Standing female divinity

With a slender waist and stoic face, the goddess stands facing frontally with her arms poised at her sides. Her right hand is turned down with fingers delicately curled as if picking a flower, and her upturned left palm may originally have held a lotus bud. The lotus attribute suggests this figure represents Lakshmi, the goddess most closely associated with the Hindu god Vishnu. The figure's delicate proportions, low-slung sampot with aligned pleats terminating in a fishtail fold, as well as the flat profile, large crown, and pointed chignon cover, indicate a twelfth-century date. This was the era in which the great monument of Angkor Wat (ca. 1150, dedicated to Vishnu) was constructed, and sculptures of goddesses proliferated throughout its sanctums and across the temple walls.