Officials, writers, academics and scores of ordinary Ethiopians issued sorrowful tributes to a man whose legacy was so significant and so varied many struggled to encapsulate it.

There was the academic: More than 20 books on Ethiopia, including its first ever economic history. There was the cultural, most notably with the establishment of Ethiopia’s first proper archive.

And, perhaps most significantly, there was the diplomatic, in the form of a dogged crusade for the return of Ethiopian cultural artefacts taken to Europe as war plunder. Although the campaign was only partially successful, it brought international attention to Ethiopia’s storied past, a history that Ethiopians maintain began with the Queen of Sheba.