966,the first three proposed areas for national parks wereestablished in the Awash Valley about 200kilometreseast of Addis Ababa, the Simien Mountains in north-eastern Ethiopia and the Bale Mountains, 250kilometres southof Addis Ababa.³¹⁶ From the 1960s onwards, ar angeo fg overnment institutions which were concerned with natural conservation were founded, including the Ministry of Agriculture, the GameDepartmentand the Forestry Authority.Ethiopia had been in sight of the network of formercolonial African Wildlife researchers-turned-inter- national-conservation-advocates who sought to rescue and protect the African wildlife from poaching,f arming and potential industrialisation.³¹⁷ When one of their members, Julian Huxley,b ecame the first DG of UNESCO,h ew as able to leverageh is position to shape the environmental agenda of international organisations and to direct fundst owards conservation work. Organised through the IUCN and the FAO, in anumber of preparatory missions and conferences, experts visited African governments, among them the Ethiopian, and explained in detail which areas and species weret hreatened the most in their eyes.³¹⁸ They also outlined regulations for environmental protection. As ac onsequenceo f this, the EthiopianW ildlife Conservation Organisation (EWCO) was established in 1964.I tw ould eventuallyb ecome the most important institution in terms of Ethiopiann atural heritage.³¹⁹ As with the archaeological institute, the EWCO was formallye stablished as ap art of am inistry,i nt his caset he ministry of agriculture, but was directed and later supported by foreign experts, who outnumbered their Ethiopianc olleagues. Foreign experts weren ot onlyv ital in running the EWCO but also as head managers or wardens of national parks. Ap rimary responsibility for the experts in these positions was monitoring and mapping wildlife,a sw ell as the systematic documentation accordingt ot he standards and guidelines of the international organisations,s uch as IUCN and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).³²⁰ These organisations would often act as sponsors for experts to undertake these tasks. From 1965t o1 971, John Blower,af ormerB ritish Colonial Senior Park Warden and wildlife advisor from Kenya, served as aW ildlife Conservation Advisor and Senior Game Warden and the first head of EWCO.³²¹ In line with his training,p rior expertise, and the prevailing spirit of the international natural conservation organisations at thatt ime, Blower promoted aconcept of wildlife protection that revealedatraditionalcolonial understanding.Hefocused on the establishment of nationalp arks and game reserves  Anna-Katharina Wöbse, "Framingthe HeritageofMankind: National Parks on the International Agenda",inCivilizing Nature: National ParksinGlobal Historical Perspective,ed. Bernhard Gissibl, SabineH öhler,a nd Patrick Kupper (New York: Berghahn, 2012), 148.  Riney,T ., and P. Hill. "FAO/IUCN African Special Project -Interim Report on Ethiopia". Rome: FAO, 1963.  Blower, "Wildlife Conservation",8 ;t oday the institution is called EthiopianW ildlife Conservation Authority (EWCA).  Hillman, "Compendium of Wildlife Conservation",11-14.  Interview with Hans Hurni, May1 2, 2015,B erne (CH); Hillman, 13;B lower, "Wildlife Conservation",7-9.
