Created: Wednesday, 12 June 2013 09:02

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA—The two statues known as the Kneeling Attendants have returned to Cambodia after nearly twenty years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. They are thought to have been taken from the Koh Ker Temple in Siem Reap during the civil war of the 1970s, and were donated to The Metropolitan Museum in pieces between 1987 and 1992. The statues were welcomed home by government officials and Buddhist monks. “It was a great privilege to be able to show works of Khmer art in New York, but we are also very pleased to see these pieces rightfully returned to Cambodia,” said Maxwell K. Hearn, head of the Asian Art department at the museum. The Kneeling Attendants will reside in Phnom Penh’s National Museum.