Cultural object
Khmer lintel (British Museum)
The British Museum Khmer lintel is a carved sandstone lintel showing Shiva and Parvati seated on their bull, held by the British Museum.[1][2] A lintel is the stone beam laid above a doorway, and in Khmer temples lintels crowned the doors of the sanctuaries.[2]
The object
The lintel measures 58.4 centimeters (23 inches) high and 132.1 centimeters (52 inches) long.[2] It survives in one piece with a deeply carved surface, though both sides appear to have been sawn off.[2] Floral scrolls flow from the mouth of a makara.[2] The floral arch meets a kala, the face of a mythical creature, which bites into the garland, a motif found in several periods of Khmer art.[2] The museum's catalog reference is 1971,0924.1.[1]
Iconography
The scene at the center is Umamahesvara, Shiva with his consort Parvati. The pair sit together on the bull Nandi above a kala head, their inner arms joined and their outer arms raised in a lively embrace.[2] Shiva has two arms, as he often does in Khmer art.[2] The object in his raised right hand is hard to identify. It looks more like a flame or a lotus than his usual trident or rosary.[2]
Another figure, with large prominent eyes, rises behind the couple between the bull's tail and Parvati's raised arm. It is probably the demon Ravana, and the scene is likely the story in which Ravana shakes the mountain where Shiva and Parvati live.[2] An almost identical scene is held by the Conservation d'Angkor in Siem Reap.[2]
Date and origin
The British Museum dates the lintel to the mid-10th century. Its record gives Cambodia as the possible place of making and northeast Thailand as the supposed findspot.[1][3]
Details of the carving point to other dates. The figures wear a sampot, a wrapped lower garment, with a broad fold at the waist and a smooth belt, a dress that may belong to the 10th-century Banteay Srei style. The blunt nose of the kala suggests instead the Baphuon style of the mid to late 11th century.[2] The upper floral frieze is like those on some 11th- and 12th-century Khmer lintels from northeast Thailand, and the stone appears to match a known group of Thai sandstones. Neither the stone nor the style fixes the lintel's exact origin.[2]
Provenance
Douglas Latchford gave the lintel to the British Museum in 1971, together with a second Khmer lintel now registered as 1971,0924.2. The Trustees' minutes of September 18, 1971, record both gifts.[1][3] The two gifts came during a period of documented looting of Khmer temple sculpture.[3] The museum website gives no exhibition history for either lintel, and as of 2024 both were in storage.[2]