France returns ancient artifacts to Ethiopia

France on Saturday began the return of some 3,500 archaeological artifacts to Ethiopia, which Paris held since the 1980s for study.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel 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.

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 thes objects have never been part of French public collections," Laurent Serrano, culture advisor at the French embassy, told the media.

"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.

Agence France-Presse