Building up Ethiopian heritage institutions in order to disable interference from their indigenous inhabitants.³²² He undertook extensive surveyst ob uild up the database necessary for zoning and other conservation measures and wheren ecessary commissioned an umber of biologists for survey work such as his fellow countryman Melvin Bolton, who spent over five years visiting most of Ethiopia to conduct preliminary ecological surveyst oi dentify new game reserves and remainingw ildlife resources.³²³

Foreign research interestsa nd the creation of Ethiopian heritage institutions
Togetherwith the establishment of modern state institutions for culture, heritage and heritage-making wereinstitutionalised in museums, research and conservation institutes.Both Ethiopian and foreign scholars and expertswho participated in this process shared an understanding of heritage-related knowledge production and the role they assigned to state institutions. In away,the institutionalisation and evolving heritageg overnance which occurred in Ethiopia since the 1950s shows manyp arallels to the development Anne Eriksenh as studied for Norwaybetween the mid-eighteenth and the late twentieth centuries. In focusing on the discursive practices surroundingt he changingr elevanceo fh istorical remains in society and politics, she describes the gradual, not always linear shift from antiquities to heritageoveraperiod of one hundred and fifty years. Of particular importance, she explains, werec hangingr egimeso fh istoricity.When in the nineteenth century the assumption of history as aprocess of changebecame more widelyaccepted, specialised academic disciplines wereestablished on this premise, all intended to bringempirical evidence for development and progress. Monuments, natural icons such as certain sites or species and objects, arranged and displayedi nm useums served as metonymies of nationalhistory.³²⁴ Bearing in mind the composition of the academic landscape in Ethiopia in the 1950s, which comprised US and European scholars and as electf ew national elites, the heritaged iscourse and the role of heritagei nstitutions were shaped by a shared understanding of world history and Ethiopia'splace in it.Centred around the campus of the Addis AbabaU niversity College/Haile Selassie IU niversity, an academic community united by ag eneral interest in Ethiopian heritage began to emerge in 1952w hen StanislawC hojnacki, the librarian of the AAUC, started collectinge thnographic objects and zoological specimens, in ac uriosity-cabinet kind of way, with the intention to establish am useum for Ethiopian tradition and culture.³²⁵ Chojnacki was not alone in his opinion that the academic community lacked institutions, organisations and structures and out of the scholarlyc ommunity grew av ibrant scene of associations, societies, journals and magazines, some of which would have as hort lifespan, although others are still in print,such as the Journal of Ethiopian Studies,issued by the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. It is important to keep in mind that the academics who organised and met through these foraw ould all go on to become keyf igures in Ethiopianacademia and other government institutions. Foreignerswho wereadmitted into these circles would contributeagreat deal to the international reputation of the Ethiopiana cademia. Fore xample, one of the most importantp eriodicals up to 1974,t he Ethiopia Observer,w as edited by the Britishh istorian Richard Pankhurst,who served as the first director of the IES. The Ethiopia Observer was published and distributed both in the United Kingdom and in Ethiopia.³²⁶ Upon openingt he university proper in 1963, manyoft hese more personally motivated practices of collectinga nd preservingw ithin the different academic disciplinesc oalesced into am ore clearlys haped effort to create separate museums dedicatedt op articular aspectso fn ational heritage, both cultural and natural. The collections became graduallymore systematic. They had twoaims, first to educatethe public about the need for conservation, and, second, to showcase the Ethiopiannation to official visitors.In1963, together with the IES, the Ethnographic Museum was openedinthe premises of the IES, with aresearch library. To underline the central role of museums in the nationalproject,the IES and its museum wereh oused in af ormer imperial palace. The archaeological museum was installed in an ewlye rected building,n ear the NALE compound, which was inaugurated for the crown jubilee in 1955.³²⁷ In 1964,the Natural History Museum was founded. It finallyopenedin1969, in anew building of the faculty of sciences.³²⁸ The exhibition in the museum was installedbyLeslie Brown, amember of the New York Zoological Society,who had served as an advisor to several African countries for IUCN and UNESCO in the 1960s and 1970s. His case might servet oi llustrate the close-knit nature of the heritage-making community in Ethiopia during that time. He acted as an advisor for EWCO in 1964 and1965, taught at the university in Addis Ababaa nd developed teachingm aterial for future university courses,m ostn otably Conservation for survival -Ethiopia's choice.³²⁹

The compound effect of UNESCO'si nvolvement
Despite this vibrant intellectual life in Addis Ababa, however,m anyo ft he heritage-related measures did not meet the requirementsfor official heritageresponsibilities. Establishing the first nationalp arks and protected natural zones initiallya mountedt ol ittle more than af ormality, as the government did not have the means to execute the plans it had signed up to -at least this is what the first generation of foreign consultants and observers expressedi nt he concluding recommendations of their reports.³³⁰ As was the case with the cultural heritagei nstitutions, an ongoing shortageo fr esources also impaired natural conservation. Equipment and infrastructure, whether it was cars, guns, roads, radio communication, werel acking.Ashortageo fs taff meant that manyp osts such as guards,rangers and district managers were left unoccupied. Trainedpersonnel, skilled management staff, financial and technical equipmentwereinsufficient or non-existent and consequentlyt hese institutions lacked the necessary bureaucratic efficiency to achievet he desired impact.The NALE and all institutions that werecreated in the following decades had in common that foreign experts remained in charge of alarge part of the activities.³³¹ Similarly, the legislation remained ineffective as it suffered from al ack of executive means and further detailed regulations and definitions.³³² At times, the national skills shortagew as particularlyn egative for the culturali nstitutions. Ar ecurrent theme in the correspondencebetween the UNESCO field office and headquarters was consultants complainingabout having to recruit from asmall pool of trained nationals deemed sufficientlyl oyal to the government. This meant that,b elow upper management level, filling positions in the heritagei nstitutions wasp articularly difficult and enjoyed alower priority than the perpetuation of an official heritage portfolio. In addition, training national heritagee xpertise on al argers cale was virtuallyimpossible -the first archaeology courses at Haile Selassie IU niversity werei ntroduced in the 1970s. The nearest opportunity to train wildlife rangers was at the MwekaC ollegei nT anzania,b ut the number of Ethiopians trained there was nowheren ear sufficient to provide for the vast territories established as protected natural zones.³³³ In short,for anumber of reasons,from the beginning on, all of the Ethiopian heritageinstitutions weredependent on international experts to operate properlya sw ell as to further develop.
