PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA — Nhem Liza made her first visit to the National Museum of Cambodia after learning about the August return from the United States of dozens of looted Cambodian artifacts, including important Hindu and Buddhist masterpieces dating from the ninth to 14th centuries.
“Those artifacts are amazing,” said 15-year-old Nhem, a 10th grade Phnom Penh high school student.
The return of the statues — viewed as divine or containing the souls of ancestors — has given younger Cambodians like Nhem an opportunity to embrace the country’s cultural heritage and history.
“I am excited to see these artifacts our government is trying to get back,” she told VOA on September 16 after viewing some of objects now on display at the museum.
Cambodia has worked for years to identify and secure the return of culturally and historically important relics from private collections and museums overseas, many of which were lost to the country because of war, theft and the illegal artifact trade.
Cambodia faced continuous civil unrest from the mid-1960s until the early 1990s and archeological sites from the ancient Khmer Empire, such as Angkor Wat and Koh Ker, suffered serious damage and widespread looting, Cambodian officials told VOA Khmer.
In August, Cambodia celebrated the return of 70 items from museums and private collections overseas, including 14 from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The objects include priceless stone statues such as one depicting 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 Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.
Presiding over the return ceremony, Prime Minister Hun Manet said the 70 returned objects symbolically reunited the Cambodian people with their “ancestral souls,” adding that the government will continue working to bring more artifacts home.
From 1996 to July of this year, 1,098 artifacts had been returned to Cambodia — 571 from private collections and 527 from foreign institutions and governments, Hun said.
“It is the soul of our nation,” Doeun Sokun Aly, 18, told VOA at the museum. “The heroes of our country built those artifacts for the younger generation to know about those antiques. … I will visit museums more to see more artifacts.”
National Museum Director Chhay Visoth told VOA the display is meant to stir new interest from Cambodians, especially younger Cambodians.
“Recently, we have seen a surprising increase of Cambodian visitors to the museum, especially youth,” he said by phone this week.
The authorities, he said, are now planning to conduct a “mobile exhibition” to display the artifacts at museums in provinces such as Siem Reap, Battambang and Pursat, in the northwestern part of the country.
Chhay said the museum also hopes the display will send a message to private collectors and museums overseas that “those artifacts are greatly important” and “not for beautifying gardens, kitchens, living rooms, residents or offices of the rich.”
“For Cambodians, they are meaningful indeed. Those artifacts are the souls of Khmer ancestors,” he said.
Chhay added that the museum is already planning to expand its display area to accommodate more returned artifacts.
Over the years, Cambodia has received dozens of statues from the families of wealthy collectors, such as George Lindemann, a U.S. 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 artifacts, according to the government.
Latchford, who co-authored three books on Cambodian art and antiques, died in 2020 facing accusations that he had illegally trafficked the artifacts to his homes in Bangkok and London.
In November 2019, federal prosecutors in New York charged Latchford with falsifying the provenance, invoices and shipping documents to transport valuable Khmer-era relics to private collections, museums and auction houses around the world.
Other cultural objects that have found their way back to Cambodia went through processes including voluntary returns, negotiations, seizures and legal proceedings.
The United States has helped secure the return of well over 150 antiques to Cambodia so far, Wesley Holzer, a U.S. Embassy spokesperson in Phnom Penh said.
“The United States is proud of its longstanding contributions to preserving and restoring Cambodia’s cultural heritage,” he told VOA in an email, adding that Cambodia is the first country in Southeast Asia to establish a bilateral property repatriation memorandum of understanding with the U.S.
“Through this MOU, the United States and Cambodia have trained heritage professionals, prevented pillaging of antiquities, and facilitated the return of looted artifacts. This agreement also makes it illegal to import certain Cambodian archeological and ethnological material into the United States,” he added.
Bradley Gordon, a lawyer representing Cambodian government, said there were “many more” that his team are searching for.
“To be clear, Cambodia does not want to empty out museums around the world, but wants many important and precious national treasures to come home. Cambodia also is open to long-term loans which they are exploring with a number of museums,” he added.
A member of Gordon’s restitution team, Cambodian researcher Kunthea Chhoun, said getting the artifacts back is not easy.
“We need to investigate and collect testimonies from looters, villagers and brokers. It takes a great amount of patience and many interviews. We have used different approaches to get back our artifacts and it has taken many years,” she told VOA in a September 20 email.
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