Cultural object
Female Divinity (Musee Guimet)
The Guimet female divinity is a Khmer sandstone statue of a goddess from the Bakong temple, made around 881 and now in the Musée Guimet.[1][2] Its head and body were found apart and were reunited at the museum in 2006, 70 years after the body arrived.[2]
The object
The statue stands 142 centimeters (56 inches) high.[1] The face has broad features set within a square outline, and the eyebrows form one continuous, sharply drawn arch.[2] An outline level with the temples frames the hair. The diadem is a wide band of small flowers set in lozenges and triangles, with plain molded edges and a frieze of flowers and stems along the top.[2] The museum's catalog reference is MA 12174.[1]
Iconography
These features belong to the Preah Ko style, in which images of the gods have a formal and majestic bearing.[2] The goddess probably stood in one of the brick towers at the foot of the Bakong pyramid, likely beside one of the eight forms of Shiva worshipped there.[2]
Date and origin
King Indravarman, who reigned from 877 to at least 886, consecrated the Bakong in 881 in honor of Shiva in the form of the linga.[2] The head and the body were both found in this sanctuary, but in places far apart from each other.[2]
Provenance
The body was sent to the Musée Guimet by the École française d'Extrême-Orient (French School of the Far East) in 1936, under the number MG 18862. It was shown without a head from then on.[1][2] The head had long been known and was kept in the Angkor Conservation depository. Cambodia later offered it to John Gunther Dean when he was United States ambassador. In 2006 Ambassador and Mrs. John Gunther Dean gave the head to the French national collections, and it was matched with the body.[1][2]
The statue is on view at the Musée Guimet-Iéna.[2] It is one of the featured works of the museum's Southeast Asia collection.[3]