The 1960s and 1970swerecomprised of ahighlyactive,dense series of international engagementst hat would form avital contribution to the Ethiopian national heritage-making process. In addition to bilateral efforts, the creation of heritagei nstitutions was notablya ccelerated through UNESCO'si nvolvement. Obtaininge xternal financial aid was ak ey workingp rinciple of the museums, the NALE, CRCCH and EWCO,a sn ot enough substantial national funding for them was available, and UNESCO and the UNDP,aswell as the IUCN,were, during the 1960s and 1970s, the most important donors. This was not necessarilybecause of the rather modest amounts of money thatweredirected towardsEthiopian heritagei nstitutions, af ar more importantr eason being thatU NESCO was in am uch better position to recruit international experts.³³⁴ The activities of UNESCO did not stop at concrete restoration projects,such as the one in Lalibela, but went far beyond. Heritage-related activities included the full rangeofUN-ESCO'spossible means of assistance, such as the award of fellowships and provision of technical equipment.C onsultants commissioned by UNESCO also developedd etailed recommendations for the creation of af ull-bodied institutional infrastructure to enable state-led conservation, includingdraft legislation for the protection of antiquities and the demarcation of protected natural zones, measures the Ethiopian governmenth ad struggled to implement.
In the archiveso fU NESCO,t wenty-four mission reports document the numerous and intense activities that took place between 1965a nd 1985. The increase in international activity and available funds turned to the advantage of those embryonic Ethiopian institutions concerned with naturaland culturalher- itagec onservation and effectively delivered as ubstantial contribution towards the establishment of Ethiopiann ational heritage, as often through aU NESCO project some theoretical planning could be put into practice. Forw ildlife and natural conservation, in 1963, 1965a nd 1971,s uccessive UNESCO missions led by Julian Huxley,Ian Grimwood, Leslie Brown and John Blower respectivelyevaluated and developed "tools of conservation"³³⁵ for the Ethiopiang overnment. These "tools" pertained to the different realms of legislation and administration, management and research, information and education, tourist industry and finance. Interestingly,not all of UNESCO'sexpertscame to the sameconclusions: thus, in 1963H uxley et al. recommended the establishment of ac onservation board. Their recommendation was dulyi mplemented soon after the publication of the report.However,Ian Grimwood and Leslie Brown found the sameboard to be insufficient both in scope and authority.³³⁶ They suggested improvements in a newlyd evelopedt hree-year plan for conservation, but also took matters into their ownh andsa nd carried out field expeditions to select regions wheret hey had identifiedt he need for better protection and urgedt he board to appoint a senior game warden. Leslie Brown also statedh is educational and publication activities at the university and his collaboration with the ETO( to produce tourism booklets)i nt he report,s tressingt he importance of "stimulating interest in wild life [sic] on the part of the public".³³⁷ Apparently, John Blower,w ho would be appointed as the senior game warden shortlyafter the mission'srecommendation, was invited to Addis Ababab yB rown duringt his, to discuss his future appointment.A fter his appointment as senior game warden endedi n1 969, Blower washired by the newlyestablished EWCO,which was fundedthrough the UN Technical Assistance Programme.F or six months his post was that of a "UnescoExpert on Wildlife and Conservation".³³⁸ As such he had to give an overview of problems,progress and further recommendations. In his eyes, his efforts and encouragingfirst measures,which he lists in detail in the report he submitted at the end of this consultancy,w eres till unlikelyt oachieve full success, mainlyb ecause of al ack of control, management and legislation. In addition to explaining anumber of site-specific conservation measures,basedonhis surveying,his recommendations reiterated and specifiedthe need for an institutional restructuring of the existing wildlife department and stronger government policy (includingadraft proclamation).
