The teacher then filmed the golden copper jewel and then posted her video on social networks.

Since then, defenders of Nepalese heritage have added it to their list of thousands of objects looted over the decades, in the hope of repatriating it.

Around 1650, in Kathmandu, the king of Nepal had offered the necklace, adorned with semi-precious stones, to the temple dedicated to Taleju Bhawani, protective goddess of his Malla dynasty.

In the 1970s, the authorities of the temple, open to the public one day a year, had decided, as a precaution, that the jewel should no longer be exhibited there.

And the adornment was then gone.

Like in a temple

Sweta Gyanu Baniya was "shocked" when she saw him at the Chicago Museum in June.

"I started to cry and pray like I would in a temple," she told AFP.

"I had so many questions," she continues.

"Why is he here? How did he get here?"

Traces of vermilion pigment used for Hindu rituals remain visible there.

The teacher's video, posted on Twitter, prompted the Nepalese authorities to contact the American museum to demand the return of the object.

The Art Institute of Chicago did not respond to multiple requests from AFP.

But its website indicates that the necklace is a donation from the private Alsdorf foundation which had acquired it from a Californian merchant in 1976.

Udhav Kamacharya, priest at the temple of the goddess Taleju Bhawani in Kathmandu, June 28, 2021 PRAKASH MATHEMA AFP

In Nepal, Hindu and Buddhist temples and heritage sites punctuate daily life.

Many of them were plundered from their centuries-old treasures, sometimes with the help of corrupt officials, after the country opened up to the outside world in the 1950s to supply Western art markets.

In Kathmandu, Udhav Kamacharya, priest officiating for 26 years in the temple of the goddess Taleju Bhawani, had never seen the necklace.

Upon discovering his image on the video, he says he "felt that the goddess still resides here".

"Gods for us"

"We sometimes say that the gods are no longer there, but they are," he assures, "that is why he was found, even though he is abroad."

"Our art is not only art, it is about divinities for us", adds the expert Rabindra Puri who campaigns for the repatriation of Nepalese heritage.

In June, under pressure from Nepalese officials and activists, the Paris branch of auction house Bonhams was forced to call off the sale of five idols torn from a temple door in the 1970s.

These auctions had been denounced on the Facebook page of "Lost Art of Nepal" where information is anonymously published on historical and religious pieces, retracing their movements from auction rooms to European museums or Americans.

Nepalese heritage expert Rabindra Puri, che lui in Bhaktapur near Kathmandu on June 23, 2021 PRAKASH MATHEMA AFP

"We have seen empty temples, empty shrines, empty pedestals and torn toranas (doors) all over" the Kathmandu valley, laments the page's administrator in an email.

The magnitude of the loss

"In search of answers, I gathered old photographs from [...] (all) possible sources", he specifies, "the extent of the loss of our heritage goes far beyond what is documented or published ".

The activists want to make the trade in Nepalese heritage art that continues, especially in monasteries in remote areas, an activity as reprehensible as the sale of "blood diamonds" or ivory.

The repatriation of heritage has become a thorny subject for museums around the world and the restitution of works in Nepal is carried out in small quantities.

Six pieces were returned to him this year and the Nepalese authorities are seeking to recover more in France, the United States and Great Britain.

In March, the Dallas Art Museum and the FBI returned to Nepal a stele depicting Hindu deities Lakshmi and Narayan dating from the 12th-15th century.

She is due to be relocated this month to her original temple where she was stolen in 1984.

The museum had held the statue for 30 years, but a tweet from Professor Erin L. Thompson, questioning its origin, sparked an investigation.

Udhav Kamacharya, priest at the temple of the goddess Taleju Bhawani, in Kathmandu on June 28, 2021 PRAKASH MATHEMA AFP

"These are objects that people revered until they were torn from them," recalls this expert in artistic crime.

In its turn, in September, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York returned to Nepal a sculpture of the Hindu god Shiva dating from the tenth century looted in the 1960s. This is the third work returned to Nepal by this museum since 2018.

© 2021 AFP