360° King Jayavarman VII @ Angkor National Museum

360° King Jayavarman VII @ Angkor National Museum: Portraiture of the Khmer kings was pretty much missing for centuries until it really kicked off in the 12th century with Suryavarman II on the walls of Angkor Wat, and statues of Jayavarman VII found dotted around his kingdom at Angkor, Preah Khan Kompong Svay and in Phimai, northeast Thailand. Inscriptions tell us that large stone images of Jayavarman were distributed far and wide across the Khmer Empire during his reign from 1181 until 1218. However, he didn’t just install images of himself, he undertook a temple construction program that was unrivalled, as well as pioneering an innovative network of roads, hospitals and rest-houses that linked the kingdom together and will forever seal his legacy as a humane ruler devoted to the well-being of his people and to Buddhism. The Angkor National Museum have a seated statue of Jayavarman VII in their collection, though it’s only been recognized as such in recent times. The body and head were found in fragments in 1934 at Krol Romeas, a site used for taming elephants just north of Angkor Thom, and kept in storage without any recognition that it was an image of the king. The head was moved to the Royal Palace for safety in 1993 because of robberies at the Angkor Conservation Depot, but the torso remained. In October 2002, the head was handed to the National Museum team (under inventory number Ka.3006) and restored in April 2004 before going on display when the Angkor National Museum opened in November 2007. It was nearly two years later, in June 2009, that the head was finally reunited with the torso that had been kept at the conservation depot (DCA658), and identified as a complete statue. The restored exhibit went on display in May 2010. The graceful pose of the seated figure in Dhyana-mudra meditation, with hands clasped on his lap, palms facing upwards, is now believed to be a portrait of the king in the form of the bodhisattva of compassion, Lokeshvara. The face is similar to other portraits of the king – semi-closed eyes, a faint smile, large nose and forehead and long earlobes - with hair combed upwards into a topknot, that has disappeared, though traces of an Amitabha Buddha are noticeable. The damage to the figure over the centuries had been extensive – broken neck, the head was in two pieces and the back part was lost, missing left earlobe, right arm missing at the shoulder, right leg and left knee were also lost. The restoration team have worked wonders to provide the four and a half feet tall exhibit we see on display today. Almost identical statues can be seen at the National Museum in Phnom Penh – where that body was found in 1924 also at Krol Romeas, and the head in 1931, at Angkor Thom’s Gate of the Dead. The arms and hands were found as late as 1994 and are in the form of a traditional Cambodian greeting, with the hands at a chest level sampeah. There’s another seated sculpture in the Phimai Museum in Thailand and a head that was likely found at Ta Prohm, and is a key exhibit in the Khmer collection at the Guimet Museum in Paris, while other partial statues and heads believed to represent the king are also known to exist.