Two looted pieces of history on their way back to Thailand

Two massive Khmer carvings will be returned to Thailand from a California museum over 50 years after they were allegedly looted from the kingdom, the U.S. Justice Department announced today.

The return of the carvings, large architectural lintels weighing 680 kilograms each, was negotiated after the U.S. federal government filed a complaint against the city and county of San Francisco, where they were kept at its Asian Art Museum, according to David L. Anderson, a federal attorney in Northern California.

“The theft and trafficking of cultural artifacts is a tradition as old as the cultures they represent,” said Tatum King of Homeland Security Investigations, which has been investigating artifacts looted from abroad. “Through our work in this investigation in partnership with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California, we have diligently…