As described abovethe institutional developmentofthe cultural heritageinstitutions, namelyt he NALE, the archaeologicals ection and the "Institut",was well underway by the time UNESCO was involved, for the first time, in the conservation of the Lalibela churches.Still, external assistance was needed to build the existing,smaller institutions up to afullyfunctioning capacity,asthey were not yeta ble to carry more thanc oncrete restoration and conservation works namelyadministration and general staff and facility management,policy recommendations, public relations,a nd fiscal operations. Most importantly,h owever, the archaeologists and historians of the existing institutions wished to establish closer collaboration with UNESCO,I COMOS and other international organisations. Through UNESCO'sh elp, they werea blet oi nvite the ICOMOS member and renowned US AmericanA rt Historian Richard Howland, who developed a three-year masterplan to achievet hese goals.³³⁹ Despite his recommendations, in the following years the priority was giventothe restoration of sites and monuments for tourism development,r ather thant he institutionala dvancement. I n 1968, 1970 and 1971,t hree missions altogether were dedicated to identifying those historicalsites with the most appeal and accessibility, mappingout a "Historic Route" and more detailed planning of restoration (includingb udgets,e xperts required etc.).³⁴⁰ The bulk of this planning was done by the Italian conservator Sandro Angelini, who estimatedatotal cost of over USD1.7 million over the course of three years, shared between the UNDP and the EthiopianGovernment. The plan was too costlya nd too ambitious in scope to be carried out,b ut it formedt he basis of ar enewed request for UNESCO'sa ssistance from the Ethiopian government in 1972, which resulted in am ore feasible programme, developed by G.S.Burrows in 1974.Along time in the making,these subsequent missions converged into the seven-year UNDP project ETH/74/014,w hich streamlined restoration and conservation works as well as the administrative improvements.³⁴¹ Along with the heritagea dministration, the new Ethiopian National Museum, the successor institution to the archaeologicalm useum, was also built up with the help of foreign experts provided through the UNESCO technical assistance programme over the course of severaly ears, beginning in 1974.M ore or less every step taken towards establishingt he EthiopianN ational Museum followed the framework of an expert mission from UNESCO.I n1 974, P. A. Cole- Howland, "Recommendations".  Angelini, "The Historic Route";A ngelini and Mougin, "Proposals for the Development"; Gaidoni, "Cultural Tourism".  FlemmingAalund, "PreservingEthiopia'sCultural Heritage", ICOMOS Information 2(1986): 5 -6.
King first reported about abroader strategyonthe development of museums and set up ac atalogue of exhibits at the IES, and in 1977 B.B.L al spent one month restoring selected pieces for the New National Museum. In his report he expressed his annoyanceabout the piecemeal approach to constructingthe museum over several years and through manysmall missions and initiatives.³⁴² Building up conservation laboratories, includingequipment and aspecialised library, formedacontinuous part of the museum project.F or as hort while it was even plannedtoinstall aregional centrefor conservation and to train conservators for the whole East African region.³⁴³ More importantly, in 1976 anew institution uniting all cultural heritagefunctions under one roof was established. Initiallyanexpansion of the "Institut",the new "Centre for Researcha nd Conservation of Cultural Heritage" (CRCCH) was systematicallybuilt up from 1977 on when the UNDP project ETH/74/014 provided opportunities to request fundsand expertise. In 1979 the CRCCH was installed as aseparate department of the Ministry of Culturetoelaborate and fullynationalise responsibilities for heritage-making and administration. It had an organisational structure containing independent departments for inventoryand monitoring,r esearch, conservation and permissions, all of which would have been previouslyhandled within just one office.³⁴⁴ Through the Cultural Heritage division of UNESCO,s everal consultants wereh ired, who contributed to the expansion and organisational development of the CRCCH. Consequently, while the director and the administrative staff of the CRCCH would always be Ethiopian, still the expertise and manykey actors involved in knowledge production werelargely of Western provenance.
