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By CARL HARTMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) - A millennium after Angkor emerged in
Cambodia's jungle as capital of a great empire, thieves are still
sawing pieces off the ruins of the world's biggest religious
monument for sale in New York's art market.
The International Council of Museums is using the first major
U.S. exhibit of Cambodian art, opening Sunday at the National
Gallery of Art, to begin a campaign for recovery of the stolen
artwork.
[snip]
The Angkor complex sprawls across 150 miles or more of
Cambodia's jungle, renowned both for its sheer size and the
exquisite sculpture of its stone temples.
In 1186, when the Khmers already had ruled Kampuchea for
hundreds of years, the temple of Ta Prohm alone was served by
12,640 ordinary people, 2,740 officiating priests, 615 dancers and
13 high priests. It was the center of a Kampuchean empire
stretching across southeast Asia.
The site eventually was largely overtaken by jungle, lost to the
world except for local people, until French archaeologists began
spreading word of its wonders early this century.
Soon after, the loss of noteworthy pieces began.
Angkor lies near the headquarters of Cambodia's splintered Khmer
Rouge rebel movement. When the Khmer Rouge ruled the country in a
reign of terror between 1975 and 1979, many of the country's art
experts were among up to 2 million Cambodians they killed. Some
objects at the National Museum were damaged and stolen.
But conservators say the Khmer Rouge did little harm at Angkor
except to some statues of the Buddha, which they regarded as
foreign. Most of Angkor honors Hindu gods.
Instead, lovers of ancient art are the threat. Early in the
century the French writer Andre Malraux was jailed briefly for
using a handsaw, chisel and crowbar to take seven stones from the
temple of Banteay Srei.
Thierry Zephir of the Guimet Museum in Paris said he admired in
January 1993 several heads of vultures carved on Banteay Srei. He
returned six months later and found them gone.
``Somebody obviously wanted just those heads,'' he said.
The museum council praised New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art
and the Honolulu Academy of Arts this month for their decisions to
return stolen Cambodian sculptures.
[snip]
Still, as recently as a year ago a customer could go into an
antique shop across the Thai border in Bangkok, examine pictures of
the temples and order pieces to be sawed off, said Helen Ibbitson
Jessup, the National Gallery exhibit's curator.
[snip]
-Ajay Shah
ajay@mercury.aichem.arizona.edu
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