PORT SUDANL: Sudan’s priceless archaeological heritage is being removed from museums as looters load statues and fragments of ancient palaces onto trucks, smuggle them out of the war-torn country and sell them online. For more than a year, the war between rival generals has killed tens of thousands of people, driven millions from their homes, and left the country’s prized antiquities to looters. On Thursday, UNESCO, the UN’s cultural body, said the “threat to culture has reached unprecedented levels with reports of looting of museums, cultural monuments and archaeological sites and private collections”. In the capital Khartoum, where fighting broke out between the army and paramilitary forces in April 2023, the recently renovated Sudan National Museum has stolen valuable artifacts, archaeologists and officials say. The museum houses prehistoric artifacts from the Paleolithic era and objects from the famous Kerma site in northern Sudan, as well as Pharaonic and Nubian pieces. First opened in 1971, the museum was established in part to house objects salvaged from an area that was flooded by the construction of Egypt’s massive Aswan Dam. Now his artifacts are threatened by war. “The Sudanese National Museum has been subject to a lot of looting,” said Ikhlas Abdel Latif, head of museums at the National Antiquities Authority. “The archaeological objects stored there were taken in big trucks and taken to the west and to the border areas, especially near South Sudan,” she told AFP. The extent of the looting is difficult to determine because the museum is located in an area controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF). Officials and experts accused the RSF of looting the site. A spokesman for the force contacted by AFP had no comment. In May, RSF said it was “vigilant” in “protecting and preserving the antiquities of the Sudanese people”. Throughout history, warriors have used booty to finance their war efforts. UNESCO said it was calling on “the public and the art market… in the region and globally to refrain” from trading in Sudanese objects. The agency also said it plans training in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, for law enforcement and the judiciary from Sudan’s neighbors. “Because of the war, the museum and artifacts are not being monitored,” said Hassan Hussein, a researcher and former director of the National Monuments Office. The army led by Sudan’s de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is in conflict with the RSF, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. Also under threat is the UNESCO World Heritage-listed island of Meroe, home to the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Kush and dozens of its pyramids. Artifacts and exhibition accessories were stolen from a museum in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state, Abdel Latif said. In Omdurman, just across the Nile from Khartoum, part of the Khalifa House Museum was also destroyed, she said. Last week, the Association of Friends of Sudanese Museums condemned “in the strongest terms” the looting that is occurring across the country. Experts raised the alarm after finding looted artefacts being offered for sale online. On the eBay auction site, a user was bidding on items presented as Egyptian antiquities that Sudanese media reported had been looted from Sudan. AFP has seen listings with items being offered for several hundred dollars, but was unable to independently verify the authenticity or provenance of the items. A Sudanese archaeologist, who spoke anonymously for security reasons, told AFP that the ceramics, gold objects and paintings listed for sale appeared to have come from the National Museum in Khartoum – although at least one statuette was fake. He said he was concerned about the larger statues, which “need to be handled in a precise way by specialists” and could be damaged if looters got their hands on them. The issue is to be discussed at an upcoming conference in Germany, which Hussein will attend. “The current state of the collections is of concern to anyone who cares about the heritage of humanity,” he said.