Contrary to the ruptures and violence occurringinthe higher echelons of the political system after the revolution of 1974,d ailyo perations continued at the heritagei nstitutions. Manyo ft he Ethiopiana nd foreign staff hired through the international organisations remained in their positions, such as Teshome Ashine, Director of the EWCO,o rB erhanu Abebe, the director of the CRCCH for several years after its establishment,who was among thoseh istorians who had receivedt heir training abroad duringt he imperial government.³⁴⁵ In particular through the UNDP project ETH/74/014,s everal morei mportant steps in terms of institutionalisation happened. In 1981, as tate of the art legislation for cultural heritagea nd national heritagei nventory werec reated duringt wo missions.³⁴⁶ The archaeological and natural research on the other hand was significantly restrainedd uringt he 1980s. One reason was the aftermath of the sensational finds of the oldest known humanoid paleontologicalremains in the Lower Valley of the Omo and the abundant findingsi nt he Lower Valley of the Awash. These two sites,w hich wereo therwise remote and difficult to access, had received World Heritage recognition and had drawnf ocus of numerous foreign research teams to the sites.F rom an earlyp oint,t he excavation fields in the Omo and the Awash Valley werec ontested terrain since more sensational finds weree xpected. After the discovery of Lucy in November1974, the increased international attention made it more and more difficult for the government to maintain the mainlyb ureaucratic control they had successfullyh eld over the processes.³⁴⁷ Part of the controlling mechanism was demanding astrict procedureofonlytemporary export of findingsand making renewed permits conditional on the return of the exportedo bjects. Every expedition party worked undert he supervision and within the strict permission framework of the CRCCH, while being funded exclusivelyb yf oreign institutions, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the Musée de l'homme in Paris. However,the administration and the conservation and research infrastructure in Ethiopia was overwhelmed with the requirements that came with the sensational findingslaboratories, museums, storagef acilities and traineds taff. Fierce competition among the researchers onlya dded to the difficulties.A nother reason was that the major natural and cultural heritages ites werel ocated in the north of Ethiopia, whereinsurgent military forces of the TPLF had begun to createunrest,premeditatingthe Ethiopian CivilWar that would last until 1991. Manyregions were under restricted access, and restoration works and archaeological excavations had to be put on hold for several years. Eventuallyt he government decided to halt all research and stopped handingo ut permits altogether. In an attempt to remain in control,the Ethiopian government announcedacompleteb an on paleontological excavations between 1981 and 1991.³⁴⁸ With the Ethiopianh eritagei nstitutions forming part of emerging international networks of conservation and heritagee xperts, in Ethiopia two complementary sides of the discourse of safeguardingheritagewould come to dominate the institutional development: that of safeguardingthe heritageofthe past from modernity,e mphasising the keyr ole of heritagei nt he construction of identity through (national) belonging, and that of protecting it from illicit trade, emphasising the notionofheritageasproperty,national or international.³⁴⁹ The global heritaged iscourse at the level of UNESCO and other international organisations and the national heritagediscourse in Ethiopia aligned temporallyduringthose years, indicating that heritagew as am ore globallyencompassingp rocess. Conceptually, the shift from antiquities to monuments which was premeditatedb y intellectual discourse since the late nineteenth centuryr esulted in ad iscovery of the past,localisingitinconstructions and objects, which had to be preserved as links to earlier periods.³⁵⁰ In comparison to the Norwegian examples mentioned earlier,i ti sp ossible to trace how the older notion of objects and sites as part of ap roject of universal knowledge databases changed in Ethiopia over the course of little more than twenty years.³⁵¹ New museums emerged, curating objectsa nd monuments along an historical trajectory and as part of the national project,charging the objectsand sites with asense of belonging,creating adirect relationship from past to present and feeding into the construction of national identity.