Khmer Dagger in USA Museum:
A very rare ceremonial Khmer gilded-bronze dagger, dating back to the middle of the 11th century, is on display to the public in the South and Southeast Asia Gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Ancient arms and armour from the Khmer Empire is scarce, so this dagger is important, particularly as it has a two-line inscription offering up a precise date of 1040-1041 AD. The dagger, with a broad double-edged blade and a hilt with a distinctive pommel and guard, was mercury-gilded, and measures 23 cm long and 8 cm wide at the hilt. However, its provenance could be questionable, as it was sold to the museum by Spink and Son, London art dealers, in June 1968, who were well-known as the clearing-house for antiquities sourced from Douglas Latchford, the Bangkok-based trafficker of Khmer artworks for over five decades. Latchford just so happened to include the bronze dagger in his glossy 2004 book, Adoration and Glory: The Golden Age of Khmer Art, claiming that the item was dated a hundred years earlier, due to an incorrect transcribing of the inscription. According to the MFA website, the inscription reads: ‘962 Saka [=1040/41 AD] offering of Lon 'Yak of Canhuar from the monastery/estate of Kamraten Jagat Treh,’ having been corrected by Gerdi Gerschheimer and Brice Vincent in 2010. It’s numbered K.1048 in the list of Khmer inscriptions. The MFA pride themselves as a leader in the field of research on provenance, or the history of ownership, of works of art in its encyclopedic collection; they follow the highest standards of professional practice in regards to issues of ownership and in its response to claims for works in the collection, according to their website. I wonder how they will or are responding to any inquiry from Cambodia for the potential repatriation of this particular Khmer treasure.
[Photo: Ceremonial Dagger: Accession Number 68.289. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. www.mfa.org.]
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