Looted Statue

Cambodia’s National Museum is slated to receive an artefact on Saturday that has been sought since its disappearance sometime in the 1970s. “This body of a four-armed deity, whose head has been lost, dates back to the 11th century. It was originally a part of the Ta Dong temple in the Angkor temple region,” said Chea Socheat, deputy chief of conservation at the National Museum. The statue is being donated by Wolfgang Felten, who encountered the object at the sale of a private collector in his native Germany. Felten recognised the statue from a UNESCO book about objects that had been looted from Cambodian temples and decided to purchase it on the Kingdom’s behalf, museum public relations officer Nguon Sophal said.