³⁵² At this moment,selectnatural sites and animal species, such as the Simien mountain rangeand its endemic Walia Ibex and Semien Fox, were also transformed into national icons and their images weref eatured on stamps and in tourist guidebooks. The writing of particularsites and emblematic objects into this nationali dentity became important as an ew "technology of governmentality" as part of the modernisation project in Ethiopia.³⁵³ Thomas Guindeuil has described how in the 1960s the imperial familystarted to acquirer eligious objectsf or the ethnographic museum, mobilising the  RogerL ewin, "Ethiopia HaltsP rehistoryR esearch", Horn of Africa 5, no. 4( 1982):5 1 -55.  Guindeuil, "Nature, culture, même combat?",135-36.  Eriksen, From Antiquitiest oH eritage,9 7.  Ibid., 100 -101.  Ibid., 105.  Ibid., 137. money of the more affluent international circlesofA ddis Ababafor more extensive acquisitions over the following years. These acquisitions werel argely done through antique-dealers in Addis Ababa, who receivedstolen or illegallysold objects of churcht reasuries.D uring this time, with reference to Christian roots of Ethiopia,t he term heritageb ecame more widespread, serving to justify the acquisition as aj oint effort of foreignersa nd of those in power.³⁵⁴ In the official languagea sw ell as in the UNESCO-Ethiopian correspondences and those among experts, the terms antiquities,m onuments and heritage( or patrimoine in French) were usedinparallel and somewhat interchangeable. The first reports on wildlife conservation, especiallyt he mission of Huxley et al., make rather ample use of the term, referring both to natural and culturali tems.S andro Angelini's1971 report contains asection on an "inventory of the culturalheritage", consistingofone for monuments and one for art objects, but he also refers to the "Ministry of State for Antiquities"³⁵⁵ and uses the term antiquities several times in am ore general meaning when referringt oh istoricals ites. Am ore frequent and eventuallydominant use of the term heritagecan be observed in the written documentation and correspondence related to the UNDP project ETH/74/014, while in the final project reportt he term antiquities is not used at all. With the establishment of the CRCCH, heritagei so fficiallyi nstalled in the title of the institution, even wheni ns ome government proclamations ar esidual use of the term antiquitiescan be observedfor another few years.³⁵⁶ Within the projects and institutions for wildlife and nature, the reporting and the correspondence have amore technicalorscientifictone and the term heritagedoes not appear often in the writings, unless in direct reference to the World Heritage status of the Simien National Park.
The "boom years"-making Ethiopian heritage World Heritage With the institutional history of heritage-making in Ethiopia and the information contained in the UNESCO reports in mind, it is easy to understand whyEthiopia was able to respond productively when the invitation wasc irculated in 1978 for applications to the World Heritage List.The Ethiopian government had reached its peak institutional capacity for heritage-making by that time, after two decades of intensive international assistance thati ncluded ab uild-up of institu- Guindeuil, "Nature, culture, même combat?",136.  Which did not exist,perhapsacareless oversight in areport written retrospectively and not while still residing in Ethiopia?  Aleme Eshete, TheC ultural Situation,3 7.
Building up Ethiopian heritage institutions tions as well as specific sites.P ersonal and professional networks had formed over the period, and international heritagee xperts were able to act as brokers, helping to connect the remotelylocated Ethiopian heritagesites with the central government and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The UNESCO reports,o ver time, had fostered ac ompilation of selected sites into ac ircuit that eventually resembled the first cluster of heritages ites included in the World Heritage List.Theses ites not onlyc omplied with the UNESCO-sent Western experts' notion of what was considered "outstanding" but alsodemonstratedwhat was considered to be Ethiopia'smost valuable history at the time from the government's viewpoint, namely the ancient monuments of northern Ethiopia.
