Museums looted of priceless artifacts as Sudan counts the cost of a deadly conflict
In the Darfur region, three museums were completely destroyed and looted during the first months of the conflict. The Nyala Museum was stripped 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 after the RSF invaded Gezira State.
There is no resolution in sight for the conflict in Sudan, with peace still distant as living conditions for millions of people trapped in the country deteriorate. “On the ground, the situation is not improving and we remain very concerned about the deterioration of the humanitarian situation,” UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric warned last month.
Looting the history of a nation
Once containing more than 150,000 artifacts representing various historical periods of Sudan, from the Stone Age to the arrival of Islam, the Sudan National Museum now sits virtually empty.
“Reports from the first months of the war spoke of trucks leaving the museum loaded with looted objects,” Al-Nabi added. Priceless Sudanese artifacts have been put up for sale on eBay after being smuggled out of the country, according to a report by French news agency Agence France-Presse. UNESCO has expressed concern over the illicit trafficking of goods from Sudan, warning that threats to culture have reached an “unprecedented level”.
A recovery committee has recovered 570 pieces from museums and heritage sites, but thousands of valuable items remain missing, said Graham Abdel Qader, undersecretary at the Ministry of Culture and Information. The National Museum suffered the worst damage, he explained, with its exhibition halls and concrete rooms looted, amounting to around 8,000 pieces.
“Looted objects are not simply inanimate objects, but represent the history of a people and the entity of a nation, reflecting cultural identity and embodying the national memory that unites people 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 head of the Sudan Antiquities and Museums Authority, said Naqa and Musawwarats es Sufra in northern Sudan, two world heritage sites containing artifacts of the Meroitic civilization, were in danger as the conflict rages.
“We feared for these sites,” said Abdel Latif, expressing fear that they would lose their world heritage status.
The war also led to a halt in the maintenance of heritage sites, he explained, as well as security and archeology missions. The mass displacement of people has created additional pressures, with some people seeking temporary shelter inside archaeological sites, with some cases of vandalism and graffiti on temple walls. Some have even started to build houses there, claiming ancestral land rights.
“We suffered a lot from these actions,” said Abdel Latif.
