PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA, MAY 17, 2015 (By Sopheng Cheang, The Associated Press): Cambodia welcomed home a 10th century stone statue of a Hindu God that was looted from a temple during the country’s civil war and spent the past three decades at an American museum. The sculpture of Hanuman was formally handed over Tuesday at a ceremony in Phnom Penh attended by government officials and the director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, which acquired the sculpture in 1982.
The statue was stolen from the Prasat Chen Temple in the Koh Ker temple complex in Siem Reap province, which is also home to the famed Angkor Wat temples, said Sok An, adding that it was shipped to Europe and then the U.S. Officials at the Cleveland museum found last year that the statue’s head and body were sold separately in 1968 and 1972 during the Vietnam War and the Cambodian civil war. An excavation showed the sculpture’s base matched a pedestal at the ancient temple.