[Article] United States Returns 7 Stolen Ancient Cambodian Sculptures.

Sunday, June 27, 2010 | Art daily.org | 2010 The Associated Press

Cambodian Buddhist monks and officers pray during a ceremony held for artifacts that were returned to Cambodia, at the Cambodian National Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Thursday, June 17, 2010. The United States returned seven sculptures from the great Angkorian era on Thursday that had been smuggled out of Cambodia. AP Photo/Heng Sinith.

PHNOM PENH (AP).- The United States returned seven sculptures from the great Angkorian era on Thursday that had been smuggled out of Cambodia.
Cambodian Buddhist monks blessed the artifacts during a handover ceremony at the port of Sihanoukville, said John Johnson, a U.S. embassy spokesman. The sandstone sculptures were recovered by U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials during an 2008 raid in Los Angeles. They arrived in Cambodia aboard the hospital ship USNS Mercy on Tuesday, Johnson said. The Mercy docked at the seaport for a 13-day mission to provide free medical care to Cambodians. Johnson said the artifacts include two heads of the Buddha, a bas-relief and an engraved plinth. The items date from 1000 to 1500 when the kings of Angkor ruled over an extensive empire and produced some of the world's most magnificent temples, including the famed Angkor Wat complex. Cambodia and the United States signed an agreement to protect Cambodia's cultural heritage in 2003.
In 2007, the U.S. government returned the sandstone sculpture of a celestial dancer, or apsara, dating from the 12th century. [ ... Read the full article ... ]

[Article] New List Aims to Stem Tide of Cambodian Stolen Antiquities.

02 March 2010 | Robert Carmichael | Phnom Penh

Cambodia recently released a publication that it hopes will help reduce the number of artifacts being stolen from sites and temples and sold on the international market.
One thousand years ago, Cambodia's Angkorean empire was at its peak, ruling areas that are now part of Thailand, Vietnam and Laos.
Today, its achievements are admired by two-million foreign tourists who visit Cambodia each year.  Many come to visit the crowning achievement of Angkor Wat, the famed temple-city in the Cambodia's northwest.
But, in recent years, Cambodia's rich cultural heritage has been plundered, with many temples and ancient sites ransacked for statues.  Those trying to preserve the heritage sometimes struggle to do so.
Hab Touch is the outgoing director of the National Museum in Phnom Penh.
He says one method recently adopted to combat the theft of antiquities is the publication of a glossy eight-page brochure. The booklet lists the different categories of Khmer artifacts at risk of being stolen and smuggled abroad.
The publication, which is called the Red List, was drawn up in conjunction with the International Council of Museums.
The Red List will be distributed to Cambodian border and customs officials, as well as to museums and auction houses overseas, as part of a strategy to combat the illicit trade.
"I hope that the Red List will also play an important [role] in protecting Cambodian cultural artifacts and I strongly believe that the Red List, in the future, will build more capacity for the protection of Cambodian heritage," he said.
The items on the Red List range from jewelry and weapons to stone heads and bronze statues. The brochure lists beads from more than 2,000 years back and wooden items from just a century ago.
It is, in short, a comprehensive time capsule of Cambodian artistic achievement.
Douglad O'Reilly is the director of Heritage Watch, an organization set up to combat the plunder of Cambodia's cultural heritage. O'Reilly says the problem of looting is widespread.
"I think that the problem is fairly substantial.  We are finding that in rural areas there is quite a lot of activity.  There has been, since about 2000, a significant amount of heritage destruction at archaeological sites that date especially to the period from 500 BC to 500 AD," he said.  "So people are excavating illegally a lot of cemetery sites in the search for carnellian and agate beads and glass beads and other artifacts."
O'Reilly applauds the idea behind the Red List, saying it has the potential to reduce dramatically the number of items being smuggled across the border -- as long as the brochures printed in Khmer and Thai actually reach the officials at the border posts. (...)

Read the full article here >>

- Photo : R. Carmichael / A wall relief stolen in 1998 from Banteay Chhmar temple in north-western Cambodia, and later returned from Thailand. It now stands in the National Museum in Phnom Penh.
- Source : VOA News.

