Over 60% of the holdings of the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum have been looted during the country's ongoing civil war. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which controlled the capital for two years, deliberately targeted high-value portable objects like gold and jewelry, stripping storage areas while leaving less portable artifacts behind. Although the museum building remains standing, tens of thousands of antiquities from its collection of 150,000 objects were plundered, with some appearing for sale online.
This systematic looting represents a catastrophic loss of cultural heritage that fractures Sudan's national identity and historical continuity. The destruction and repurposing of museums across the country, amid a war that has killed over 150,000 people, threatens to erase the physical record of ancient Sudanese civilizations. While a dedicated team of local experts is now working to document losses and salvage what remains, the scale of the theft distorts the understanding of the past and undermines the foundation for a cohesive future.