UK Returns 74 Cambodian Artifacts
The UK has returned 74 looted artifacts to Cambodia, part of a growing global movement to repatriate cultural treasures to their countries of origin. The returned pieces likely include items connected to Cambodia's Angkor period and ancient temple complexes.
The 74 returned artifacts are part of a collection belonging to the late Douglas Latchford, a British art dealer and scholar. In 2019, U.S. prosecutors charged Latchford with running a major trafficking network for looted Cambodian antiquities. He died in 2020 before he could be extradited. Following his death, Latchford's daughter entered into an agreement with Cambodia in 2020 to return his entire collection of over 100 artifacts, valued at more than $50 million. This recent repatriation is the third installment of that agreement. The returned treasures include significant pieces like two 9th-century sandstone sculptures of a "divine couple" from the early Angkorian period and a sandstone head of the Hindu god Brahma from the Koh Ker temple complex. Many of these items were violently pried from temple walls during Cambodia's years of conflict. The looting of Cambodia's cultural heritage was rampant from the 1970s through the 1990s, a period that included the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. Organized networks supplied dealers like Latchford, who then sold the artifacts to Western collectors and museums. This return is part of a larger global movement. In recent years, institutions like New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art have also returned looted Cambodian artifacts connected to Latchford. The repatriated items will be housed in the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh.
