“Souls of the Ancestors” Exhibition Sparks New Interest in Cambodian Antiquity

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA —

Nhem Liza first visited the National Museum of Cambodia after learning of the return from the United States in August of dozens of stolen Cambodian artifacts, including important Hindu and Buddhist masterpieces dating from the ninth to the 14th century.

“These artifacts are amazing,” said Nhem, 15, a 10th-grade high school student in Phnom Penh.

The return of the statues – believed to be divine or to contain the souls of ancestors – has given young Cambodians like Nhem a chance to learn about the country’s cultural heritage and history.

“I’m happy to see the artifacts that our government is trying to recover,” she told VOA on Sept. 16 after viewing some of the objects currently on display at the museum.

Cambodia has been working for years to identify and secure the return of culturally and historically valuable artifacts from private collections and museums abroad, many of which were lost to the country through war, theft and illegal trade in artifacts.

Cambodia suffered from sustained civil unrest from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, and archaeological sites dating back to the ancient Khmer Empire, such as Angkor Wat and Koh Ker, suffered extensive damage and looting, Cambodian officials told VOA Khmer.

In August, Cambodia celebrated the return of 70 artifacts from foreign museums and private collections, including 14 from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The items include priceless stone statues, such as one of a mythical warrior from the Hindu epic Mahabharata. There are also statues of Hindu deities Shiva and Parvati and one of the Hindu god Ardhanarishvara from the ancient capital of Koh Ker, according to the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.

Presiding over the return ceremony, Prime Minister Hun Manet said the 70 returned items symbolically united the Cambodian nation with the “souls of the ancestors”, adding that the government would continue to take steps to bring more artifacts back to the country.

From 1996 to July this year, 1,098 artifacts have been returned to Cambodia — 571 from private collections and 527 from foreign institutions and governments, Hun said.

“It’s the soul of our nation,” Doeun Sokun Aly, 18, told VOA at the museum. “The heroes of our country built these artifacts so that the younger generation could learn about these antiquities. … I will visit museums more often to see more artifacts.”

National Museum director Chhay Visoth told VOA the exhibition aims to generate new interest among Cambodians, especially younger ones.

“We have recently seen a surprising increase in the number of Cambodians visiting the museum, especially young ones,” he said by phone this week.

Authorities now plan to organize a “mobile exhibition” in which the exhibits will be presented in museums in the provinces of Siem Reap, Battambang and Pursat, in the northwestern part of the country.

Chhay said the museum also hopes the exhibition will send a message to private collectors and museums abroad that “these artifacts are extremely important” and “are not for beautifying the gardens, kitchens, living rooms, residents or offices of the wealthy.”

“For Cambodians, they are indeed significant. These artifacts are the souls of Khmer ancestors,” he said.

Chhay added that the museum is already planning to expand its exhibition space to accommodate more of the returned artifacts.

Over the years, Cambodia has received dozens of statues from the families of wealthy collectors such as George Lindemann, an American businessman and philanthropist who died in 2018.

In 2021, after three years of negotiations, the family of the late British art collector Douglas Latchford agreed to return more than 100 Cambodian artefacts, the government said.

Latchford, co-author of three books on Cambodian art and antiquities, died in 2020 amid accusations of illegally trading artifacts and smuggling them to his homes in Bangkok and London.

In November 2019, federal prosecutors in New York charged Latchford with falsifying provenance, invoices and shipping documents to transport valuable Khmer-era relics to private collections, museums and auction houses around the world.

Other cultural property that has been returned to Cambodia has gone through various procedures, including voluntary returns, negotiations, confiscations and legal proceedings.

The United States has helped secure the return of more than 150 antiquities to Cambodia, said Wesley Holzer, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh.

“The United States is proud of its long-standing contribution to the preservation and restoration of Cambodia’s cultural heritage,” he told VOA in an email, adding that Cambodia is the first country in Southeast Asia to enter into a bilateral memorandum of understanding on the repatriation of assets with the United States.

“Through this MOU, the United States and Cambodia have trained heritage professionals, prevented the looting of antiquities, and facilitated the return of looted artifacts. The agreement also makes it illegal to import certain Cambodian archaeological and ethnological materials into the United States,” he added.

Bradley Gordon, a lawyer representing the Cambodian government, said his team is looking for “a lot more.”

“To be clear, Cambodia does not want to empty museums around the world, but it does want many important and valuable national treasures to come home. Cambodia is also open to long-term loans, which it is exploring with a number of museums,” he added.

A member of Gordon’s restitution team, Cambodian researcher Kunthea Chhoun, said recovering the artifacts would not be easy.

“We need to investigate and collect statements from the robbers, villagers and intermediaries. This requires a lot of patience and a lot of interviews. We used different approaches to recover our artifacts and it took many years,” she told VOA in an email on September 20.