1970s, leaving the site an open target for looters.

A re-creation by Eric Bourdonneau, an archaeologist from the French School of Asian Studies in Paris, envisions the key matching figures from the Norton Simon and Sotheby's squaring off and staring each other down in the moments before beginning single combat. Other figures look on as witnesses to the climactic struggle recounted near the end of the 100,000-verse Mahabharata.

The statues' return ends a chapter in an ongoing series of controversies over alleged looting that have reduced the antiquities collections of many American museums, notably New York's Metropolitan and the Getty Villa in L.A.

Helen Ibbitson Jessup, a leading scholar of ancient Cambodian art and architecture who heads the U.S.-based Friends of Khmer Culture, said that a celebration ceremony marking their homecomingis planned early in June in Phnom Penh.

"It's going to be a major national event," said Jessup, whose organization works in tandem with institutions in Cambodia.

New facts about the Norton Simon's prized piece and the nearly identical figure that had landed at Sotheby's in New York began to emerge publicly about two years ago in court filings surrounding the Sotheby's statue, which had been consigned for auction by a Belgian collector's widow.

Objections from Cambodia and the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization had prompted it to be quietly held out of a scheduled auction in 2011, where it had been expected to fetch at least $2 million.

The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan sued in 2012 to seize the Sotheby's piece, triggering a legal battle that ended with