A trove of stolen Cambodian treasure has been secretly returned to Phnom Penh after being discovered in London.
Experts said they had never seen most of the precious jewellery before – some which dates back to the seventh century – and that they were stunned.
The stolen collection belonged to Douglas Latchford, an antiquities dealer who died in 2020 while facing charges in the US for fraud and smuggling.
After being returned to Phnom Penh, the Angkorian crown jewellery is due to go on display.
Brad Gordon, the head of Cambodia's investigative team told the BBC how he became the first representative of Cambodia to see the jewellery in London last summer.
“I was driven by a representative of the Latchford family to an undisclosed location. In the parking lot was a vehicle with four boxes inside,” he said.
“I felt like crying. I just thought – wow – the crown jewels of [an] ancient Cambodian civilisation packed into four boxes in the back of a car."
Among the vast trove are 77 pieces of jewellery, including crowns, belts and earrings, as well as a large, seemingly solid gold bowl, which may have been used to eat rice by royalty.
It is unclear how the items were stolen and came to be in London, although it is reported some may have been stolen from Angkor Wat.
The UNESCO world heritage site was heavily looted during French colonial rule but other temples were also looted during the Khmer Rouge era.
Cambodian authorities believe that more looted Angkorian items may turn up.
They say they have evidence that Latchford was attempting to secretly sell this collection as late as 2019 from a north London warehouse.
Latchford wrote a book with collaborator Emma Bunker in 2008 called Khmer Gold, which experts have described as a sales brochure for private collectors to let them know what was being sold illegally.
Ashley Thompson, a professor in South East Asian art at SOAS, told the broadcaster: “Publishing these materials, inviting other scholars to contribute and comparing the items to museum pieces was a way of validating them and associating them with known materials already in museums and effectively enhancing their value.”
However, she said that the book contained half-truths, meaning it would take time to piece together where the jewellery really came from.
