Mass looting of Sudan's National Museum amid civil war shocks cultural heritage community

Reports of mass looting at Sudan's National Museum amid the ongoing civil war have shocked the cultural heritage community. Ikhlas Abdel-Latif Ahmed, head of museums at Sudan's national antiquities authority, said that Rapid Support Forces (RSF) soldiers had stolen artefacts from the recently renovated Sudan National Museum in Khartoum. She called the theft by RSF soldiers "a major looting operation," according to the Financial Times.

The war in Sudan has killed an estimated 150,000 people and pushed 10 million into exile. 

The Sudan National Museum, opened more than 50 years ago, houses objects rescued from an area flooded by the construction of Egypt's Aswan Dam. Among the 100,000 pieces housed in the museum are those from the Palaeolithic, Meroë, Christian, and Islamic eras. The museum also houses artefacts such as ushabti burial figurines of Kushite kings from Kerma, a capital in northern Sudan that predated Meroë.

Many of the objects taken from the Sudan National Museum were loaded onto trucks and smuggled across the border into South Sudan, according to Abdel-Latif Ahmed. "Unfortunately, all this has become a target of the war," she said.

Reports of looting have become so persistent that UNESCO issued a statement in September warning that the "threat to [Sudan's] culture appears to have reached an unprecedented level." UNESCO called on art market professionals and members of the public "to refrain from acquiring or taking part in the import, export or transfer of ownership of cultural property from Sudan," 

UNESCO's entreaty followed concerns that some of the antiquities may have ended up for sale online disguised as Egyptian artefacts. The situation in Sudan recalls the wholesale theft of artefacts during recent wars in Iraq, Syria, and Mali.

None of Sudan's treasures is safe, according to Amani Gashi, an archaeologist and coordinator of the cultural protection initiative Safeguarding Sudan's Living Heritage Against Conflict and Climate Change. Gashi added that this includes the Temple of Amun at Jebel Barkal in Karima, the lion-headed god Apedemak in Naqa, and the elephant carving at the temple at Musawwarat, near Meroë.

The situation has drawn parallels with previous conflicts where cultural heritage was at risk. The Iraq Museum in Baghdad was looted after the 2003 US invasion. Although a 4,000-year-old statue of Sumerian king Entemena was later returned to the Iraq Museum, many stolen pieces remain missing. In 2016, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, an Islamist militant, became the first person to be tried for the war crime of destroying antiquities when he was sentenced to nine years in prison by the International Criminal Court for demolishing historic monuments in Timbuktu, Mali.

Sudan was home to some of Africa's earliest human settlements, dating back to as early as 8,000 BC. The Kingdom of Kush, established at Kerma by 2,500 BC, ruled over Egypt for almost a century after conquering it in the eighth century BC, with Meroë as its seat of power featuring pyramids, temples, and a water network.

Meroë itself has a history of both looting and being looted. In 1834, the tops of dozens of pyramids at Meroë were blown up by Italian treasure hunter Giuseppe Ferlini. The British Museum in London, much of whose collection was derived from plunder, includes the Meroë Head, a large bronze head depicting the first Roman emperor Augustus. The Meroë Head was taken in 1910 from Meroë, where it ended up after being looted from Roman Egypt in 24 BC.

Sources: Financial Times, Periódico HOY

This article was written in collaboration with generative AI company Alchemiq