60% of Sudan National Museum collection looted

In September 2024, officials reported that the Sudanese National Museum in Khartoum, the country’s capital, was robbed by members of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) amid the country’s ongoing civil war. Now, museum officials are revealing the extent of the robbery.

According to Ghalia Jar Al-Nabi, director of Sudan’s General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums, “more than 60 percent of the museum’s collections have been looted.” nbc news. “The war lasted for months and no one knew what had become of these museums.” Nabi added that several display cabinets in the museum were currently empty, confirming that gold and jewelry from Sudan’s ancient kingdom had been stolen.

Doctors Without Borders occupied the museum from April 2023 to early 2024.

Before the conflict, the museum contained more than 150,000 artifacts. The National Museum said that about 8,000 collections were stolen from the exhibition hall alone. Deputy Culture Minister Graham Abdel Qader said only 570 artifacts had been found so far. nbc news.

Sudan’s Culture Minister Khalid Ali Aleisir estimated the losses related to culture, antiquities and tourism at around $110 million. nbc news. This number also includes about 20 other looted cultural institutions in Sudan, such as the Palace of the Republic and the Sultan Ali Dinar Museum.

The Sultan Ali Dinar Museum was one of four institutions that were looted and completely destroyed, according to officials. The other three museums are the Gezira Museum in the country’s Gezira state and the Nyala Museum and El Geneina Museum in the Darfur region, where the Dinar Museum is also located.

A 2024 report from state broadcaster SBC said that “satellite images confirmed that a truck loaded with items had left the museum earlier this year.” At the time, it was unclear which items from the museum’s collection had been taken.

Weeks later, UNESCO issued a statement warning against the import or export of looted objects from Sudan, saying “the illegal sale or transfer of these artifacts will lead to the loss of parts of Sudan’s cultural identity and jeopardize the country’s recovery.”

The civil war death toll is estimated at between 20,000 and 150,000, according to a report published by the magazine last month. science. “We can’t responsibly put a number on it,” Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Laboratory, told science. A United Nations fact-finding mission said in 2024 that both the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) had committed “a shocking and distressing range of human rights violations and international crimes.”