Angkor Wat contains 12th century portraits of 1,796 individual women. They were clearly part of a "social network". American researcher Kent Davis asks "Was this temple an ancient Facebook"?

Andrew Buncombe reports from Asia for the UK Independent

Angkor, Cambodia — Amid the splendour of the 12th-century temple of Angkor Wat, they stand and stare like silent sentinels, sensuous rather than erotic, carved with elegance and care. But exactly who are these 1,796 mysterious women and why, more than a century after Cambodia’s famed Hindu temple was rediscovered by Western archaeologists, did it take the efforts of an amateur researcher from Florida to push experts into trying to resolve the puzzle?

Researcher Kent Davis at Angkor Wat.

Though Kent Davis had lived in South-east Asia during the 1990s, he did not have an opportunity to see Angkor Wat until 2005. Like most visitors to the huge complex in the centre of the Cambodia, for many years cut off from the outside world because of the presence of the Khmer Rouge, he was mesmerised by the experience.

But he was also left with a flurry of questions. “I went to Angkor as a tourist and I was startled when I got there and saw these women,” said Mr Davis, 54, a publisher and writer who now lives near Tampa, Florida. “I was not prepared for it. The human element of them struck me and I wanted to know who they were. I asked one of the guides and he said they were there to serve the king after he went to heaven.”

Mr Davis’s interest was tweaked, so he wanted to know more. He vowed he would return to the US and investigate. Yet when he got home he found there was essentially nothing written about these women, who appear throughout the temple complex in full body carvings.

The women of Angkor Wat appear to include different Asian ethnicities.

Indeed, the only study of the female carvings he could find had been made in the early 20th century by Sappho Marchal, the daughter of Frenchman Henri Marchal, then the curator of the temple site. Frustrated but intrigued, he decided he would find out for himself. Five years and several trips to Angkor later, Mr Davis has slowly begun to get some answers.

MSU researchers plotted 130 identification points on each face.

In 2008, he asked for the help of computer experts from the University of Michigan. That team was able to conduct facial mapping experiments on digital photographs of the women, or devatas. The team, whose findings were presented last month at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition, an academic convocation in Istanbul, concluded that there were at least eight different facial types, perhaps reflecting a variety of ethnicities in the Khmer kingdom.

The results are to be examined further by archaeologists and more computer mapping is planned. But for all the effort that went into the mapping, the results of which were published in DatAsia magazine, many questions about the women remain unanswered.

“It’s a 12th century Facebook,
but no one has ever heard of this social network.”

“There are almost 1,800 faces there,” said Mr Davis, who now uses 65 separate characteristics to define the individual women in a devata database. “It’s a 12th century Facebook, but no one has ever heard of this social network. This was the biggest temple the Khmer people ever built. It is still the largest religious structure on Earth! It must have been important to them because they threw everything into it. They would have only put their most important images into it; these women must have been incredibly important to the kingdom.”

Mr Davis wrote to universities, pestered experts, and sought the opinions of people from around the globe who had worked at Angkor. Trude Jacobson, an assistant professor of history at the University of Queensland, Australia, and author of Lost Goddesses: Denial of Female Power in Cambodian History, said: “Kent is an enthusiastic researcher of a question that everyone assumed was settled long ago, or doesn’t matter.

Each of the 1,796 women at Angkor Wat is unique.

“The history of women in Cambodia, until very recently, has been one in which they were relegated to the shadows. His interest is infectious and has made others more interested in questions of gender in an otherwise heavily masculinised historical inquiry.”

What has struck Mr Davis as he has continued his enquiries, is that for all the women at Angkor there are relatively few male carvings.”Could these different women represent the different professions of the Khmer kingdom?” he said. “Could they be scholars, agriculturalists? I think they must represent the most important women in the kingdom.”

Dr Peter Sharrock, an expert on South-east Asia at London’s School of African and Oriental Studies, has studied the temples around Angkor for years. “We understand [the female carvings] little but they play a major role in the architectural sculpture of these temples, which must imply a major role in the beliefs of the ancient Khmers and in the rituals in their temples,” he said.

