In Angkor? Don't Steal That Statue: It's a Fake

The

world's largest collection of Khmer sculpture resides, appropriately, at Angkor, the exquisite former royal capital in Cambodia. The 7,000 pieces—full statues, heads and carved inscriptions—are breathtaking not only for their individual beauty, but also for what they collectively represent: a road map to the origins of much of Southeast Asian culture. But this gallery is not in a museum, and isn't open to visitors. The collection is held in anonymous, guarded warehouses where only a few people see it a year. These hoarders assembled it by removing figurines from the ruins of Cambodia's world-famous temples—sometimes decapitating larger pieces—and replacing them with hollow, concrete fakes. Clever art thieves? No, these statue-jackers work for Angkor Conservancy.

Wait a minute! If the real stuff is all locked away, then tourists at Angkor see ... fakes! Well, let's call them replicas. Except for very large pieces too heavy to haul, virtually all surviving Angkorian statuary, wood carvings and artifacts not yet stolen have been replaced with copies. For the most part, these are hard to distinguish from the originals. (Look for lichen: the spottier, the older.) There is no warning in tourist brochures that the art may be imitation, and if local guides are in on the secret, they're doing a good job of keeping it.

This raises an interesting ethical question: Is the tourist, who may be traveling thousands of kilometers on the promise of seeing a 12th century original, being shortchanged? On the other hand, isn't leaving statues scattered across a vast site an invitation to thieves? After all, Cambodian carvings have been a fixture on the international stolen art market since Angkor was sacked by the Thais in 1351. The inheritors of this trade, antique dealers in Bangkok, sometimes still select 800-year-old stone carvings from photographs of Angkorian sites and pay for them to be hacked out and delivered to order by international smuggling rings, which are often in cahoots with Cambodian soldiers.

Any ancient statue or bas-relief is a target, particularly the heads. Once smuggled into Thailand, pilfered pieces find their way to Singapore and Hong Kong—and eventually Japan, Europe and the U.S. Interpol says the global stolen art and antiquities market is second in value only to drugs. At several Cambodian temples, up to 90% of the figureheads or artwork are missing. At one site, Banteay Chhmar near the Thai frontier, entire temple walls vanished in 1999 only to reappear across the border. Art experts are still trying to trace most of that haul. But much has been lost forever: clumsy headhunters often crack open the carvings when attempting to cut them out.

That's why preservation experts say original Khmer art should be no more left out in the open than a Van Gogh. Even removed pieces are at risk: in 1993, a gang armed with machine guns shot a conservancy guard outside a compound at Siem Reap, south of Angkor, fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a storeroom door and made off with 11 statues worth a total of perhaps $500,000. Olivier de Bernon of the Ecole Française d'Extréme Orient, which advises the conservancy, asks: "Is it legitimate to remove statues imperiled by thieves? I guess yes. But not to give access to the original ones in a purposely protected facility—I guess no. There should definitely be a national museum in Siem Reap."

The practice of removing genuine articles is by no means unique to Angkor. De Bernon cites the replica of the Chevaux de Marly, rearing over the Champs ElysEes in Paris—the thoroughbreds are in the Louvre. And in India, archaeologists worried about visitor damage want to seal caves at Ajanta in the central state of Maharashtra. Project director A.C. Grover says only scholars would be allowed to view the 2,000-year-old Buddhist rock paintings inside, while tourists would be shown museum copies.

Even if they don't always see the real thing, tourists are doing a great deal to preserve Cambodian treasures. Their dollars help fund some policing and preservation efforts. And growing interest in Khmer art has also spawned a large, labor-intensive industry producing reproduction statues for a fraction of the price of an original. "It's very difficult to tell the difference between the fake and the real," says Etienne Clément, UNESCO's Cambodian chief. Thieves and collectors appear to share that view. The conservancy reports a number of its replacements are now going missing. And art experts in Phnom Penh tell the tale of one guilt-stricken U.S. enthusiast  who magnanimously returned his prize piece, a 9th century male divinity for which he paid tens of thousands of dollars. On its arrival, they immediately recognized it as a copy and offered to send it back. Ironically, the ignorance of its plunderers may hold the key to Angkor's survival.