Baphuon temple rises

Photo by: Tracey Shelton

A man appears dwarfed by the famed Baphuon Temple at the ancient Angkor complex. The temple was dismantled during the 1960s because it had fallen into disrepair, and its remains have been painstakingly pieced back together by a team of architects in an ambitious restoration project that is finally nearing completion.

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We had to face a kind of jigsaw puzzle without the picture how to rebuild it.
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(Posted by CAAI News Media)

Thursday, 05 November 2009 15:04 Patrick Falby

One of Angkor’s most complex rebuilds nears completion.

Siem Reap

ON a muggy afternoon in Cambodia’s ancient Angkor complex, workers in hardhats hunch over the world’s biggest jigsaw puzzle, painstakingly assembling sandstone blocks.

Walled off from camera-toting tourists, the reconstruction of the 11th century Baphuon Temple is now astonishingly close to completion. “This is not easy to plan like a construction project is,” said architect Pascal Royere from the French School of Asian Studies, who is leading the rebuilding team.

Restorers dismantled Baphuon in the 1960s when it was falling apart, laying some 300,000 of its stone blocks in the grass and jungle around the site. Before the French-led team of archaeologists could reassemble the 34-metre-tall temple, the Khmer Rouge swept to power in 1975.

As the regime dismantled modern Cambodian society, even the records of its past – including those instructing researchers how to put Baphuon back together – were lost.

“The archive of the numbering system [for scattered stones] was stolen and destroyed by the Khmer Rouge,” Royere said.

“We had to face a kind of jigsaw puzzle without the picture how to rebuild it.”

Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan, who visited the Khmer kingdom in 1226, described Baphuon as “an exquisite site” with a bronze tower. Baphuon was the largest monument in the Khmer empire when it was built under King Udayadityavarman II as a Hindu temple dedicated to the goddess Shiva.

Photo by: Tracey Shelton

The famed Baphuon Temple is being rebuilt by architects after it was dismantled after falling into disrepair in the 1960s.

In the Kingdom, which at one time spanned parts of modern-day Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and Malaysia, Baphuon’s size was only eclipsed only by Angkor Wat.

“I believe that when the restoration of the temple is done, a lot of visitors will climb to see it,” said Soeung Kong, deputy director general of the Apsara Authority, which oversees Cambodia’s ancient temples.

After the 1991 peace agreement to end Cambodia’s civil war, French architect Jacques Dumarcay, in charge of Baphuon’s restoration from 1964 to 1970, rushed back to the site and appointed Royere to do his old job.

Despite invaluable input from Dumarcay and others who worked on Baphuon in the ’60s and ’70s, reconstruction required measuring and weighing each block, as well as numerous drawings to figure out how each part fit.

When Royere began work on the project in 1993, grass and jungle had grown over most of Baphuon’s blocks. He spent much of 1994 trying to figure out how to approach the job.

“Each block has its own place. It can’t be replaced by another one because there’s no mortar between them and you will not find two blocks that have the same volume and the same dimensions.”

Photo by: Tracey Shelton

Pieces of Baphuon’s reclining Buddha about to be moved into place by crane last weekend.

It was first estimated Baphuon would be rebuilt by 2003 or 2004. Now Royere says it will take until the end of next year, but adds the hardest task – stabilising Baphuon so it doesn’t collapse – is now complete. Recent work has focused on a 22-metre-high pile of rubble that collapsed in 1971, covering a quarter of the monument.

“It was a kind of landslide mixed with blocks. In 2008 we started to dismantle it, taking care of each block and building a concrete retaining wall,” Royere said. “When you take one brick, you have to take care another doesn’t collapse. It took double the time we thought.”

Last year, King Norodom Sihamoni presided over a ceremony marking the restoration of a 70-metre long reclining Buddha. Now, Royere’s project is entering its final stage, matching parts of intricate ornamentation altered in the 16th century when stones were shifted from the top of Baphuon to build the Buddha.

“Now it’s the most interesting,” he said. “We have now the picture because we worked for a long time.”