Metropolitan Museum Will Repatriate Sculpture to Nepal

NEW YORK, NEW YORK—The New York Times reports that the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it will return a tenth-century sculpture to Nepal. The 13-inch sculpture, which depicts the Hindu deity Lord Shiva on Mount Kailash in the Himalayas, is now thought to have been looted from a temple in the Kathmandu Valley about 50 years ago, based upon gaps in its provenance. A collector donated the sculpture to the museum in 1995. “We have so many objects like the Shiva statue on our list,” said Roshan Mishra of the Taragaon Museum and the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign. “One by one, they will end up returning.” To read about excavations of an early Buddhist shrine in Nepal, go to "Buddhism, in the Beginning," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2014.