Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich
University collection of forty thousand objects gathered by nineteenth-century travelers, missionaries, and colonial-era collectors.
Location
About this audio guide
The Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich opens on a Swiss engineer named Alfred Ilg spotting a discrepancy between two copies of an 1889 treaty involving Emperor Menelik the Second of Ethiopia. It follows Ilg from his arrival as a young engineer detained on the coast at Zeila, through building the emperor's water and power systems, to becoming one of the only men in Menelik's court fluent enough to catch the trick. Menelik came to call him minister, then friend, a bond the guide traces long before the treaty dispute turned into war.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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