Heading back home:
As indicated yesterday, an 11th century Baphuon-style antiquity was handed-over to Cambodia’s representatives in New York, including HE Koy Kuong, the newly appointed Ambassador of Cambodia to the United States and Mexico, by Matthew Bogdanos, chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit with the New York County District Attorney's Office. The male torso was identified by Mélanie Theillet as being one of the artifacts stolen from the Wat Po Veal Museum in Battambang during the civil war of the 1970s, and published as one of 67 artworks in the book, Missing Objects from Wat Po Veal and Battambang Provincial Museums (2015). The stone deity came up for auction in September 2024 at Freeman's-Hindman of Chicago, USA and sold for US$3,500 but has been recovered after an investigation. A second separate artifact, a male head from the twelfth century, may’ve once been part of a Buddha Muchalinda sculpture but further details were not made public in the reporting.
