Mapungubwe's royal dead were dug up in 1933 and reburied on their hill in 2007, but the gold rhinoceros stayed in a university museum

Mapungubwe Hill was the centre of a state that archaeologists date to about 1220 to 1290. The elite lived on the hilltop. Archaeologist Thomas Huffman argued that the move to the hill fixed "sacred leadership and class distinction" in place, so rank came by birth. A 2014 study found the same pattern earlier at Mapela Hill in Zimbabwe. On 31 December 1932 a party led by E.S.J. van Graan, guided by a local man, Mowena, reached the hill. In January 1933 excavators opened grave M1 A620, the Original Gold Burial on the summit. It held gold foil fragments and a small rhinoceros of thin gold sheet over a wooden core. The University of Pretoria took the gold and the excavation rights. The government bought the farm Greefswald in June 1933. The skeletons stayed at the university. Communities claiming descent asked for them from the mid-1990s. The National Heritage Resources Act of 1999 made a return possible. The university handed the remains over on 29 October 2007. They were reburied on the hill from 18 to 20 November 2007, each in a sealed container, with no samples taken for destructive tests. The gold was not reburied. It was declared a national heritage collection in October 1997. In 2026 the rhinoceros is on display at the University of Pretoria's Mapungubwe Museum in the Old Arts Building.