Cham Sculpture Museum’s website unveiled [VNNet]

VietNamNet Bridge |  21/01/2009 – The website of the Da Nang-based Cham Sculpture Museum was launched last week, opening a new door for this unique museum to reach out to the world.
The website officially came out on January 15 at www.chammuseum.danang.vn, in Vietnamese and English. This is one of several websites opened by museums in Vietnam.
The site offers useful information about the Cham Sculpture Museum, including the history of Cham culture, collections, documents and others. The museum aims to turn this site into an online forum about Cham culture.
The museum was built by the French in the central city of Da Nang in the early 20th century. It has more than 3,000 objects collected from central provinces.
Most of the items displayed at the museum are originals made of three major materials – sandstone, terra-cotta and bronze – from the 7th to the 14th centuries.
The museum welcomed around 170,000 visitors last year, earning VND5 billion.

 

Writer: Hai Chau

Découverte d'une statue de Nandin à Yogyakarta (Java, Indonésie)

Sacred Statue Uncovered at Site of Ancient Hindu Temple in Yogyakarta

Ari Adji - Jakarta Globe

A statue of Nandi, the sacred bull that carried the Hindu god Shiva, was discovered on Wednesday among the ruins of what is believed to be an ancient temple at an excavation site in Yogyakarta.

Indung Panca Putra, the head of the excavation team from the Yogyakarta Antiquities and Relics Conservation Agency, said the discovery of the statue, which in Hindu mythology is said to embody sexual energy and fertility, meant that the team would now continue its work until Jan. 20. A previous deadline for the excavation work had been set for Jan. 6.
“The statue is exquisite,” Indung said. “The sculpture is carved differently from other statues of Nandi. This one is not depicted as fat.”
Previous discoveries at the site, which is located on the Indonesian Islamic University campus, include a statue of Ganesha, Shiva’s divine son; a linga , the symbol of worship for Shiva; and a yoni , a Hindu symbol for divine passage or birth.
“We strongly believe the temple had a roof and its pillars were made of wood or bamboo,” Indung said.
He said archeologists were working under the assumption that the pillars had not been destroyed by a volcanic mudflow hundreds of years ago, but had instead been removed by people.

Indung said that the temple ruins were different from other temples found in Central Java.
“We have compared what we have found to what was found in the temples of Sambisari, Gebang and Kedulan. The comparisons have led us to believe that the material used for the temple and its statues were much harder and the sculptures are far more refined,” Indung said.
The first discovery at the site, the Ganesha statue on Dec. 21, was made when the university was preparing to lay foundations for a new library. Indung said excavation machines uncovered rocks five-meters deep that resembled an ancient building complex.
The conservation team, consisting of four archaeologists and four engineers, has been working ever since to find other statues.

For security reasons, the campus has had to install a fence around the dig site. The archaeological find is considered vulnerable to theft, considering the historical value of the temple.

Conférence: Pr. Y. Ishizawa, "Les 274 sculptures bouddhiques ..."

Conférence du Professeur Y. Ishizawa* :

Les 274 sculptures bouddhiques récemment découvertes à Angkor
Salon d'honneur de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient
22bis, avenue du Président Wilson
75116 - Paris
(métro Iéna ou Trocadéro) 
Vendredi 20 novembre, 18h30.

"Lors de campagnes de fouilles effectuées dans le site de Banteay Kdei à Angkor, en 2000-2001, les archéologues de la Mission de l'Université Sophia sont tombés sur une fosse contenant 274 statues et un caitya bouddhiques.
L'ensevelissement de ces statues témoigne sans doute de la forte réaction çivaïte au bouddhisme mahâyâna précédemment soutenu par le roi Jayavarman VII.
A présent, ces statues, d'une grande variété de styles, ont été étudiées et répertoriées et certaines, d'une très grande beauté, commencent à être présentées au public."

 * Yoshiaki Ishizawa, Président de l'Université Sophia de Tokyo et Directeur de la Mission internationale pour l'étude scientifique d'Angkor de l'Université Sophia.

La jambe perdue de la statue Hevajra (Met, NY) a été retrouvée à Siem Reap.

Lost legs found in Siem Reap
Phnom Penh Post, 29 September 2009

THE missing piece of an ancient sculpture of the Buddhist deity Hevajra, the bust of which is on display in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, has been recovered from a historic site in Siem Reap province.
The legs of the sandstone carving, which dates back to the 12th century, were stumbled upon by a British archaeologist this summer. He had been trying to find the spot where French archaeologists first discovered the sculpture’s remains in 1925 near Angkor Thom, the walled city of King Jayavarman VII (1125-1215). Instead, to his amazement, he found the statue’s legs “just lying there on the jungle floor”.
Dr Peter Sharrock, a senior teaching fellow in the art and archaeology of Southeast Asia department at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, said the French archaeologists must have removed the bust, but left the legs, unaware of the artefact’s significance.