How Sudan’s civil war is erasing thousands of years of cultural memory
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war → erase → memory
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- Sudan’s civil war turned its national museum into a battlefield and crime scene, with ancient statues shattered, skeletal remains scorched and vaults of gold looted.
- Archaeological treasures have been sold on the black market to power a war machine that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced some 14 million people.
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that → click → people
- ‘These artifacts and sites, they’re part of us,’ says one museum staffer.
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staffer → ’re → us
‘Your lose them, you lose your identity.’
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you → lose → identity
The ancient statues of the deities Heket and Beset, too heavy to move, were used for target practice.
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statues → move → practice
The 4,000-year-old skeletal remains from the bio-archaeology lab? Scattered or scorched.
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remains → scatter → lab
The gold vault lays ransacked, the storage rooms firebombed.
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rooms → lay → ?
Walk through the grounds of the Sudan National Museum and the reminders of the civil war’s devastating impact on this country’s cultural history seem everywhere.
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reminders → walk → history
They entered the depots and stole everything they could,” said Umaima Abdul-Rahman Al-Sanusi, one of the museum’s curators, as her eyes scanned a shattered display case.
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eyes → enter → case
She was referring to the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, a paramilitary group that controlled the capital — and the museum with it — from April 2023 until government forces dislodged them in March of last year.
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forces → refer → year
When Al-Sanusi first saw the level of destruction in the museum — where she’s been employed around 15 years — she cried.
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she → see → museum
Even now, more than a year after she and her colleagues returned to the museum, her voice was tight with not-quite-resigned frustration.
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voice → return → frustration
“These artifacts and sites, they’re part of us,” she said, her fingers giving a reassuring touch to a statue of the Nubian god Apademak — a lone survivor standing in a courtyard strewn with shattered stone shards and the occasional bullet casing — as she walked past.
“You lose them, you lose your identity.”
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you → ’re → identity
Sudan’s civil war, a conflict credibly described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, has seen violence matched only by the belligerents’ rapacity in pillaging the country’s riches.
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violence → describe → riches
Like gold, oil, gum arabic and other resources, Sudan’s archaeological treasures, a legacy of the successive kingdoms that flourished and died in the Nile Valley over millennia, have been commandeered to power a war machine that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced some 14 million people.
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that → flourish → people
At least 76 heritage sites and 20 museums have been ransacked by the RSF and run-of-the-mill thieves, officials say, carting off an archaeological haul worth more than $150 million.
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officials → ransack → haul
One museum was turned into a barracks.
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museum → turn → barracks
The National Museum alone lost almost two-thirds of its inventory, comprising nearly 100,000 artifacts that covered Sudan’s prehistoric age through its Nubian era, the Kingdom of Kush, the Christian era and its Islamic period.
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that → lose → Kush
Sudanese visitors walk past examples of 10th century Christian art work at the national museum in the capital Khartoum on June 25, 2008.
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visitors → walk → June
2. Haitem el-Nour, new director of the national corporation of antiquities and museums looks at a collection of antiquities at the Sudan National Museum in the capital Khartoum on August 12, 2020.
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Nour → look → August
Some items were smashed and shattered when the museum’s grounds became a run-and-gun battlefield.
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grounds → smash → ?
The museum was undergoing renovations before the war, so most of the collections were packed in the main warehouse.
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most → undergo → warehouse
The RSF stole the artifacts in the same boxes where they were stored, said Jamal Zaid Al-Abideen, a veteran official at the National Corp. for Antiquities and Museums.
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Abideen → steal → Antiquities
“They didn’t even need to break into the strongroom,” Al-Abideen said bitterly, looking at a heavy metal door secured with multiple bolts.
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Abideen → need → bolts
Behind it was the vault that once contained almost 2,000 objects of 24-carat gold, gem-ornamented Nabatean funerary figures and ancient jewelry from the Kingdom of Kush.
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that → contain → Kush
All gone.
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All → go → ?
“They had the time to go through the museum director’s desk and find the key.
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They → have → key
They could loot it all at their leisure.”
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They → loot → leisure
Al-Abideen, who was the first civilian to enter the museum after the Sudanese army clawed back Khartoum, walked to a room where staff had gathered all the ordnance found when bomb experts came and sanitized the museum of explosive materials.
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experts → enter → materials
Lined on the floor was box after box of ballpoint-pen-sized .50-caliber rounds; beside them lay a mound of bullet casings and a half-destroyed drone.
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mound → line → casings
Al-Sanusi joined, and with Al-Abideen continued their macabre tour of the museum’s grounds.
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tour → join → grounds
They headed to the backyard, where a dozen containers lay in the sun, one for each of the international archaeological missions that had been working in Sudan before the war’s start.
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that → head → start
“Everything was packed here for when the research missions were supposed to come back,” Al-Sanusi said, as Al-Abideen heaved a jammed container door open.
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Abideen → pack → door
Inside was a maw of fire-roasted boxes, shards of pottery spilling across the floor, a skull and a scorched femur.
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maw → roast → floor
“Now all of it — excavation equipment, notes, samples — it’s all burned.
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it → burn → it
And we don’t even have records for them,” Al-Sanusi said.
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Sanusi → have → them
“The metal pieces were burned because they thought they could melt them down and find gold in them,” Al-Abideen added.
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Abideen → burn → them
The ravaging of the museum reflects the destruction seen across Khartoum.
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ravaging → reflect → Khartoum
The neighborhood where the museum is located — once a well-appointed Nile-side quarter of luxury hotels, architecturally adventurous towers and botanical gardens — became a prime target for the RSF.
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museum → locate → RSF
The group evolved from the government-supported Janjaweed militias of the 2000s to become the army’s most powerful ally before turning on it in 2023.
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group → evolve → 2023
…and 28 more, not listed.
