Cairo: Inside Sudan’s biggest museum, the exhibition halls once filled with statues and relics from centuries of ancient civilisations are trashed, littered with debris. The display cases stand empty and shattered. A mummy lies exposed in an open storage box. All the gold artifacts have been looted.
The Sudan National Museum has been wrecked by two years of war in Sudan, with most of its artifacts stolen. Authorities blame the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which held this district of Khartoum along the banks of the Nile River for most of the conflict.
Since the Sudanese military regained control of the capital last month, officials have been working to assess the damage and loss in hopes of one day restoring the museum.
“The losses are extremely big and saddening. A significant number of antiquities were stolen,” Gamal ElDeen Zain al-Abdeen, a senior official at the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, told. “The RSF destroyed everything ... concerning the civilization of the Sudanese people.”
The National Museum had thousands of pieces, dating back to the Paleolithic era well before the development of agriculture, and through the kingdoms of ancient Sudan. Many came from the Napatan era in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., when pharaohs from Sudan ruled over much of ancient Egypt, or from the later Meroitic kingdom that built pyramids in Sudan. Other halls had later Christian and Islamic material.
Some pieces too heavy to carry remain in place. In the museum’s garden, a line of stone lions remains, as do the Colossi of Tabo, two large pharaonic-style statues. Also remaining are three pharaonic temples that were moved from northern Sudan and reassembled at the museum in the 1960s to escape the rising waters of Lake Nasser from Egypt’s construction of the High Dam.
But many objects are gone. Looters broke into the locked storerooms and made off with all the gold artifacts, Zain al-Abdeen said. But it was too early to know how much of the museum’s collection had been stolen, he said.
He blamed the RSF for the destruction, saying they had fighters in the museum at some point during the war.
The war in Sudan broke out in April 2023, after tensions between the Sudanese army and the rival RSF turned into battles in the streets of Khartoum and rapidly spread around the country. The RSF held much of Khartoum during the war, including the district of the museum. Now that they have been driven out, the extent of the destruction from fighting and looting is coming clear.
The ransacking is a blow to a country with a rich heritage.
