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                                                                                CULTURES, Page 70

The Battle of Angkor


Cambodia's magnificent monuments and temples, sinking slowly
into a swamp, need more than a face-lift if they are to survive
for another millennium

By RICHARD HORNIK/SIEM REAP


    In 1860 the French naturalist Henri Mouhot came upon an
enchanting temple buried in the jungle of western Cambodia. It
thrust spires of finely carved sandstone into the sky, and its
open galleries held an artistic treasure: more than a mile of
delicate bas-relief stone panels. "It is grander than anything
left us by Greece and Rome," wrote Mouhot in his diary.

    The temple, called Angkor Wat, was the work of the ancient
Khmer kings of Angkor, whose empire stretched from what is now
southern Vietnam to Burma. Today a first-time visitor may feel
like a modern Indiana Jones who spies misty towers peaking
behind dense foliage and thinks he has discovered a lost
civilization.

    In many ways it is. Angkor Wat, a Hindu shrine dedicated
to the god Vishnu, is one of hundreds of stone structures built a
thousand years ago over a 200-sq.-mi. area. Although largely
abandoned for five centuries, more than 270 of the temples have
survived intact. But little is known about the society that
created one of the architectural wonders of the world.

    The question now is whether this wonder will be lost
again. The temples of Angkor are deteriorating steadily as they
slowly drown in a giant swamp. While preserva tion efforts have
focused on the facades, the foundations have been eroding. New
restoration proposals by countries from Japan to Poland have
raised hopes that the temples will be saved, but progress is
hampered by a lack of coordinated planning and by corruption in
Cambodia.

    To prevent further deterioration of the Angkor monuments,
scientists need to explore what made the ancient society work.
At a minimum, they have to understand the remarkable
water-management system created by the Khmers. Beginning in the
late 9th century a succession of Kings constructed enormous
reservoirs, some as large as 20 sq. mi. These barays and a
complex gravity-fed network of moats and canals provided an
almost continuous supply of water so that three rice crops a
year could be grown. That production enabled Khmer Kings to
extend their empires and build temples to their own divinity.
It is the destruction of that intricate water system that could
drown most of the major monuments.

    The most recent threat to Angkor arose during Cambodia's
20-year-long civil war, which began in the early 1970s. The
Khmer Rouge, whose genocidal reign of terror killed an estimated
1 million Cambodians, did little direct damage to the monuments,
but the fighting made maintenance impossible. Says B.
Narasimhaiah, the head of an Indian archaeology team at Angkor
Wat: "Wherever there is a small crack, dust will accumulate and
soon a bush will spring up." All but a few of the major temples
are covered in weeds, small bushes and even large trees.

    Less obvious, but more insidious, is the water damage,
according to archaeologist Richard Engelhardt, the director of
UNESCO operations in Cambodia. The water system was neglected
for centuries, and it totally collapsed following the
construction of grandiose hydroprojects by the Khmer Rouge. They
dammed the Siem Reap River, an integral part of the ancient
system, in order to create their own baray farther north. As a
result, the moats and canals surrounding the temples of Angkor
turned into swamps.

    Now the stone foundations sit in water year round. The
moisture percolates up into the sandstone and allows mold and
moss to destroy the intricate carvings and eventually the
integrity of the structures. The antidote used so far has been
to scrub the facades. Since 1986 the Archaeological Survey of
India has spent the six-month dry season sprucing up Angkor Wat.
A team of 15 Indian specialists supervises more than 300
unskilled Cambodian workers, who scrape the fragile sandstone
carvings with brushes and chemicals.

    While the bright facade of Angkor Wat is a welcome change
from the grim, mold-covered exteriors of the other temples, the
procedure is controversial. Says a foreign archaeologist at
Angkor: "Initially, the Indians were very careless. Much of the
detail in the carving has been lost." But on balance, there is
less criticism of the Indian efforts now than a few years ago.
Says Pich Keo, director of the National Museum in Phnom Penh:
"At least they came here and worked when no one else would
come."

    Now that the civil war is over, teams from Japan, France
and Poland want to begin similar work on other monuments. The
most ambitious project would be the restoration by Polish
specialists of the Bayon, the last great temple built before the
collapse of the Khmer civilization. Most of the temples at
Angkor are Hindu, but the Bayon was built as a Buddhist shrine.
While Angkor Wat soars, the Bayon suffocates. It is crowded with
54 sandstone towers, each with four carved visages of a
complacently smiling future Buddha, or bodhisattva. The faces
are probably like nesses of the temple's builder, King
Jayavarman VII. The King, whose vigorous rule turned out to be
the death rattle of the Angkor civilization, went on perhaps the
greatest building spree of all Khmer kings, but the sandstone
available by his time was of a much lower quality than that used
at Angkor Wat. When first discovered, the Bayon was already so
decrepit that archaeologists believed it was one of the earliest
temples instead of one of the last.

    Although the Polish government has signed an agreement
with the Cambodian government to restore the temple, Warsaw is
broke. The Poles have asked UNESCO for funds and have been
turned down. The organization would like to see such bilateral
efforts postponed until the overall environment can be
stabilized. Even though there is a general understanding of the
need for that approach, donor nations want a temple to restore
and claim as their own. "Everyone wants to produce a
before-and-after photograph," complains Engelhardt.

    It will be hard to raise money for the basic
infrastructure work needed. For one thing, potential donors are
likely to be put off by the corruption that surrounds Angkor's
temples. Angkor Tourism, a provincial organization, charges
sightseers $120 a day to visit the site and will take in more
than $1 million this year. Yet little, if any, of that money
goes to maintenance of the monuments. "What money we get comes
from Phnom Penh," says Uong Von, director of the Angkor
Conservation Office. This office, with only 72 employees in the
Angkor area, must deal not only with environmental degradation
but also with thieves who are ready to steal any artifact,
including statues carved into the building blocks of the
monuments.

    Still, for all the problems facing Angkor, it shares with
the Cambodian people the hope of a brighter future. UNESCO will
soon launch a yearlong, $500,000 study of environmental
conditions in the Angkor region. The study will make zoning
recommendations for future development -- particularly tourist
access -- of what will be known as the Angkor Archaeological
Park. But the investigation's main emphasis will be on the
hydrology of the area and the possibility of restoring the
ancient Khmer water system. Such a project could take until the
end of the century to complete and cost more than $10 million.
It would entail dredging the old moats and canals, restoring the
Siem Reap River to its prewar state and refilling some of the
old barays with water.

    UNESCO hopes to recruit several thousand demobilized
soldiers to help guard the monuments and begin clearing out the
water system. As more tourists pour in and new facilities are
built, the pressure on the provincial authorities to provide
funds for the monuments will increase. But Narasimhaiah of the
Indian archaeology team has some advice for scientists
interested in restoration: "You have to love your monument. It
should be like the relationship between a doctor and a patient.
If a doctor doesn't have faith in his patient, he will never
cure him." And if nothing else, the monuments of Angkor inspire
a great deal of love and a faith in their ability to survive.