Restoring Cambodia’s Shattered Past: The Dancing Shiva of Koh Ker

via Focus Cambodia, 25 April 2024: In Siem Reap, archaeologists and stone restorers face the immense challenge of reconstructing the looted and shattered 10th-century statue of the dancing Shiva from the Koh Ker temple complex. This task, taking place in the Angkor Conservation office, involves piecing together over 10,000 fragments of the once magnificent sculpture.

In a shift from earlier times, looters of the late 20th century sought to evade the law by cutting the link between the objects and their origins.

Antiquities dealers such as the late Douglas Latchford – a prolific collector of Cambodian relics who before his death was criminally charged with smuggling looted artefacts – made use of this tactic of misdirection. Latchford had claimed a massive, three-tonne Ganesha statue he sold was not the original but merely a replica.

The dancing Shiva was one of the last statues in Koh Ker to be looted. While vandals absconded with other nearby pieces, the Shiva remained, possibly because of its large size and because its remaining two faces were worn and in bad condition. But in the early 1990s, looters finally lopped off those faces. In order to break off the heads intact, researchers believe the looters drove chisels lower down on the statue’s body, shattering the torso in the process.

Source: Peace by piece – Focus Cambodia