Visited the National Museum this morning. It reminds me a lot of the Egyptian Antiquities Museum in Cairo. It’s great to see statuary that is missing from the temples we have visited: the fighting apes at Koh Ker and many Vishnu statues from the Angkor area temples. There is a nice cobweb stretching between the apes’ faces and there are pedestals without items or museum tags. The layout is chronological which helps those of us still struggling with our Khmer history and there are some interesting historical maps to show Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, Laos, and China’s territories in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. We could not find a good inventory guidebook in the gift shop; the book we purchased features only the highlights of their collection.
They don’t allow pictures inside the museum. We purchased a “permit” for one dollar that allowed us to take pictures in the inner garden.
One of the items I was looking forward to seeing is what I’ll call the “Vishnu wall” from Banteay Chhmar. One of the inner walls had several Vishnu carvings on it. In the late 1990s, a long stretch of the wall was looted – the entire wall was dismantled instead of the wall face just chiseled as so many are – and put on trucks bound for Thailand. The Thai authorities confiscated the six Vishnu carvings and returned them to Cambodia in January 2000. We had been told they were now in the National Museum but I didn’t find them until the end of our visit. We purchased some drinks and sat down in the “break” area. I glance up and there are two pieces of wall featuring Vishnu behind me. Argh! I guess they didn’t want to rearrange the current collection to fit them in. Disappointing. Two of the best Vishnu were left at Banteay Chmmar: they are the best looking pieces of the wall. Whatever. It was good to visit the National Museum.
MediciTen 