The British Council is using a £1.8 million ($2.3 million) grant to help prevent the pillaging of Sudan’s national museums during its ongoing civil war, Britain’s The Telegraph reported.
The grant from the tax-payer-funded body had been dedicated to conserving several heritage sites in Sudan before the war broke out, but has since been diverted to help civilian efforts to prevent the pillaging of national museums and historic sites, it said.
Museums across Sudan have been raided since the start of the civil war in 2023, and artifacts looted from significant sites have been sold on the illegal art market.
Museums linked to ancient cities and pyramids have had their artifacts relocated and hidden during the war, which has cost at least 20,000 lives, the newspaper said.
The move follows the looting and damaging of major museums in the country, including sites linked to British colonial expeditions in Sudan, which had received funding from the UK prior to the conflict.
“Our priority is the safety of our project teams and participants and we carefully monitor this, but we’re flexible where we can be to allow projects to continue their heritage protection activities where it’s feasible and safe to do so,” The Telegraph quoted Stephanie Grant, the director of the British Council in Sudan, as saying.
“Cultural heritage faces serious threats in times of conflict and it’s vital that there are global efforts to defend culture in crisis,” she said.
The British Council had been funding projects in Sudan prior to conflict breaking out in April 2023, with £997,000 provided to sites including the Khalifa Museum in the capital, Khartoum, which had ties to British imperial history.
This had been the home of the Khalifa, who succeeded the Islamic leader Muhammad Ahmad, known as the Mahdi, who defeated British forces at the Battle of Shaykan and in the Siege of Khartoum, an action which cost General Charles George Gordon his life in 1885.
A project titled Safeguarding Sudan’s Living Heritage was allocated £1.8 million to help preserve and document Sudanese customs. It used the Ethnographic Museum in Khartoum, which was also to be upgraded as part of the project, as its base.
The Khalifa House was looted along with the Sudan National Museum, the Natural History Museum was burnt out, and the Darfur Museum was destroyed, with experts on the ground estimating that tens of thousands of artefacts had been stolen.
A report by Sudan’s National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums has revealed that artifacts linked to the ancient kingdom of Kush, and displays linked to British general Gordon, have been ransacked during the war.
British Council staff are no longer on the ground in Sudan, but funding from its Living Heritage fund is being provided to Sudanese experts and local communities who have relocated and hidden remaining museum artefacts in order to preserve their cultural heritage, The Telegraph said.
The work has so far helped safeguard stores from museums linked to the ancient sites of Kerma and Jebel Barkal, the Port Sudan Museum on the coast, and the UNESCO site at Meroe, home to 2,300-year-old pyramids.
Despite the ongoing war, there are also ongoing projects to build and protect community museums including at El Obeid, another site linked to a battle in the Mahdist War that drew Britain into Sudan in the 19th century.
Amani Bashir, the director of the Sheikan Museum in El Obeid, said that “tangible and intangible cultural heritage in Sudan” remains of “the utmost importance to communities” amid the ongoing conflict.
She added: “All societies are proud of their heritage and it serves as the identity and brand or sign that distinguishes each group from others.
“The other is therefore working hard to preserve it, continue it, and own it for current and future generations.”
