If I had to sum up my views in four words they are simply “The women are important.” How? Why? More important or less important than what else? …all that and much more is not yet defined.

Also, please don’t think of my work as a “male vs. female” issue. Nothing could be further from the truth. My view is that Khmer ideology, and its success on Earth, was based on a “male AND female” universe. Khmer vision balanced the universe, and did so by acknowledging male and female forces, heaven and earth, sun and moon, garudas and nagas, deva and asuras, etc.

Look at Eleanor Mannikka’s analysis of Angkor Wat temple itself. Apart from her work the general consensus was that it was merely an architectural masterpiece that contained considerable artwork depicting Hindu religious concepts and legends.

Her work put all that interpretation on an entirely new level by revealing that science — exceptional mathematical and astronomical science — was encoded throughout the structure. With her vision we no longer have a bunch of artistic ancients “decorating” a structure. We have a sophisticated group of geniuses encoding a structure with supreme universal knowledge.

In that vein, I believe that the representation of the women in the temple was *also* done using a highly codified system. I also believe that their diversity will contain far more information than the temple itself.

I agree with you that the lintels and pediments are symbolically very important. My work has not proceeded to include them yet because I’m focusing on the female images. But once the female images are defined I believe that contextual analysis of the women and entrance art will take the investigation to yet another level.

I appreciate your reminder that there are thousands of males depicted, albeit in miniature, throughout the temple. My personal impression is that we should distinguish *narrative* art (i.e. the miniatures that represent legends and perhaps formula) from *operative* art (i.e. the large devata, exact purpose as yet unknown) that seem (to me) to suggest a more pervasive essential element that exists throughout the temple.

Friends are exploring the concepts of shakti and bhakti relating to the women’s purpose and I agree that these concepts fit in.

But above all, I don’t discount the importance of any other parts of the temple (and other temples). I am focusing on the female images and their potential data.

Regarding the devata database I would love to make it available online. I’m now backing up 250+ gigs of images and research. I have created criteria for differentiating the women and have built a database that can sort the information. Only two things are missing – time and money. And both these can be summed up in one word… “help”.

I work independently because no institution has thus far assisted me. It’s tricky being outside the academic world but I continue to reach out to people all over the world. The MSU study with facial pattern recognition of the devata was my first collaborative effort. I hope there will be more. The best news article is here, with a link to the original study http://www.devata.org/2010/08/the-women-of-angkor-wat/

Indeed, I believe that until all the data is added to the feature database we are just scratching the surface in trying to interpret the significance of these women.

Finally, regarding the 3D interface for the database, that is also an objective. For the past 14 months I’ve been working with 3DreamTeam in refining their Angkor Wat model. Future versions of their programs will be able to link to external databases and display detailed sections of the temple (e.g. the bas reliefs, the devata, the pediments, etc.). If you’re on a Windows platform with a fast graphics card you can download the 3D model for free.

http://www.devata.org/2010/09/angkor-wat-3d-vizerra-showcases-virtual-unesco-heritage-sites-at-demo-conference/

Lots to do and I will keep doing it with the time and money I have. (-: Thanks again for your ideas.

Also I’ve always understood that the most important images in a temple are those on the lintels (especially those above the doorways on the main axis), and in particular the statues that were once all over the place on pedestals in the centres of the towers. I guess the latter are mostly missing now but judging from the collections I’ve seen in museums etc, and the references to them in inscriptions, aren’t these mostly male divinities? These aren’t loaded questions or implied criticisms of your work, which I think is terrific (even if I’m with Alison here on being more cautious about reading too much into it on the status of women), I’m just genuinely curious as to why you think the accepted wisdom on this is so wrong and that the placement of female figures has such great relative importance. Or am I not reading you right on this?

Also, do you have any plans to make the devata database available online as a searchable inventory that displays the photos? It would be a pretty amazing resource especially if it allowed people to search by specific characteristics etc. and display the results as spatial distributions on a map (or even better a 3D model) of the temple. Considering the intense interest and debate your work has obviously stirred amongst the hundreds of people working on Khmer studies I think it would see a lot of use by both specialists and by the interested public. Maybe it would even win over some of the old-school critics once they really see first-hand what can be done with this kind of information. (Or maybe not!)

Regarding male vs female images in Khmer temples there are thousands of female images with comparatively few male images. A general inventory in progress is here http://www.devata.org/khmer-devata-temples/

Khargosh is right to look to Indian traditions for more answers on this topic, but this must be done cautiously. Many Indian and Western scholars tend to discount the innovation and modification of Khmer institutions. Ancient Cambodia blended Hinduism, Buddhism and animism with unusual results that must be considered within the context of that civilization.

Vidya is one of the best and her recent book, The Body Adorned, speaks to this research. All her books are on Amazon at this link http://www.amazon.com/Vidya-Dehejia/e/B001HCZ1UO

A broader spectrum of evidence — especially from good old-fashioned dirt archaeology — is what’s really needed here.

The idea of the poster above that Angkor Wat is a kind of ancient “Playboy Mansion” does come across like a silly fantasy, but unfortunately at the end of the day I think there’s about as much chance of proving it one way or the other as many of the other theories above.

