'A massive loss to culture and history': How Sudan's ancient artefacts are falling victim to the civil war

Massive quantities of precious relics are allegedly being smuggled out of Sudan's national museum for resale abroad, a top museum official told The New Arab, as ancient artefacts fall victim to the country’s bloody civil war. 

Sudan has been locked in bloody civil strife since April 2023, when street battles erupted between its armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces, a heavily armed paramilitary group accused of ethnic cleansing and sexual violence.

UN officials said last Friday that both sides in Sudan’s civil war have committed abuses that could amount to war crimes and called for peacekeepers and a stronger arms embargo to protect civilians.

More than 20,000 people have been killed and 13 million displaced.

Since the war erupted, Sudan’s National Museum in Khartoum has come under the control of the RSF, potentially putting its vast collection of precious items at risk.

The RSF has denied that any looting has taken place.

The National Museum — located in a capital that has become a “ghost town” because of the violence — is Sudan’s biggest repository of ancient artefacts and one of the most important in Africa.

Its relics date back to some of the continent’s earliest civilisations, tracing the origins of human culture in the Nile Valley.

Desperate plead to recover looted items 

In recent days, satellite images have emerged on social media that purportedly show trucks loaded with artefacts leaving the National Museum and heading toward the border with South Sudan.

Sources close to the country’s antiquities have reported that precious museum items like statues have popped up for sale on social media.

But according to multiple interviews with officials, only one of the displayed items is genuine and linked to Sudan — that of a robe with an Islamic history — yet it’s not possible to know if it's among those stolen, or was taken during the British colonisation.

Iklhas Abdel Latif, Director of the Museums Department, told The New Arab that at the start of the year, large trucks carrying the museum’s relics left its facilities, passing through Omdurman due west to distribute the artefacts near border areas, particularly South Sudan.

More than 200 Sudanese researchers wrote to South Sudan President Salva Kiir, pleading for his government to help recover the looted items. 

The news has set off panic among archaeologists worldwide, who fear that the RSF’s brutal tactics will spell disaster for priceless world heritage items.

“Genocide, famine, plague, terrorism and now looting. I was a hostage of the RSF for nine days and am lucky to be alive. They’re terrorists no different to ISIS. I was working at the SNM (Sudanese National Museum) when the war started. So very sad,” archaeologist Rennan Lemos posted on X.

Other museums at threat

The Sudan National Museum was first opened in 1904 when Sudan was under British colonial rule. Its over 100,000-piece collection includes items from every Sudanese civilisation, from prehistoric Stone Age tools to rare artefacts that date to the Kushite civilisation of Kerma, one of the earliest known urban-dwelling communities in Africa. It also includes relics from later Christian and Islamic periods. 

The civil war has threatened other museums in Sudan as well.

“The Nyala Museum in Darfur was looted of all its property and museum collections, including furniture and display cases. Additionally, the Khalifa Abdullah al-Tayyashi Museum in Omdurman was also subjected to theft and damage to parts of the building," said Abdel Latif.

The Nyala Museum houses ancient archaeological finds from Darfur, while the Khalifa Abdullah al-Tayyashi Museum curates artefacts from Sudan’s 19th-century Mahdist period.

The latest reports appear to confirm what many have feared since the early months of Sudan’s conflict when disturbing videos began circulating on social media that appeared to show RSF members rummaging through containers of the museum’s bioarchaeology lab, a wing of the museum that contains mummified human remains that scientists date to 2500 B.C.

In the footage, baffled RSF members refer to the mummies as “corpses” and appear shocked that they are being kept in sarcophagi.

“The control of the National Museum in Khartoum by the Rapid Support Forces raises concerns about the safety of important artefacts, including mummies, amidst the ongoing war," Latif told The New Arab, commenting on the footage.

A French archaeological team meanwhile reported they had detected signs of a fire at the National Museum.

Sudanese officials are in contact with Interpol to recover stolen items, Abdel Latif said. She said that it’s likely that the stolen realms were taken to neighbouring countries.

But tracking down looted artefacts across the world’s dodgy black markets for antiquities is extremely difficult. 

'Harm goes beyond material aspects'  

Many relics are laundered in new countries by being re-registered or having their documents expertly forged, methods that allow items to be auctioned off to major institutions that are unaware they’re buying looted property, explained Dr Ismail Elnour, who works on protecting Sudanese heritage with UNESCO.

“There is also a significant global demand for these artefacts, either from illegal dealers or antique collectors who do not care about their provenance.

Private museums or personal collections are another possibility, where some artefacts are bought by wealthy individuals wishing to add them to their private collections, often away from public scrutiny," said El Nour. 

Most horrific of all, many artefacts are broken down and sold as raw materials like precious metals to avoid detection, said El Nour. International criminal networks even sell them to fund their activities.

“Looting the Sudanese National Museum is a massive loss to national culture and history. The harm goes beyond material aspects, threatening our identity and the cultural memory of the people,” Dr Elnour, a researcher of Sudanese heritage at Birmingham University, told The New Arab.

“The loss of these pieces severely affects a deeper understanding of Sudanese civilisation, weakening efforts to educate future generations about their heritage,” he warned.

This piece was published in collaboration with Egab