A statue of the Nubian god Apademak stands alone in the courtyard of Sudan’s National Museum, one of the few survivors of systematic looting amid a conflict that has developed into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Inside the museum’s exhibition halls, display cases stand empty, stripped of their lightweight, high-value contents during a period of occupation by the Rapid Support Forces from April 15, 2023, until early last year.
“More than 60% of the museum’s holdings were looted,” said Ghalia Jar Al-Nabi, director of the General Authority for Antiquities and Museums, noting the theft of gold and jewelry belonging to the kings of Napata and Meroe, two ancient kingdoms that inhabited the region. The towering figure of Apademak, a deity of the Meroitic empire, which ruled between 300 B.C. and 350 A.D., was likely too heavy to move.
The war raging between the RSF and the Sudanese military has claimed at least 40,000 lives and displaced at least 13.6 million people, according to figures from United Nations agencies and the World Health Organization, though aid groups say the true death toll could be many times higher. An independent U.N. report last month accused the RSF of carrying out “a coordinated campaign of destruction” against non-Arab communities in parts of Sudan, “the hallmarks of which point to genocide.”
The preliminary losses across the culture, antiquities and tourism sector during the war stand at $110 million, according to an estimate from Sudan’s minister of culture and information, Khalid Ali Aleisir, who said that figure captures only part of the irreversible damage inflicted on repositories of African history. At least 20 museums have been destroyed or looted, he said, including the National Museum, the historic Republican Palace, military museums and the Sultan Ali Dinar Museum in El Fasher, North Darfur.
Khartoum, where the conflict first broke out in April 2023, contains four museums for antiquities and heritage, all within the line of fire. “For months of the war, no one could know what became of these museums,” Al-Nabi said.
In the Darfur region, three museums suffered complete destruction and looting during the first months of the conflict. The Nyala Museum was robbed of its antiquities and destroyed, followed by the looting and destruction of the Al-Geneina Museum and the destruction of the Sultan Ali Dinar Museum building in El Fasher. The same fate, Al-Nabi added, befell the Gezira Museum in Wad Madani following the RSF’s invasion of Gezira state.
There is no resolution in sight for the conflict in Sudan, with peace still distant amid worsening conditions for the millions trapped in the country. “From the ground, the situation is not getting any better, and we continue to be very concerned by the deteriorating humanitarian situation,” U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric warned last month.
Looting a nation’s history
Once containing more than 150,000 artifacts representing various historical periods in Sudan, from the Stone Age until the arrival of Islam, the Sudan National Museum now lies mostly bare.
“Reports during the first months of war indicated trucks moving from the museum loaded with looted artifacts,” Al-Nabi added. Priceless Sudanese artifacts were put up for sale on eBay after being smuggled out of the country, according to a report from the French news agency Agence France-Presse. UNESCO has expressed alarm over the illicit trafficking of goods from Sudan, warning that threats to culture have reached an “unprecedented level.”
A recovery committee has retrieved 570 pieces taken from museums and heritage sites, but thousands of valuable items remain missing, said Graham Abdel Qader, undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture and Information. The National Museum suffered the worst damage, he said, with its exhibition halls and concrete rooms looted of approximately 8,000 pieces.
“The looted artifacts are not merely inanimate objects, but represent a people’s history and a nation’s entity, reflecting cultural identity and embodying the national memory that unites peoples and preserves the cohesion of their cultural and social fabric,” Al-Nabi said.
Archaeological sites under siege
Ikhlas Abdel Latif, head of the looted antiquities recovery committee and an official at the Sudan Antiquities and Museums Authority, said that Naqa and Musawwarat es Sufra in northern Sudan, both World Heritage Sites containing artifacts from the Meroitic civilization, were at risk as the conflict rages.
“We feared for these sites,” Abdel Latif said, expressing fears that they could lose their World Heritage status.
The war also meant maintenance was halted at heritage sites, he said, along with security and archaeological missions. The massive displacement of people has created further pressures as some have sought temporary shelter inside archeological sites, with some instances of vandalism and graffiti on temple walls. Some have even begun constructing homes there, claiming ancestral land rights.
“We suffered greatly from these actions,” Abdel Latif said.
Illegal mining poses perhaps the gravest threat to archeological sites. On Sai Island on the Nile, bulldozers operate inside ancient burial sites, while miners use metal detectors that cannot distinguish between gold and buried artifacts. “Many archaeological pieces contain precious metallic elements,” Abdel Latif said. Some mining companies received licenses to work inside sites without clearance from the antiquities authority due to war conditions.
Jibreel Ibrahim, Sudan’s finance minister, told reporters at a January event in Khartoum to announce the retrieval of some of the looted artifacts that the thieves “understood the value of these artifacts and sought to erase the country’s identity, but failed.”
Sudan has also offered rewards for information leading to artifact recovery and compiled a comprehensive report outlining violations for journalists and researchers.
But Al-Nabi fears these measures aren’t enough.
“Despite efforts made,” she said, “the process of tracking and monitoring stolen pieces requires broad international cooperation and joint efforts from various institutions concerned with protecting cultural heritage.”
This piece was published in collaboration with Egab.
