Yemen's Heritage at Risk as War Fragments Control

About 477 of Yemen’s 2,318 documented archaeological sites have suffered total or partial destruction during the war, according to Mohammed Ali Thamer, director general of cultural statistics at the Sanaa-based Ministry of Culture. His research documented 775 destructive operations affecting cultural sites between 2014 and 2025. The damage from the latest Houthi offensive hasn’t yet been established, but weakened institutions and fragmented authority have left sites and collections exposed to destruction, looting and trafficking.

The apparatus and the ruins

Thamer’s research draws on ministry records, statistical data and the Yemen Data Project. It identifies risks to the Old City of Sanaa, with its historic tower houses and intricate architecture, as well as damage to sites across the country. The Houthis control several important heritage locations, including the Old City, the historic town of Zabid and sites associated with the ancient Kingdom of Saba in Marib. Shibam, in Hadramawt, is another internationally recognized landmark.

Thamer documented Houthi military use of archaeological locations, including the ancient city of Baraqish, which the militia seized in August 2014. Houthi forces reportedly planted landmines around the city’s outskirts before withdrawing in early April 2016. The record sits alongside a wider breakdown of protection; it doesn’t provide a complete accounting of who damaged every site.

Saleh Al-Baydani, president of the Anaween Center for Research and Transformation Studies in Aden, described how that breakdown creates openings for illicit trade. “The war has weakened state institutions, fragmented authority, reduced the protection of archaeological sites and museums, and created conditions in which looting and trafficking can flourish,” he told Arab News. He said the trade is “rarely the work of a single individual or organization”: objects can move from illegal excavation or theft through local intermediaries and cross-border networks to dealers, auction houses and private buyers abroad. Those networks, he said, may benefit from corruption, political influence or the protection of armed actors operating within the wider war economy.

Looting without a full inventory

Yemen has no comprehensive national statistics on stolen artifacts. That makes it impossible to establish precisely how many objects disappeared, where they came from or who profited. Estimates cited in Thamer’s research put the number of Yemeni artifacts held abroad at 10,000 to 14,000; the country’s antiquities authorities listed 8,000 objects they said were smuggled out during the war.

Thamer identified 12 of Yemen’s 22 museums as looted or damaged. The Regional Museum in Dhamar, which held about 12,500 objects, was destroyed. Fighting and looting affected museums in Aden, Taiz, Al-Mukalla and Ataq; looters almost completely stripped museums in Ibb Governorate, including those at Al-Oud, Al-Mashneh, Dhafar and Jibla. Authorities confiscated much of the Military Museum’s collection in Sanaa. Incomplete ownership histories now make it harder to establish what is missing and when objects left Yemen.

A 2024 report by a UN panel of experts described an investigation into information about an organized smuggling network allegedly backed by the Houthis. Al-Baydani warned that further fighting could put more objects into international markets, though some may remain hidden for years before reaching auction houses or private collections.

The market’s paperwork test

In July, Yemen’s General Organization of Antiquities and Museums raised concerns about objects offered at London auctions by Bonhams and Apollo Art Auctions. Bonhams listed a South Arabian alabaster woman’s head, dated to about 2,000 years ago, for £5,000 to £8,000 ($6,700-$10,600), and a male head for £20,000 to £30,000. Neither found a buyer. Bonhams said the male head came from a private collection formed in Aden and exported before November 1967, and that it had reviewed provenance and was satisfied the lots were lawfully on the market. Apollo denied knowingly offering unlawfully obtained or looted objects and cited its due-diligence procedures and screening against the Art Loss Register. The allegations didn’t establish that either object was stolen.

Al-Baydani said dealers should provide a credible chain of ownership and relevant export records. He called on the British Museum and auction houses to publish provenance records for objects identified by Yemeni authorities and cooperate with independent reviews. Any object shown to have left Yemen unlawfully, he said, should be withdrawn from sale and returned.

One case shows how recovery can stall. In 2023, the US State Department and Yemen’s embassy asked the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art to care for 77 ancient Yemeni artifacts seized in the United States. Officials formally repatriated the objects to the Yemeni government, but they remain with the museum under an arrangement allowing them to be preserved and, in some cases, displayed. The collection includes 65 funerary stelae and 11 pages from a ninth-century copy of the Qur’an, believed to have originated in documents taken from the Great Mosque of Sanaa.

Archaeological surveys in Yemen have stopped, foreign missions have departed, and the country lacks a coordinated system to protect sites and track missing objects. Thamer said a comprehensive register could help investigators trace artifacts and support restitution claims. UNESCO’s Mohammed Jumeh said in September that heritage properties were “endangered due to the impact of war.” Yemen’s history is left to be counted amid the wreckage, while institutions and markets that might account for it still demand paperwork.