The success of all Ethiopianr equests to anyo ft he international organisations for technical and financial assistance was essentiallyb asedu pon aw ellrunning system and an etwork of experts in place, with connections and channels alreadye stablished. And the field of conservation activities was no exception to this fact.The impact of these decade-longefforts to build up the institutional heritage-making capacities in Ethiopia showed considerable results duringt he 1970s. Because manyi nternational expertsw erea lreadyi nvolvedi n relevant conservation activities in both the natural and culturalf ields within Ethiopia (with UNESCO providingthe most prominent platform for them), Ethiopian national heritagew as registered and recorded by Western standards.T he extensive documentation thate xisted, ap rerequisite for the positive evaluation of the World Heritagen omination through ICOMOS, had been created for the main Ethiopian heritages ites either in the context of the research of the "Institut",through prior UNESCO expert missions, or the WWF specialists workingi n the Simien Mountains. Through the experts and consultants present in the country,i n1 978E thiopia was able to submit nominations that could smoothlyp ass evaluation by ICOMOS and IUCN accordingt ot heir scientific standards,w hile onlyhaving national resources at its disposal that represented the bare necessities of heritage-making infrastructure. Because of the ongoing project ETH/74/ 014, institutional capacities werei np lace to attend to the newlyr atified World Heritage Convention. In fact,i nt he context of the extent of the project ETH/ 74/014,t he World Heritage Nominations appearl ike as ide effect of al argescale plan to establish proper institutionalised national heritagec onservation.
After the commencement of the project ETH/74/14for the "Presentation and Preservation of selected sites",the associatedexpert and the architect restorer of the project carried out extensive and detaileddocumentation and prepared informationo nm anagement plans for individual sites as well as the national inventory.T hese management plans and the project activities presented important practical stepping-stones for the nomination of selected sites as World Heri-tage.³⁵⁷ The preparation of Ethiopianh eritages ites for inclusion in the World Heritage programme was foreseen as ap art of the project from the beginning, and the experts employed for the project "took activep art in draftc ompletion of the nomination forms."³⁵⁸ The historian Berhanu Abebe, who served as director of the CRCCH during that time,w as well-versed in international collaboration in the field of heritage-making and historic research, and immediatelyu nderstood the relevance of the invitation to submit nominations to the World Heritage programme in increasingp otential support from the international community for the conservation of Ethiopian heritage. In addition to the support receivedf rom the ETH/ 74/014 project team,B erhanu Abebe turned to UNESCO'sD ivision of Cultural Heritage,r equestinga" Consultant for the Preparation of the Drawing-up a World HeritageL ist": In conformity with the World National and Cultural HeritageC onvention Is hould like to request aC onsultant for af our weeks [sic] stayi nE thiopiat oa ssist our Department in drawing-up al ist of outstandings ites and monuments to be presentedf or inclusion in the World HeritageList.Weconsider this request beingalogical consequenceofthe Ethiopian Government'sratificationofthe mentioned convention and we give the request activity high priority.A tthe same time we want to emphasizethe support which the visit of the Consultant could give to our newly created Inventory Department as well as to the preparation for the implementation of the resolution 19/126.³⁵⁹ As ar esult, the Iranian archaeologist Firouz Bagherzadeh, of the Iranian Centre for Archaeological Research, who had completed similar assistance in several other countries,w as sent to Ethiopia and assisted with the preparation of the World Heritagen ominations.³⁶⁰ The nomination list the Ethiopian government submittedt ot he fourth session of the World Heritage Committee in 1978 (which was the first one to decide on sites to be included on the World Heritage List) wast he most extensive in comparison (eleven sites,the next highest number wasT unisia with four sites) and is at estimonyo ft he vivid heritage-making activity in Ethiopia at the time.³⁶¹ The nomination dossiers for the Simien National Park, the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, the Fasil Ghebbi Castle in Gondar and the historical remains of ancient Aksum contained aw ealth of material. Drawing on the existing scholarlyliterature and ongoingecologicaland archaeological research and conservation works,itwas easy enough to support the nomination with photographs,p lans, maps,d rawings and other relevant information, commonlyr eferred to as "documentation" by UNESCO and ICOMOS. The Simien National Park and the Lalibela Stone Churches werea ccepted in the first round, and accordingt ot he Swiss Geographer Hans Hurni, who was employed by the EWCO throughout the 1970s, amanagement plan had been drafted in al ast minute effort to ensure aW orld Heritage application of the park.