Ageless Borobudur: Buddhist Mystery in Stone, Decay and Restoration, Mendut and Pawon, Folklife in Ancient Java

by A.J. Bernet Kempers

Book by A. J. Bernet Kempers

288 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1976

About the author

Dr. August Johan Bernet Kempers was born in Holland in 1906 but spent the first 50 years of his life in Indonesia, from 1906 to 1956. During this time he worked as Royal Batavian Society (Jakarta Museum) librarian, as professor of cultural history and archaeology in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, and as director of the Archaeological Service of Indonesia. These occupations were interrupted by the war in the Pacific and a three and a half year internment during the Japanese occupation.

In 1956 Dr. and Mrs. Bernet Kempers returned to the Netherlands and began working in both Indonesian and European studies. Between 1958 and 1971, Dr. Bernet Kempers was Director of the Netherlands Open Air Museum in Arnhem, and was for a time professor of European Ethnology at the University of Amsterdam. Between 1970 and 1984 he revisited Indonesia (including Bali) regularly in connection with research into ancient monuments and archaological preservation.

Dr. Bernet Kempers has published numerous books and articles on Indonesian archaeology, including Ancient Indonesian Art (1959), Ageless Borobudur (1976), Herstel in Eigen Waarde (on the preservation of Indonesian antiquities, 1978), The Kettledrums of Southeast Asia (1988), and Monumental Bali (Holland, 1978, and a revised and expanded version with color prints in 1991).