The National Museum of Sudan or Sudan National Museum, abbreviated SNM, is a war damaged former museum, housed in a two-story building, constructed in 1955 and established as national museum in 1971. Before its destruction during the Sudanese civil war, the museum held an estimated 100,000 objects covering thousands of years of Sudan's history, ranging from the Nubian kingdoms and the Kushite empire to the country's Christian and Islamic periods.
Before the Sudanese civil war that started in April 2023, the museum building and its surrounding gardens housed the largest and most comprehensive Nubian archaeological collection in the world, including objects from the Paleolithic through to the Islamic period, originating from every site of importance in Sudan. A significant catalyst for the museum's creation was the large number of relocated artefacts as a result of the 1960âÂÂ1980 International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia.
In particular, the museum comprised collections of the following periods of the history of Sudan: Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, A-Group culture, C-Group culture, Kerma Culture, Middle Kingdom of Egypt, New Kingdom of Egypt, Napata, Meroë, X-Group culture and medieval Makuria. The museum is located on Nile Avenue in Khartoum's al-Mugran area, close to the confluence of the White and the Blue Nile.
The National Museum was the scene of heavy fighting during the Sudanese civil war (2023âÂÂpresent) between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). On 2 June 2023, the museum was taken over by the RSF. Most exhibits, among them ancient mummies dating back to 2500 BC, which are among the oldest and most archaeologically significant in the world, were destroyed, looted or badly damaged by the RSF.
The Continent magazine commented these events as follows: "The war in Sudan is destroying not just the country's future, but also the country's past." Reports later emerged that most items from the museum's collection had been looted and some taken to be sold in South Sudan. Ikhlas Abdel Latif, the head of museums at the Sudanese national antiquities authority, said that items stored in the museum had been taken by truck to western Sudan and border areas. Following the expulsion of the RSF from Khartoum in March 2025, the director of SudanâÂÂs National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM), Ghalia Garelnabi, accused the RSF of destroying 90% of the museum's holdings, looting its archaeological gold collection and deliberately smashing other artifacts. Almost all of the 100,000 objects from the museum's collection were looted according to The Guardian, with only heavy artefacts remaining. Following this, the French Archaeological Unit for Sudanese Antiquities (SFDAS), supported by the Louvre and Durham University, helped the museum create a virtual site to display lost artefacts and recreate its exhibits.
The objects of the museum were displayed in four areas:
Highlights of the collections included:
In the museum garden were some rebuilt temples and tombs relocated from the submerged area of Lake Nasser.
In 1964, the Aswan High Dam, built across the Nile River in Egypt, created a reservoir in the Nubian area, which extended into Sudan's territory threatening to submerge the ancient temples. During the UNESCO Salvage Campaign the following temples and tombs were re-erected in the museum garden according to the same orientation of their original location, surrounded by an artificial stream of water symbolic of the Nile:
Outside the museum building were set up two granite unfinished colossal statues from the ancient temple of Tabo on Argo Island. As inscriptions were missing, they could not be assigned to any precise origin, but show Roman stylistic influence.
The lane leading from the museum car park to the exhibition halls was flanked with Meroitic statues of two rams and six dark sandstone man-eating lions from Basa village site. The lions were from the first century BCE, as shown by the two cartouches from king Amanikhabale engraved on the first lion on the right.
After decades of excavations by foreign archeological teams in the 20th century, Sudanese archeologists were gradually trained and included in these excavations and subsequent research. At the end of 2022, The Guardian reported about a new generation of Sudanese archeologists, including a large number of young women. Trained at the Department of Archeology of the University of Khartoum, this new generation represented a growing number of professionals for SudanâÂÂs National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums, who were adding their skills and perspective on the heritage of Sudan to foreign-led research and studies.