Pandava

Pandava

At some point in the early 1970s, this 10th century Khmer statue of Pandava was looted from Prasat Chen temple within the Koh Ker complex in northwest Cambodia.

This Pandava, one of five brother warriors from Hindu mythology, had once stood near a series of other Khmer statues that were also later looted: the Duryodhana, which was seized from Sotheby's in 2012; the Bhima, returned by the Norton Simon Museum in 2014; and two Kneeling Attendants, returned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013.

Christie's sold the Pandava to an anonymous collector in 2009 for USD $146,500, but bought it back in 2014 amid a federal investigation of Sotheby's over its role in the auction of the Duryodhana looted from the same site. Investigators in Cambodia and New York had determined that the Pandava had also been looted but did not know its current owner.

Christie's had previously tried to auction the same Pandava statue in 2000, but attracted no buyers. It only provenance at the time was the London auction house Spink and Son, Ltd., a regular partner of the British antiquities trafficker Douglas Latchford, who sold most of the objects looted from Koh Ker.

In light of increasing evidence attesting to the looting and illicit export of the entire Prasat Chen temple assemblage, Christie’s agreed to return the Pandava to Cambodia in 2014 in a ceremony at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh, alongside Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Dr. Sok An.

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Sculpture – statues, carvings, bronzes, reliefs, figurines

Khmer

Christie's

An unnamed private collector purchased the statue in 2009

Cambodia

Jason Felch

Damien Huffer

Liv Siefert