Sudan's forgotten pyramids

Sudan boasts even more pyramids than Egypt, but its treasured archaeological heritage is increasingly under threat from its brutal civil war.

Meroë, a city on the banks of the Nile and once the capital of the ancient kingdom of Kush, formerly "drew intrepid tourists to see the carvings and hieroglyphs housed in some of the 200 pyramids" built nearly 2,500 years ago, said the Financial Times. But since Sudan's civil war broke out last year, the site has been "deserted". The pyramids' sole caretaker, a woman named Fozia Khalid, is "the only person standing between some of Sudan's greatest art treasures and rampaging armies accused of looting priceless antiquities".

"The militias are not far," said Khalid, referring to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group locked in a power battle with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). "I fear they may come and ravage centuries of history."

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An amazing civilisation

"Today Sudan is a country that's synonymous with conflict," Zeinab Badawi, a Sudanese-British author and president of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, told the FT. "But in the ancient world it was the centre of an amazing civilisation."

Some of the earliest human settlements in Africa, dating as far back as 8,000BC, have been found in Sudan. The kingdom of Kush, which emerged around 1,070BC in present-day northern Sudan, was "a formidable entity which challenged the dominant powers of the time, including Egypt", said Mohamed Albdri Sliman Bashir, associate professor in archaeology at the University of Khartoum. "At its height, the Kushite Empire stretched from the confluence of the Nile rivers to the Mediterranean Sea," he wrote in an article on The Conversation. Kush, a "central player in the ancient world", was known for its distinctive pyramids at Meroë.

But by 300AD the Kush empire was "in decline", said The Independent. "Dwindling agriculture and increasing raids from Ethiopia and Rome spelled the end of their rule". Now war once again threatens Sudan's ancient history. Nearly 12 million people have been displaced and at least 60,000 killed, and hundreds of thousands more face famine. Much of Sudan's under-appreciated ancient heritage could be lost forever, Badawi said. "It breaks my heart. I can hardly even think about it."

'Unprecedented' looting

In September, Sudan's national broadcaster SBC reported that the National Museum of Sudan in Khartoum, considered one of the most important in Africa, had been targeted by a "large-scale looting and smuggling operation" by RSF soldiers.

"Tens of thousands of artefacts" were taken, an anonymous official from the institute told The Guardian, with many smuggled across Sudan's southern border. "When we learned about the looting, we didn't sleep for three or four days," the official said. "These artefacts are our identity, the identity of the Sudanese people. Can you imagine what it feels like to lose your identity? You lose your existence in this world."

But the RSF has repeatedly denied the accusations, saying that its members were "simply safeguarding cultural Khartoum", said ArtNews. That statement was "challenged" by the publication Middle East Eye, which published a video of RSF fighters "raiding" the bioarchaeology laboratory in the National Museum, including storage containers housing mummies dating to ancient Nubia. The SAF has also been accused of looting, according to Sudanese news website Dabanga.

Now locals say the RSF has forces less than 20km from the pyramids, wrote the FT, and RSF drones have been "shot down" not far from Meroë. The war is "destroying Sudan's future", but also "Sudan's past", said The Continent.

In September, Unesco warned that the "threat to [Sudan's] culture appears to have reached an unprecedented level". The UN's cultural heritage body has warned the world's art market not to purchase any cultural property from Sudan. "Any illegal sale or displacement of these cultural items would result in the disappearance of part of the Sudanese cultural identity and jeopardise the country’s recovery," said a statement in Artdependence Magazine.