Cambodian bronze

In 2006, a woman digging in her garden unearthed seven ancient Buddhist bronzes in Sdaeung Chey village, Cheung Prey district, Kampong Cham Province in Cambodia. Rather than selling them on the black market, she did the proper thing and gave them to the Cambodian National Museum. They appeared to date back to the sixth and seventh centuries and although they displayed different styles and seemed to have come from diff erent backgrounds they formed a unique group that had been in the same spot in the ground for centuries. They are by no means the only ancient bronze artifacts still to be found in the ground, or that have been unearthed in recent times, but needless to say, they do not all end up in the museum in Phnom Penh or other public venues.

Reviewed publication:
Louise Allison Cort and Paul Jett (eds.) 2010. Gods of Ankor: Bronzes from the National Museum of Cambodia, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, distributed by University of Washington Press and Silkworm Books, ISBN: 978-0934686-17-4

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