Archaeologist races to preserve Sudan’s heritage as war threatens to erase its cultural past
In a dimly lit office in a corner of the French National Institute of Art History, Sudanese archaeologist Shadia Abdrabo studies a photograph of ceramics made in her country around 7,000 BC. C. Carefully write a description of the Neolithic artifact on a spreadsheet.
As the war between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) continues, the curator of Sudan’s National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums (NCAM) receives a year-long research fellowship in France with one mission: to build an online database of the African nation’s archaeological sites, museum collections and historical archives.
Shortly after the war in Sudan began, in April 2023, the museums were looted and destroyed. It’s unclear what exactly disappeared, but Abdrabo says his task is to find out, and time is of the essence.
“We have to work quickly to protect our collections. We have already lost two museums and we don’t want to lose more,” Abdrabo told The Associated Press.
She says two regional museums in El Geneina and Nyala were almost completely destroyed, while in Khartoum, the National Museum (which housed approximately 100,000 objects before the war) was looted by militias who posted videos online of their fighters inside the warehouse.
The National Museum had pieces dating back to prehistoric times, including the Kingdom of Kerma and the Napatan era, when the Kushite kings ruled the region, as well as the Meroitic civilization that built the pyramids of Sudan. Other galleries displayed later Christian and Islamic objects.
Among its most valuable objects were mummies dating back to 2,500 BC. C., some of the oldest and most archaeologically significant in the world, as well as royal Kushite treasures.
‘Entire archives disappeared’ UNESCO raised the alarm over reports of looting, saying that “the threat to culture appears to have reached an unprecedented level.”
“My heart was broken, you know? We didn’t just lose objects. We lost research, we lost studies, we lost a lot of things,” Abdrabo said.
Last month, hundreds of people were killed and more than 80,000 were forced to flee following the capture of North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher, by the RSF. For Abdrabo, the work is deeply personal.
“I am from Nubia, from the north, an area full of monuments, archaeological sites and ancient life,” he said. The region was home to some of the world’s first kingdoms that rivaled ancient Egypt in power and wealth.
He was working at the national museum in the capital, Khartoum, when the war began.
“We thought it would end soon… but then life started to get very difficult: not only the bombings, but there was no electricity or water,” he said. With her three sisters she fled north, first to Atbara, then to Abri and finally to Port Sudan.
During that time, Abdrabo and his NCAM colleagues worked tirelessly to try to protect Sudan’s 11 museums and sites, some designated as UNESCO World Heritage, by moving pieces to safe rooms and secret locations.
But efforts to protect Sudanese art were too slow, said Ali Nour, an advocate for Sudanese cultural heritage.
“While applications were being drawn up, sites were emptied. While risk assessments were being reviewed, entire archives were disappearing,” Nour wrote in an article for the UK-based International Institute for the Conservation of Historical and Artistic Works.
Urgent recovery efforts UNESCO said it carried out inventories, trained police and customs officials to recognize stolen antiquities, while calling on collectors “to refrain from acquiring or participating in the import, export or transfer of ownership of Sudanese cultural property.”
But unlike similar cultural emergencies that followed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, “Sudan has not benefited from strong media coverage denouncing the degradation and looting of its cultural heritage,” according to researcher Meryam Amarir. “This lack of visibility has reduced the international response.”
Ancient Sudan was connected, through trade and military activity, to Egypt, the Mediterranean world and Mesopotamia, and was the source of much of the gold available in the region, according to Geoff Emberling of the Kelsey Museum of Archeology at the University of Michigan.
“If we are interested in these ancient cultures, then we have to be interested in Sudan,” said Emberling, who is involved in the newly created Sudan Cultural Emergency Recovery Fund.
The task force, requested by NCAM, aims to unite institutions, academics and donors around the urgent recovery efforts of Sudan’s heritage.
“What Shadia Abdrabo is doing is urgently essential: establishing what is missing,” Emberling told the AP. “And with a team of about 15 Sudanese now working at the Khartoum museum to clean and restore what has been damaged, they will soon be able to compare what is left there now.”
‘I cry when I talk about this’ Abdrabo has funding until April 2026 to finish collecting the data and build a platform, but he worries that won’t be enough time.
The work is meticulous. Some data sets arrive in the form of spreadsheets, others as handwritten inventories or photographs taken decades ago. Her colleagues at the Louvre, the British Museum and others provide support, but she works mostly alone.
“I’m trying to finish this database, but it’s a lot. I’ve done about 20% of the work. For the national museums alone, I’ve registered 1,080 objects so far… and then I have to do other museums, sites, archives… I need to add photographs, identification numbers, coordinates…”
As winter comes to Paris, the crisis in Sudan drives Abdrabo.
“We are working on tracking what has been looted,” he said. “I cry when I talk about this. My only goal and message is to bring back everything I can, do everything I can for Sudan, but it is not easy for us.”
It is not only the war itself, but its consequences that could affect the country’s heritage: “militias, displaced people… it is not safe for art to be in unsafe places,” he added.
“Until the war is over we don’t know what will happen.”
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