Sudan crisis: Threat to culture 'unprecedented,' UNESCO says

In a social media video, soldiers from Sudanese militia forces pose in front of the ancient ruins of Naga with their Kalashnikovs at the ready and their fingers forming a "V" for victory.

Naga lies 200 kilometers (124 miles) northeast of Sudan's capital, Khartoum, and not far from the banks of the Nile in an area once regarded as the cradle of civilization. The city was founded around 250 B.C. as a royal residence of the Kingdom of Meroe and featured numerous temple and palace buildings.

Three temples have been excavated and restored since the 1990s by archaeologists, including a German team from the Munich Museum of Egyptian Art. Fifty more temples, palaces and administrative buildings are still hidden under the ruins, as well as necropolises with hundreds of graves.

But now Naga, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been caught up in yet another Sudanese civil war. Since April 2023, rival generals have again fought for power in the resource-rich yet desperately poor country. The de facto ruler Abdel-Fattah al Burhan and the army he controls are opposed by the Rapid Support Forces militia of his former deputy, Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo  — who now control Naga.

World leaders, including US President Joe Biden, have repeatedly — and so far unsuccessfully — called on the parties to the conflict to negotiate an end to the war.

'Threat to culture' in Sudan is unprecedented

"The situation is really bad," says Arnulf Schlüter, the director of Munich Museum of Egyptian Art.

He does not know whether the archaeological project will ever be resumed.

"Most of the excavation workers have fled, the excavation house has been broken into, and the tires of the vehicles have been stolen. The antiquities site lies defenseless."

Museums and artifacts are being destroyed and looted across the country amid a severe humanitarian crisis — more than 10 million Sudanese people are displaced and half of the country's 50 million inhabitants are experiencing hunger.

"This threat to culture appears to have reached an unprecedented level, with reports of looting of museums, heritage and archaeological sites and private collections," said UNESCO, the United Nations' cultural organization, on September 12.

Sudan's Naga archaeology site is unprotected

Despite the historical significance of the city's three temples that were restored over decades, and plans drafted by British star architect Sir David Chipperfield to build a museum at the site, Schlüter is very worried about its future in light of the war.

"We don't know how they are doing," he said of the people managing Naga. "There is a lack of reliable information."

He noted that Sudan's antiquities service, which is responsible for looking after the world heritage sites, has lost many documents as a result of the conflict.

"Its offices in Khartoum were looted," he explained, noting that a centralized register of antiquities had only just been set up.

Schlüter fears that the nation's history is being bombed out of existence.

"Even if peace were to return immediately, we would have to start from scratch," he said.

Sudan's National Museum also looted

Amid the immense destruction of civilian infrastructure, soldiers have robbed and destroyed museums across Sudan, often before trying to sell antiquities on the overseas art market.

For example, Khartoum's National Museum of Sudan, whose important antique,statue and archaeological collections were recently restored by UNESCO and the Italian government, was also looted.

UNESCO is warning art market investors not to acquire cultural artifacts from Sudan.

"Any illegal sale or displacement of these cultural items would result in the disappearance of part of the Sudanese cultural identity and jeopardize the country's recovery," said the UN agency.

"The situation in the war zones is dramatic," said professor Angelika Lohwasser, an Egyptologist specializing in the Archaeology of Sudan at the University of Münster.

As an organizer of the International Conference for Meroitic Studies at the western German university in September, she joined Egyptologists to view photos and reports of the damage to cultural sites in Sudan.

According to Lohwasser, Sudan's cultural assets are "currently under threat."

The iconic Souq Market of Omdurman, on the opposite side of the Nile from Khartoum, has also been completely burnt out.

The Goethe-Institut is closed in Sudan's capital

Meanwhile, the Germans cultural institution, the Goethe-Institut, has been deserted for many months in Khartoum.

Due to its proximity to the presidential palace in the capital, it is located in the center of the combat zone.

Many of the staff were evacuated from the country at the beginning of the military crisis in 2023.

In the Egypt capital Cairo, where many cultural workers from Sudan have fled, the Goethe-Institut has set up programs relevant to Sudan, as the head office in Berlin confirmed.

The conflict in Sudan has also transformed the cultural travel industry.

Frank Grafenstein runs an agency that maintains the Visit Sudan website on behalf of the government and organizes cultural trips for journalists and tourism managers.

Although the website is still online, Grafenstein no longer has any contacts in the civil war-torn country.

"I advise against travelling to Sudan," he said.

This article was originally written in German.