³⁶² Included in the documentation for the Simien National Parkwas also tourism promotion material, such as the "Safari Ethiopia" brochure. ForLalibela, amanagement plan, including at opographic map of the church-area and an inventory, was submitted, as well as an umber of international press clippings.³⁶³ As the conservation activities under ETH/74/014 werehighlyselective,onlya few sites weree ventuallyp rogressed far enough in the heritage-making process so as to qualifyf or the World Heritage nomination. Fors everal of the sites submitted, the documentation was not deemed sufficient enough for the application to be considered accordingt ot he IUCN and ICOMOS evaluation and they were declined World Heritage status. Of Melka-Kontoure, Yeha, Bale Mountain National Park and the Abijatta Shala Lake National Parkaswell as the Eritrean sites of Adulis and Matarat he following was noted: "Allt hese nominations wered eferred by the World HeritageC ommittee duet ot he absence of the necessary documentation, requests by the AdvisoryB odies for more thorough sitee valuations, as well as the submission of atentative list of properties which Ethiopia intended to nominate. Furthermore, neither of the two natural sites, Bale MountainN ational Park and Abijatta Shala Lakes National Park, werey et legallyd efined and protected under Ethiopian legislation."³⁶⁴ Forthese sites, ICOMOS requested more detailed documentation and reviewed the revised nominations as sufficient in the following year (Gondar)a nd two years after (Aksum, Tiya, Omo and Awash). In the end, seven World Heritages ites werei nscribed for Ethiopia by 1980,inthe middle of astrenuous fifteen-year period of civil war,border conflicts and "Red Terror". None of the archivesthat holdrelevant files for the Ethiopian World Heritage Sites (UNESCO,ARCCH,ICOMOS Documentation Centre) kept records such as accompanying correspondence that would allow access to the original submission from supporting documents after the 1978 session of the World Heritage Committee. The documentation material was either conservation or researchrelated or of technical or scholarlyn ature. In the nomination file for Tiya, as eparate page was added, listing "organisations which hold documents about Ethiopia" in Paris, together with ahandwrittennote listing the most relevant francophone periodicals. Giventhat the review of all nomination dossiers took place in the ICO-MOS office in Paris, it is possiblethatthe archaeologists, following the request to provide more documentation,thought it possible thatthe reviewer would be familiar with the Christian heritagesites,but not with the sites from the megalithic period. While the first mentioningo ft he Stelae fields of the Soddo regioni n Southern Ethiopia as anoteworthyarchaeological sitecame in 1905,archaeological surveying and excavations did not start until 1974.M uch liket he Eritrean heritages ites, these southern heritages ites had enjoyed am uch lower priority in the tourism development planning and consequentlyinthe large-scale conservation projects and programming which took place during the UNDP project ETH/74/014.
With little to no touristic destination value, no monuments and no scenery declared to be iconic, the Lower Valley of the Omo and the Awash had not been part of anyi nternational conservation or development efforts either.Their nomination, at this time, owed largely to thescientific relevance, which was obvious within the experts' community,evenif"Lucy's" discovery was still afew months away when the submissions wered ue to be sentt oP aris. The nomination files included ar udimentary photographic documentation of the landscape and some excavation works and otherwise simply referred to the unique and rare quality of the sites as rich conservatories of over five million years of human and animal evolution, and its international renown among palaeontologists. Fort he bibliographys ection, the statement "It is numerous" (Omo) and "It is abundant" (Awash) seemed to suffice. When ICOMOS reviewer Léon Pressouyre wrotethe proper justification statements for the sites earlyin1980,headded the discovery of humanoid fossils to the criteria for inscription.³⁶⁵ The UNESCO missions and their ramifications in the Ethiopiana dministration elucidateaclear causality between the "heritageboost" for institutional heritage-makingthrough UNESCO and the "heritageboom" through the increasein  ICOMOS Senior Programme Specialist Gwenaëlle Bourdin explained this to me in an interview Ic onductedo nM ay 26,2 015. archaeological and paleontological research work going on duringthe 1960s and 70si ng eneral, and the consequent "boom years" of Ethiopian heritage-making in the period from 1972 to 1978.E thiopia had ak ey role in conservation and development projects of UNESCO.T he history of the organisations which would eventuallys ervea sa dvisory bodies to the World Heritage Committee, IUCN and ICOMOS has more than some points of connection with the making of Ethiopian national heritageasW orld Heritage.Asone of the first countries to respond to UNESCO'sp rogramme activities in heritagea nd wildlife conservation in the 1960s, Ethiopia was the targetlocation for several of the first missions and projects for cultural and natural heritagec onservation.