“Khmer descent was primarily matrilineal, and Khmer women were literate and powerful. Many were queens, and most kings base their genealogies and claims to the throne on their female ancestors. The ancient Khmers venerated the goddess Prajnaparamita in the most elaborate cult to her known anywhere in Asia. So there are fundamental questions here about an exceptional female religious and regal role in ancient Cambodia that remain unanswered.”

Despite 150 years of experts purporting that the women of Angkor Wat are imaginary, Davis contends that they are realistic, accurate portraits of actual women who were members of the royal Khmer court.

Professor Jacobson believes the images were part of a broader iconography relating to the supernatural world. “The devatas, placed either side of doorways, were guards who monitored who was permitted access from the mundane world to the supernatural,” she said.

“[Those] represented as flying or dancing, were responsible for leading the souls of the dead to the supernatural world from the battlefield. The models for the images at Angkor were doubtless members of the royal family.”

Despite the abundance of women at Angkor Wat, not a single man is honored with the same type of portrait carving.

Mr Davis said he was dedicated to trying to throw greater light on the mystery of the carvings by working with the team of researchers he has cultivated. At this point, he said, starting to analyse the images was like “being the first person to get a map to the British Museum and the keys to the front door”.

He added: “Once we define facial types more thoroughly, an incredibly exciting prospect appears. If these images are portraits of actual people, it’s logical to assume that they had children within this region, and that creates the possibility of using facial pattern recognition on people living in this area to see if facial shapes and types seen at Angkor still live here. We could actually find the descendants of some of the sacred women in the temple.”

Angkor Wat, the icon of Cambodia's Khmer Empire reflects in a sacred pond.

Angkor Wat – Symbol of a nation

• The sprawling temple complex of Angkor Wat, located amid dense jungle and close to the city of Siem Reap, was built in the early 12th century and is one of a series of stunning palaces and temples that were built over a 400-year period by the Khmer Kingdom.
• Today, the temples attract up to a million tourists a year, but for many years the remarkable buildings were unknown to the West, which only “rediscovered” them in the 19th century. During the 1970s and 1980s they were off-limits as a result of the presence of the Khmer Rouge, the Maoist-inspired rebels who ruled Cambodia from 1975-79 and who then engaged in a bitter civil war for the next two decades.
• Angkor Wat itself, the most impressive and best-preserved of the complexes, was built for King Suryavarman II in the early part of the 12th century and is dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu. It has since become a symbol of Cambodia, even appearing on its national flag.

Angkor Wat at dawn.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia – This article identifies working counts and locations of all devata (sacred female) images in Angkor Wat. We have numerically identified 1,796 devata at the temple, not including those on the high towers.

In her 1926 study, Sappho Marchal cited 1,737 devata, possibly not counting some that are partially completed, worn away, covered by stone blocks (sealed doorways on level A1) or “aerial devata” located on Angkor Wat’s top towers.

Angkor Wat's main structure with key devata locations labeled.

DatAsia’s numbering system identifies devata carvings sequentially in five defined structural areas.

A1 – Angkor Wat Top Level (Bakan) + Central Tower

A2 – Angkor Wat Second Level + 2 Libraries

A3 – Angkor Wat Third Level (outside only) + 2 Libraries

Angkor Wat West Gopura (entry gate)

A4 – The West Gopura – Entry gate to Angkor Wat

A5 – Angkor Wat South + West Gates (no devata at North Gate)

Our numbering convention identifies the Level; Structure; Inside/Outside Location (relative to the center of the temple); Sequential Devata Number + Additional Details (this can include the feature, photographer, raw photo number, etc.)

e.g. A4-GW-I-009-K
This means the devata is located in area A4, Gate West, Inside, Devata #009, photo by Kent Davis

All numbering begins at the southwest corner of each structure and goes sequentially counter clockwise (from South to North on the West Gopura).

