Koh Ker, the Cambodian temple advanced awarded UNESCO standing in 2023, fights for the return of its plundered artifacts.

On a sizzling, sticky day in Cambodia, I’m standing atop Asia’s solely seven-sided temple, a pyramid-like construction surrounded by huge swathes of kapok, fig, and banyan timber. To my proper, the humid air often stirs the Cambodian flag hooked up to the flagpole mounted to the highest of the temple. It’s adorned with a picture of Angkor Wat–the archaeological web site that put this a part of Cambodia on the map. However there’s one other temple on the town: Koh Ker, which refers not solely to the construction I’m standing on however an unlimited advanced comprising round 80 close by temples.

I arrived in Siem Reap 17 years after my first go to to Cambodia’s temple city, after I traveled overland from Bangkok in a taxi with a cracked windscreen and long-gone suspension, struggling to deal with the unpaved street that led to the city. At present, issues look somewhat totally different. Siem Reap’s roads are freshly paved, and there’s a shiny new airport that opened in 2023. Considerably depressingly, its middle now has a McDonalds, Starbucks, and KFC. Pub Road (sure, that actually is its identify), the backpacker hangout the place vacationers collect to drink low-cost towers of Angkor Beer, stays unchanged, its moniker picked out in what seems to be the identical brilliant crimson neon letters that drew me right here virtually 20 years in the past.

For the overwhelming majority of those folks, Angkor Wat, the big temple advanced and former Khmer capital, continues to be the location with essentially the most pulling energy. However there’s a brand new (or, in actuality, very outdated) crowd-puller for guests to Cambodia: Koh Ker, which was the second most necessary Khmer kingdom after Angkor Wat. And, it seems, one which seems completely totally different. Koh Ker, a two-hour drive from Siem Reap, was the capital of the Khmer Empire from 928 AD to 944 C.E. It was constructed by King Jayavarman IV after a presumed breakdown within the line of succession, which noticed him depart Angkor Wat.

This breakaway Khmer capital’s Brahmanic temples and prasats (towers) look very totally different from the temples of Angkor Wat, and Koh Ker’s pièce de resistance is the massive, seven-tiered Koh Ker temple, which has extra in widespread with Mexico’s Chichén Itzá temple than the constructions at Angkor Wat.

At crowd-free Koh Ker, the sense of remoteness is instant. I spot a number of indicators itemizing particulars about latest mine-clearing operations; many carried out by APOPO, a charity that trains African rats (supersized rodents with kangaroo-style pouches) to smell out these deadly reminders of Cambodia’s brutal civil conflict. In some areas, these indicators reveal that the final mines have been cleared as just lately as 2010.

Koh Ker is a web site that has remained largely hidden from the remainder of the world, and there’s a way that sure temples are on the verge of being reclaimed by the jungle surrounding its most necessary constructions. Take Prasat Pram, barely seen beneath a banyan tree’s tendril-like roots, which twist down its crumbling partitions earlier than disappearing into the earth. I’m virtually sure the temple would collapse have been these roots ever eliminated.

At Koh Ker, which is the identify of a towering, seven-tiered temple in addition to the complete web site, restoration work has already begun in anticipation of the inevitable improve in customer numbers. There are rapidly erected indicators that drones are banned, and a brand new staircase is being constructed for guests eager to achieve its summit. Which, I ought to level out, may be very a lot wanted. At present, the one option to attain the highest of Koh Ker is by clambering up a wobbly staircase clinging to the aspect of the lichen-covered stonework. On the prime, my information factors to the situation of the unique staircase he climbed throughout a earlier go to–a construction which was, he says, so unstable that he virtually turned again on the midway level.

It’s not simply Asia’s solely seven-sided temple that makes Koh Ker distinctive. One thing else units it aside–the massive piles of bricks I spot contained in the crumbling ruins of its constructions. At Angkor Wat, these have been cleared away years in the past by native authorities eager to erase the reminders of the time when looters plundered Cambodia’s first Khmer Kingdom. Koh Ker wasn’t so fortunate. Looters continued to plunder its temples till latest years, reminders of that are the indicators pleading with guests to respect the nation’s latest UNESCO-listed archaeological web site.

Different reminders of this looting are in all places. At Prasat Khnar, 4 stone elephants as soon as stood guard at every nook of the temple. At present, just one stays in place. Two are lacking, and the stays of one other have been positioned on the bottom, the ornately carved elephant’s physique haphazardly propped up by the amputated sections of the trunk and legs.

A lot of this looting was carried out by locals who’re supplied enormous sums for stolen artifacts, and consultants consider a British man, Douglas Latchford, masterminded the vast majority of these thefts. Latchford was dwelling in Southeast Asia when he realized that personal collectors, museums, and galleries world wide have been keen to pay enormous sums for relics taken from temples corresponding to Koh Ker. For years, Latchford drove up and down the street between Siem Reap and Koh Ker, providing locals enormous sums of money to anybody who might present artifacts taken from the location. He’d then promote them on to museums and personal collectors, amassing an enormous fortune within the course of.

Establishments that bought Latchford’s pilfered artifacts embrace New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Artwork (numerous Cambodian artwork consultants consider it nonetheless has dozens in its possession) and the British Museum. In recent times, an American lawyer and newbie archaeologist, Bradley Gordon, has made it his mission to return this stuff to Cambodia. Gordon now acts as an advisor to the Cambodian Ministry of Tradition and High quality Arts and has been awarded Cambodian citizenship in recognition of his work, which has seen quite a few artifacts returned to the nation.

He describes these museums and establishments as “laundromats” for Koh Ker’s treasures, a lot of which have been taken by locals tempted by the massive sums supplied by folks corresponding to Latchford. However there’s hope on the horizon. Latchford died in 2020, and in 2021, his daughter agreed to return 125 statues and gold relics looted from Cambodia. She just lately handed over $12 million from his property to the Cambodian authorities.

Nearly the entire guards at Koh Ker come from native villages, and their presence–and extra particularly, their new-found delight on this newly licensed UNESCO web site–is essential to its safety. “There are villages near the temples of Koh Ker, and that is the place numerous the looters got here from, says Gordon. “Lots of the guards you’ll see on the web site are descendants of people that have been concerned within the looting.”

World wide, there are quite a few examples of conditions the place locals’ shifting attitudes have been key to the safety of archaeological websites, endangered species, and historical artifacts. In Cambodia, there’s the sense {that a} rising variety of locals now really feel delight of their heritage websites. The guards whose ancestors profited from the unscrupulous actions of individuals like Douglas Latchford are actually defending the temples that they plundered, and I believe the way forward for Cambodia’s latest UNESCO web site is in secure arms. And who is aware of? Maybe sooner or later, the flag planted atop its seven-sided temple will function Koh Ker as a substitute.