And finally I have a stupid question: Don’t images of men/male deities vastly outnumber images of women/female deities at Angkor Wat? I’m not sure about Angkor Wat itself, but I know this would definitely have to be the case with (what remains of) Khmer art generally.

For starters, although I gather Mr. Davis deliberately cultivates an image of himself as being anti-academic and anti-establishment (yawn…), this may not prove all its cracked up to be. Most scholars learn in Anthropology 101 that culture is not monolithic and changeless, and that there can be a substantial degree of dissonance between formal artistic expressions and the socio-cultural context from which they emerge.

Let’s look at the “purpose” of building Angkor Wat: Whose “purpose” exactly, and what does that mean anyway? The purpose of Suryavarman II may have been to create something which accurately reflected the status of women in Khmer society, or it may have been a completely disingenuous representation of an ideal which had nothing to do with the social or cultural realities of the time. It may have been something that he was trying to promote for some particular reason, and he and/or his subjects, or any particular subset of them, may have believed it to some degree or not at all, consciously, subconsciously, or whatever. It may have been one very minor reason in a suite of motivations for building the temple. It’s conceivable that the lay workmen who made the carvings had a substantial degree of autonomy, and that it was a reflection of everyday ‘non-royal’ attitudes towards women, or again, a completely bogus ideal.

Considering that Angkor Wat took decades to build, and has been venerated as an important building for centuries since, any and all of these aspects — from social realities to abstract ideals — were subject to constant change and reinterpretation, and at any stage the symbolism of Angkor Wat may, or may not, tell us anything useful about the people who built it or worshipped there. The temple is still important and venerated; centuries from now, are scholars supposed to interpret from this that women had serious political power and were not regarded with deep ambivalence in Hun Sen’s Cambodia?

Art historians and in particular anthropologists often manage to navigate their way around these issues with participant observation and a full understanding of the historical context of objects. However, we have access to neither of these for Angkor Wat; given the lack of historical documentation and the limited usefulness of the inscriptions in this respect, we probably never will. Meaningful assessments of “purpose” or intent are therefore impossible. We’ll never know. High time to move on to more interesting questions.

Fortunately, there are a number of very interesting research questions that could be asked of this dataset. The question of *why* Angkor Wat was built isn’t one of them.

Kudos to Kent for re-sparking interest in the question of Angkor Wat’s purpose. One reason could have been economic. Temple construction projects would have served to keep people stably employed for long periods. I’m sure the Obama administration wishes it could issue orders for building an American Wat or two.

The fact that the statuettes are placed on the margins of structures may be of some significance. In Hindu temples, an important God generally grants “darshan” (roughly, an “audience”) only at certain times during the day. The doors of the inner sanctum are opened with great fanfare. The officiating priests are the *only* ones ever allowed into the sanctum. This implies that the deities who give darshan– the important Gods– are never placed on exposed boundaries. At least, that’s my understanding. Hinduism, like evolution, takes a manic pleasure in exceptions.

The darshan, by the way, is a two-way gift. It’s not the relation of an observer to an object. Kent seems to have gained a measure of darshan from Angkor Wat. Irrespective of the original purpose, perhaps a Hindu temple’s true purpose was achieved, inadvertent as it may have been.

Anil

Kudos to Kent for re-sparking interest in the question of Angkor Wat’s purpose. One reason could have been economic. Temple construction projects would have served to keep people stably employed for long periods. I’m sure the Obama administration wishes it could issue orders for building an American Wat or two.

The fact that the statuettes are placed on the margins of structures may be of some significance. In Hindu temples, an important God generally grants “darshan” (roughly, an “audience”) only at certain times during the day. The doors of the inner sanctum are opened with great fanfare. The officiating priests are the *only* ones ever allowed into the sanctum. This implies that the deities who give darshan– the important Gods– are never placed on exposed boundaries. At least, that’s my understanding. Hinduism, like evolution, takes a manic pleasure in exceptions.

The darshan, by the way, is a two-way gift. It’s not the relation of an observer to an object. Kent seems to have gained a measure of darshan from Angkor Wat. Irrespective of the original purpose, I would guess that a Hindu temple’s true purpose had been served.

Anil

A terrific reply! I’m genuinely grateful for the intelligent discussion on this topic and I’m absolutely open to critical comments and opinions. Best of all, you’ve already begun making constructive improvements in this work and for that I thank you.

Also my apologies if it seemed that I jumped on Nemi’s “Playboy mansion” comment to my theory that “Angkor Wat is the world’s largest monument to women” (which is equally sensationalistic!). But Truth is distilled from comparing and debating such diametrically opposed viewpoints so Nemi, please keep ‘em coming. (-:

I am not a formally trained archaeologist nor am I an academic. I realize that many of my theories are not yet refined enough to pass muster in those fields. This is one reason why I hold such high regard for Trudy Jacobsen’s work in “Lost Goddesses.” She IS meeting these standards and I hope to learn from her example of rigorously supporting theories with multiple references and sources.

So you are absolutely right saying that I don’t always using scientific method in my arguments.

