Sudan preservationists struggle to restore country's shattered cultural treasures

The shattered remains of antique pottery and shards of ancient statues lie among broken glass and bullet casings at Sudan’s National Museum, not far from where the Blue and White Nile meet in the capital Khartoum.

After over two years of a civil war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions, Sudan’s army expelled the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces from Khartoum and its environs this spring. 

But much of the city still lies in ruins, including many of its heritage sites. Antiquities were damaged in the fighting, and still more were carted off by looters and smuggled into neighboring countries. 

Preservationists who returned to the city after the army’s advance are now sifting through the wreckage and trying to recover and restore what they can. 

"The museum was extremely damaged. A lot of artifacts were stolen that are very, very important for us. Any piece in the museum here ... has a story," said Rehab Kheder Al-Rasheed, head of a committee set up to evaluate damage and secure museums and archaeological sites in Khartoum state, as she stood in a hallway strewn with debris. 

So far, about 4,000 antiquities have been counted missing in Sudan, according to Ikhlas Abdullatif, director of the museums sector at Sudan's National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums. 

These include pieces in Khartoum, as well as other parts of the country such as the western Darfur region, where about 700 pieces disappeared from museums in the cities of Nyala and El Geneina, Abdullatif said. In El Geneina, the museum’s curator was killed when the building was shelled. 

Many of these pieces appear to have been smuggled to neighboring countries. Sudan is among a long list of countries including Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt where antiquities smuggling became rife in the wake of political upheaval. 

The National Museum's open-air courtyard includes multiple temples and other artifacts moved to Khartoum from the country's north in the 1960s to preserve them from flooding caused by the construction of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam.

One of the most spectacular is the Buhen Temple, built by the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut, who reigned around 1,500 B.C. The temple sustained damage during the fighting which authorities are working to repair – albeit with “very, very limited resources,” Rasheed said. 

The National Museum was not the only site to suffer damage. The interior of Khartoum’s Republican Palace Museum is now filled with charred wreckage. Antique cars parked outside sit amid debris, their windows and headlamps smashed.

Abdullatif estimated that the cost of restoring and maintaining Sudan’s museums and securing the remaining antiquities could be as high as $100 million. It is a sum preservationists are unlikely to obtain any time soon given the country’s devastated economy. 

There is also the question of when foreign specialists might feel it is safe enough to return. Sudan had around 45 archaeological missions in the country before the war, Rasheed said. Today, all of them have stopped. 

“We hope, God willing, the missions come back and continue their work," Rasheed said.