The National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh is the country's foremost repository of Khmer art and history, housed in a striking terracotta-red building constructed in traditional Khmer architectural style. Its galleries are said to hold what is believed to be among the world's largest collections of Khmer sculpture and artifacts, spanning centuries of the Khmer Empire's artistic output. The museum sits near the confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers in the heart of the capital, making it a natural hub for anyone tracing the empire's legacy. In S12E07 of Expedition Unknown, Gates visited the museum to examine repatriated statues from the lost capital of Koh Ker — including pieces identified as a Shiva and a Skanda sculpture — and consulted with attorney Brad Gordon to understand the staggering scale of looting that stripped that jungle city of its finest works. The museum's repatriation holdings represent both a victory for Cambodian cultural heritage and a sobering reminder of how much has been lost.
Sculptures created at Koh Ker under King Jayavarman IV, the works that would eventually make their way into international markets and, later, the museum's collection
The National Museum of Cambodia opened to the public, established under French colonial administration as a home for Khmer antiquities
Gates visits the museum during filming of Expedition Unknown S12E07, examining repatriated Koh Ker statues and learning about the looting crisis from attorney Brad Gordon
In S12E07, Gates used the National Museum as a gateway into one of Southeast Asia's most pressing archaeological justice stories. Attorney Brad Gordon — named on camera — walked Gates through the legal and logistical challenges of tracing looted Khmer artifacts back to their origin sites and negotiating their return. The presence of the Koh Ker statues in the museum's collection reflects years of diplomatic and legal effort, and Gates' conversation with Gordon underscores that repatriation is rarely a simple transaction.
The broader context, as the episode lays out, is that Koh Ker was the short-lived capital of the Khmer Empire under King Jayavarman IV in the 10th century — a remote jungle city built over roughly 20 years and then abandoned with equal suddenness. Its temples and pyramids were adorned with extraordinary sculpture, and for decades after Cambodia's civil conflicts, those works were systematically looted and dispersed into international art markets and major museum collections. The National Museum now serves as both a destination for repatriated pieces and a record of what has been recovered.
Mainstream archaeology holds that Koh Ker's artistic output represents a distinctive and brief flowering of Khmer sculptural style, and scholars have worked to catalog what survives in order to identify pieces that may still be in private or institutional hands abroad. The repatriation process remains ongoing, and the museum's collection continues to grow as more works are identified and returned. What remains genuinely uncertain is the full count of pieces still unaccounted for.
Gates' episode does not claim to resolve the looting crisis or definitively answer why Koh Ker was abandoned — instead, it presents the museum visit as grounding for a larger investigation, giving viewers a tangible sense of what was taken and what, piece by piece, is coming home. The episode contributes public awareness more than new archaeological findings, which is an honest and valuable role for the show to play.
The museum's distinctive terracotta-red building was designed in traditional Khmer architectural style and has been a Phnom Penh landmark since it opened in approximately 1920.
Koh Ker, the source of many of the museum's most significant repatriated works, served as the Khmer capital for only about 20 years before being mysteriously abandoned — a remarkably brief reign for such an ambitious building project.
Attorney Brad Gordon, who consulted with Gates on camera, is among the legal advocates who have worked to trace looted Cambodian artifacts through international art markets and facilitate their return.
The Mekong River, which Gates describes as traveling 'more than 3,000 miles through six countries,' flows near Phnom Penh — the same waterway that nourished the Khmer Empire whose art the museum now preserves.
The National Museum of Cambodia is generally open to visitors in central Phnom Penh, with the building itself considered a landmark of traditional Khmer architecture worth seeing even from the outside. Entry fees are modest, and the galleries are typically navigable in a few hours, though visitors with deep interest in Khmer art may want considerably more time. Check current opening hours and local advisories before visiting, as schedules can vary.
Phnom Penh — the museum is located within the city center, approximately 1 kilometer from the Royal Palace.
The dry season, roughly November through April, is generally considered the most comfortable time to visit Phnom Penh, with lower humidity and reduced chance of rain. The museum is an indoor attraction, so it is accessible year-round, but the dry season makes pairing it with outdoor Cambodian sites more practical.
Guatemala Snake King Archaeological Sites
Like Koh Ker, the Snake King sites represent jungle-swallowed capitals where looting, abandonment, and modern archaeological recovery intersect — Gates investigated both as lost-city mysteries.
Sky Caves of Nepal
The Sky Caves represent another Gates investigation into a remote, inaccessible site where ancient treasures survived largely because of their isolation, paralleling Koh Ker's jungle concealment.
Kingdom of Kush Pyramid Tombs
The Kush pyramid tombs share the theme of a once-powerful empire whose monuments were systematically stripped of artifacts, with modern investigators working to reconstruct what was lost.