Cambodia welcomes the Mets repatriation of centuries-old statues looted during past turmoil

On Thursday, Cambodia’s culture minister said the return to Cambodia this week of 14 sculptures that had been looted from the country during a period of war and unrest is like welcoming home the souls of ancestors.

The items repatriated from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art arrived on Wednesday and were displayed to journalists and VIPs on Thursday at the National Museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

They “were made between the 9th and 14th centuries in the Angkorian period and…