Trudy does it right. I realize that I’m doing it “wrong”, but I am doing it to the best of my ability and will improve. My passion (and frustration) arises, however, from what I see as 150 years of serious academic and scientific neglect for these women. The male-centric blindness that got us to this near vacuum of knowledge about women in the Khmer Empire amazes me as a layperson.

So my first priority is to stir up general curiosity and debate about these women. I will make some off the wall statements that contain mistakes, I will try to correct them, but I won’t retreat or slow down while trying to make every statement meet every reader’s personal standards of what is “scientific” or “academic”.

Personally, I’ve seen plenty of “academic” debates denigrate into pointless discourses that produce no results and block great creativity. Some academics will debate punctuation, semantics, interpretations and just about anything else *ad nauseum* just to hear themselves talk (much like lawyers). Many live for the debate and their egos could never “suffer an opposing viewpoint to live”. Add blind devotion to one’s particular academic school, dedication to a professor or prior works and it gets even more confused.

I’m an independent researcher. I owe allegiance to no one and I fund my own work. This gives me the freedom to be really right…or really wrong! But I assure you I am seeking the facts, can accept what I find, and love outside input.

Like Trudy (and many others), I have an agenda in the modern world as well as the ancient one. My goal is to encourage people to open their minds to the fact that women have played vital roles in ancient societies and do today. This knowledge can and will help empower women to assume their rightful equal roles in the world.

But setting my more radical (and less proven) statements aside I am creating absolutely scientific instruments whereby these female portraits can be studied: facial recognition software, applying Waist Hip Ratio science to the images, a searchable feature database, etc.

I don’t want to go into another super long post (too late), but let me touch upon some great points you raised starting with the “eye candy” debate. This links back to Nemi’s Playboy mansion comparison, which is really how MOST people…including all the guides at Angkor Wat…DO characterize the women.

You’ve brought great new perspectives into this issue for me. I especially like your connections to modern experience where a government building may feature women yet won’t grant them equal power inside. And also your link to Hatshepsut, a truly powerful woman who…if my memory serves me…wore a fake beard when she assumed the role of Pharaoh to imitate her male predecessors? Oh well. (-:

In Trudy’s book she presents (and substantiates) an idea that speaks to all our ideas:

“Perhaps, instead of looking for ‘significance’ of women in political office, we should be looking to the unseen world that has far more resonance for everyday life in Cambodia than the abstract decisions of an elite governing body.” p. 287

So a few debates raised here are:

a. do the women of Angkor Wat represent sexual toys to be given to gods, kings, soldiers or leaders as sensual rewards and/or incentives for certain behaviors?

b. are the women there just as pretty decorations?

c. did the women portrayed have definable “power” in the empire and if so what was it and what is the evidence?

I’m working on a paper examining the women of Angkor Wat in terms of “Decoration vs. Adoration vs Veneration”. Would you like to collaborate expanding these concepts?

To wrap up (who’s going to read all this?) here are a few “quick and dirty” counter comments for you:

“The devatas are passive, they do nothing.”
- And the flag featured in the Star Spangled Banner is just a piece of cloth fluttering in the breeze.
- Umbrellas over a person’s head in a royal portrait are just painted papier mache and bamboo.
- Books on a shelf are just colored bits of cardboard that don’t do anything.
etc.

Symbols have power. Systems of communication have power. My work will prove that the devatas are doing a heck of a lot.

“There’s also been quite a lot of research on Angkor Wat’s importance as a symbol of King Suryavarman II’s power and his relationship to Vishnu (Eleanor Mannikka’s Angkor Wat: Time, Space, Kingship) that you seem to ignore.”

First, I have great respect for her work which, frankly, I am not mathematically adept enough to fully understand. But I absolutely agree with her that a major purpose of this temple was to represent an incredibly sophisticated level of architectural, astrological, mathematical and spiritual technology.

“Even if Angkor Wat’s sole purpose was not to glorify women”

Just as a side note, I do NOT believe that the temple’s “sole” purpose was to “glorify women” and I’m not promoting the importance of women in relation to the temple to the *exclusion* of its other meanings. I may be crazy but I’m not that crazy. (-:

HOWEVER (ah, here it comes), speaking of “ignoring” things, I am nearly speechless (nearly mind you!) that such an extraordinary inquiry into the mathematical symbolism of the construction of this temple was performed without even _considering_ the women who fill the temple.

Their placement, positions and adornments certainly hold great meaning. When my database is complete and devata features can be viewed as strictly mathematical equations and patterns I will vigorously pursue input from great mathematical minds, including Dr. Mannikka, Subhash Kak, and others. My prediction is that the women contain data to further substantiate and expand upon the mathematical theories presented thus far.

“It is indeed hard to ignore that Angkor Wat was built by and for King Suryavarman II and yet we know almost nothing about his wives.”

Interesting statement. And just how much do we *know* about King Suryavarman II and the political system that made this temple possible? It seems to me that the answer is “Not much.” A lot of complex powers united on this project. Sometimes the greatest powers are behind the scenes…like Divakarapandita. Or the women in the court.

Let’s continue the investigation!

Kent