A Bible has been withdrawn from auction after the Ethiopian Embassy said it had been looted by British forces in the 19th century.

The vellum-bound Bible had been among the items for auction at Busby Auctioneers and Valuers in Dorset last Thursday.

But the auction house agreed to remove the Bible after the embassy said it was among the artefacts taken by the British after the 1868 Battle of Magdala. 

The embassy told Busby that the sale of the items was "unethical" and represented a continued "cycle of dispossession perpetrated by those who would seek to benefit from the spoils of war."

It described the looting of Magdala as "a great injustice of the 19th century" and "a scar on the, otherwise, warm and friendly relations between the peoples of Ethiopia and the United Kingdom."

Repatriating items looted from Magdala would "bring closure" to a "painful chapter" in Britain and Ethiopia's shared history, the embassy said. 

It is "a well-established fact that British soldiers engaged in indiscriminate looting of both the Fortress of Magdala and the surrounding areas", said Deputy Head of Mission Beyene Gebremeskel said in a statement. 

The Bible came in a sewn leather satchel and featured an Ethiopian cross. Before the embassy's intervention, it was to go up for auction with a set of graduated horn beakers also from Magdala. 

Both items came from the estate of Major-General William Arbuthnot, a Scot who served in the late 19th century British expedition to what was then Abyssinia, which culminated in the Battle of Magdala.

The Ethiopian Embassy said it was preparing for the eventual repatriation of the items to Ethiopia.

"These items are of immense cultural, spiritual, and historical value to Ethiopians," said Gebremeskel.

"Current and future generations of Ethiopians are deserving of the restitution of their cultural heritage, so we very much look forward to returning these precious items to Ethiopia in due course."

A spokesperson for Busby said: "The matter has been resolved with the vendor and the Ethiopian embassy in London."