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The thousand-year-old statue of the warrior that some experts believe was removed from its pedestal at a temple in Koh Ker, another city in the Khmer empire that once rivaled the capital Angkor, is sitting ?in limbo? at Sotheby?s after it was pulled from an auction at the last minute, The New York Times said. The piece, estimated to be worth 2-3 million dollars, was pulled after the Cambodian government complained it had been ?illegally removed? from the country, the paper added.
Working with the UNESCO office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia has asked Sotheby?s to bargain with ?a wealthy Hungarian antiquities collector?, Zelnik, who has offered to pay 1 million dollars for the statue and present it to Cambodia as an act of good will, the paper said.
?There is no question the statue was looted in the final stages of the war,? the paper quoted Zelnik as saying. ?The best solution is that I purchase it for purposes of donation,? he added.
Earlier, the Zelnik István Southeast Asian Gold Museum, which houses Zelnik?s collection, donated a 12th century silver bowl inscribed with Old Khmer writing to the Cambodian National Museum in Phnom Penh.
Zelnik, who acquired the piece, entirely tarnished, 20 years earlier at an antiques market, put its present value in the tens of millions of forints.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI) / NYTimes
