The Battle of Angkor

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 preservation 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 likenesses 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.