In almost three years of civil war in Sudan, the country's museums have been ravaged, with thousands of its archaeological treasures looted and feared trafficked. Researchers in Sudan and beyond are racing to catalogue and recover the losses, estimated at $110 million.
The Sudan National Museum in Khartoum bears battle scars. Beneath holes left in its facade by rocket fire, a large bay window lies shattered. The gardens are littered with explosives.
Home to a vast collection tracing thousands of years of human history in the Nile Valley, the building was ransacked when paramilitaries fighting the armed forces overran the capital, soon after the war began in April 2023.
The army recaptured the city from its opponents, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), last March - finally allowing the museum's employees to assess the damage.
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"Inside, all the locks had been broken and all the doors left wide open," said Jamal Mohammed Zein, the first member of staff to return.
"I headed straight for the main store room, which houses more than 100,000 archaeological artefacts. Objects were strewn all over the floor. The crates had been opened and looted. Many artefacts had been broken or chipped," he told RFI.
Suspected trafficking
As employees work to clean and repair what remains, a committee of experts is making an inventory of the losses. At least 4,000 items are missing, according to Rihab Khidir, the archaeologist who heads the panel.
"They completely ransacked the Kushite gold room, which housed hundreds of ornamental pieces," she said. "Necklaces and rings made entirely of gold. Jewellery dating back to the time of the Kush civilisation, from the kingdom of Napata and Meroe, that was found inside royal burial chambers."
The museum held the world's most important collection of artefacts from the kingdom of Kush, an ancient Nubian culture whose pharaohs once conquered Egypt. It also housed objects that testified to the rich range of influences, including Islamic and Christian, that have shaped Sudan over its long history.
Museum authorities say they have evidence that at least three trucks loaded with artefacts left Khartoum in August 2023, heading west. The RSF are suspected of trying to smuggle the treasures out of Sudan, selling them to foreign dealers to finance the ongoing conflict.
From the early days of the fighting, international experts sent pleas to the RSF warning that "heritage is a red line", according to Khidir.
"It is part of our culture, a piece of our history that has nothing to do with the current conflict. They got the message and said they were willing to cooperate, and yet everything was stolen."
The challenge of preserving Sudan's rich heritage for future generations
Symbolic losses
The National Museum was not the only heritage site raided. At least a dozen others across Sudan have been damaged or plundered, with the total losses estimated at nearly $110 million.
In Darfur, scene of some of the most brutal battles, militia turned the regional museum of Nyala into a barracks.
In the city of El-Fasher, under siege for more than a year before it fell to the RSF last October, the palace of Ali Dinar, Darfur's last sultan, was destroyed in shelling.
The palace was "a symbol of the sovereignty of the Fur people and resistance to colonisation", said Ali Noor, secretary-general of the Sudanese committee of the Blue Shield, an international NGO that works to protect cultural heritage in emergencies.
Noor believes the destruction, in a country riven by ethnic and religious divisions, is no accident. "It is the deliberate physical and cultural extermination of entire communities from our historical heritage."
Sudan's El-Fasher under the RSF, destroyed and 'full of bodies'
Global preservation efforts
Critics say Sudan's heritage, like the human victims of its war, has suffered from a lack of global attention. But in Sudan and abroad, a patchwork of initiatives are attempting to stem the damage.
Experts from the country's National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums have been documenting and moving collections from sites judged to be in danger.
One of the National Museum's curators, Shadia Abdrabo - now based in Paris on a French research grant - is compiling an online database of artefacts in all of Sudan's museums to help establish what's missing.
Unesco is funding emergency efforts to secure vulnerable world heritage sites, including the former royal city of Meroe, seat of the Kushite kings, as well as the pyramids at Gebel Barkal. It has also helped train police and customs officers in Sudan and neighbouring countries to spot stolen antiquities, and appealed to international museums and collectors to refuse suspect items.
The Louvre, the British Museum and others have lent support. Meanwhile an international task force has been set up to mobilise institutions and donors outside Sudan.
The efforts are beginning to bear fruit. Last week, the Sudanese government announced the recovery of 570 objects taken from the National Museum - roughly 30 percent of what was lost.
The delicate figurines, vases and scarab-shaped amulets were reportedly retrieved after months of investigation helped by Interpol and Unesco.
The government has promised a financial reward to any member of the public who returns other looted objects or shares information about their whereabouts.
Museum restored online
Separately, part of the National Museum's collection is once more on view in a virtual museum that went live at the start of this month.
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Visitors can explore some 500 of the museum's treasures in an online recreation of the building as it was before the war. A recreation of the famed Kushite gold room will be uploaded later this year.
Commissioned before the conflict started, the project was supported by the French Section of the Sudanese Directorate of Antiquities (SFDAS), a government-funded research institute that works on archaeological projects with Sudan.
"This is a great source of hope for our Sudanese colleagues, as it allows them to continue researching and promoting Sudanese heritage," said Faïza Drici of SFDAS.
It is also hoped the virtual collection, by providing a public record, will make it harder for traffickers to sell off looted items.
In Khartoum, reopening the museum in reality remains a distant dream.
For archaeologist Khidir, still working to document the scale of what has been lost, the paramilitaries fighting Sudan's war have missed the true value of what they stole or destroyed.
"The Rapid Support Forces are foolish," she said. "Who do they want to rule? Those who have no history have no present. Heritage is our roots. They say their hearts are with their homeland. They say they want to govern the country, so why don't they protect our heritage?
"This stolen heritage, this civilisation, belongs to an entire people, and even to all of humanity."
This article has been adapted from RFI interviews by Eliott Brachet, Gaëlle Laleix and Savannah Ruellan.