Devata Inventory at Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat Devata - West Gopura

A1 – 407

Central Tower – 64   (#001-062)
Central Tower Aerial – 16 (NW-NE-SW-SE x 4)
OUTSIDE – 201   (#001-198)
INSIDE – 126   (#001-124)

A2 – 647

A2 OUTSIDE – 341   (#001-328)
A2 INSIDE – 222   (#001-217)

A2 Libraries
North – 44   (#001-044)
South – 40   (#001-040)

A3 – 414

OUTSIDE – 241   (#001-241)
INSIDE- 0

A3 Libraries
North – 46   (#001-046)
South – 20   (#001-020)

Angkor Wat Devata - West Gopura

West Inside Chambers
Center – 28   (#001-028)
North & South – 8+8   (#001-016)

Cruciform Gallery
North – 34  ( #001-034)
South – 29   (#001-029)

A4 – Gate West – 259

West (OUTSIDE) – 119   (#001-119)
East (INSIDE) – 124   (#001-122)
Entry Chamber North – 8   (#001-008)
Entry Chamber South – 8   (#001-008)

A5 – 69

A5-South Gate – 25   (#001-024)
A5-East Gate – 40   (#001-040)
A5-West Library – 4*   (#001-004)

Total: 1,796 unique devata

*These devata are a different style and appear to have been added during the reign of Jayavarman VII or later. There are other devata with questionable styles that may also have been added later.

The A1 exterior towers may also have as many as 16 devata each, which could increase the inventory by 64 additional devata.

NOTE: Original DatAsia numbers were assigned to correspond with the German Apsara Conservation Project database so that data could be compared.

Unfortunately, the GACP database has numerical anomalies due to later additions. For this reason, some numbers have more than one devata (e.g. 100a, 100b). This, therefore, results in areas such as A1 Outside, where the numerical sequence only goes to 198 but covers a population of 201 devata.

Another issue is that the GACP system numbers counterclockwise, even for devata inside levels A1 and A2. This means that they are numbered right to left (…3, 2, 1) instead of left to right (1, 2, 3…), which is less intuitive when viewing.

When the Devata.org database is complete a final, sequentially perfect number will be assigned to each devata portrait. In the meantime, however, we continue to use the legacy system for easier cross referencing.

Review by Kent Davis     Amazon link to purchase this book

"Costumes and Ornaments after the Devata of Angkor Wat" by Sappho Marchal. Orchid Press 2005.

Marchal’s visual meditation is a gem to treasure for the images it holds and the ideas it will inspire.

While the topic of Khmer adornment seems to occupy a narrow niche of knowledge, the fact is that it holds great appeal for a broad range of people. Indeed, the worlds of Asian art, fashion, history, jewelry, graphic design, feminine style and culture all intersect in this compact 99 page work.

This book revolves around 41 plates with line art drawings of the “apsara” or “devata” carvings at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. More than 1,800 of these woman were immortalized in sandstone between 1116-1150AD. Some experts characterize the figures as “celestial nymphs” or demi-goddesses called “devatas” but these terms were applied long after the fall of this civilization. The truth is that the identity and meaning of the “devata” remains a mystery.

Sappho Marchal - Plate XXXI

What is undeniable is the beauty, life and energy the carvings radiate. Some art historians see the Angkor civilization as the pinnacle of artistic expression in Asia. Dr. Paul Cravath of the University of Hawaii elegantly captured the essence of the “devata” when he wrote, “There, with stupendous variety, the Feminine achieved a new level of expression unsurpassed at any time in Asian sculpture.”

In 1927, Sappho Marchal published her original work in Paris when she was only 23 years old. Sappho was in a unique position to study Angkor Wat; her father, Henri Marchal, was appointed the second curator of the vast Angkor site for the French colonial government in 1916. Sappho grew up with these extraordinary Khmer women.

Sappho Marchal - Plate XV

Seeing the devatas through this young lady’s eyes holds immense value for researchers of art and history alike. Mlle Machal highlights details of their hair, costumes and ornamentation that archeologists, in their mad rush to measure large stones and determine stellar alignments, have never paused to notice. Her sensitivity and attention to detail is refreshing. In fact, there is no other volume that offers this degree of analysis for these important carvings.

Merrily Hansen’s 25 years of educational publishing experience resulted in an excellent translation and flawless plate reproductions for this rare volume’s reprinting.

Sappho Marchal - Plate XXX

For those interested in Southeast Asian, Thai and Cambodian art this book is indispensable.

But the truth is that this is a beautiful book for anyone.

It offers inspiration in design and feminine style, and a pleasant meditation on one of the most beautiful art mysteries in the world.

Kent Davis is a US-based publisher, author and independent researcher specializing in Khmer studies with DatAsia, Inc. and Devata.org.