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Addis Ababa: France has begun the return of some 3,500 archeolo-gical artifacts to Ethiopia, which Paris held since the 1980s for study.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot handed over two prehistoric stone axes, 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 carried out on the Melka Kunture site,” a cluster of prehistoric sites south of the capital excavated under the direction of a late French researcher, Barrot said.

France and Ethiopia hold a longstanding bilateral agreement to cooperate in archeology and paleontology.

The artifacts stored at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa will be delivered to the Ethiopian Heritage Directorate on Tuesday.

“This is a handover, not a restitution, in that these objects have never been part of French public collections,” said Laurent Serrano, culture adviser at the French Embassy.

“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.