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Wednesday 4 March 2009

Cambodia has 4,000 ancient temples and 2,000 have been found and located

Top: Ta Prohm temple where the film, Tomb Raider: Lara Croft, starring Angelina Jolie, was filmed. Bottom: Unknown temple.

Khmer Sthapana newspaper
4th March, 2009
Reported in English by Khmerization

According to the heritage inventory of the Ministry of Fine Arts, Cambodia has 4,000 temples and ancient sites. Among the 4,000 sites, 2,000 of them have been found and located since 2005.

Khmer people do not know how many ancient temples were built by the Khmer ancestors. According to some French documents, there are 1080 Khmer temples dotted around the countries. But, according to a former Minister of Ministry of Fine Arts, Cambodia has more than 3,000 ancient temples.

Different sources have put the numbers of Khmer ancient temples built by Khmer ancestors at 1080 temples, some sources said 2000 temples, while others have put the numbers at 3,000-4,000 temples.

But according to the Ministry of Fine Arts, in cooperation with the French School of Extreme East, it has compiled an inventory of the temples in 2005 as well as data found in stele inscriptions, Cambodia could have as many as 4,000 ancient temples of which 2,000 of them have been located and inventoried.

The above figures are based on the results of the field studies done by the Cambodian and French teams up to the year 2005. But at present, the data collected by the teams show that Cambodia has about 4,000 ancient temples dotted around the countries.

According to the inventories that resulted from the on-the-site field studies, 2603 temples and sites have been visited in 18 provinces and towns. Among the 2603 sites visited, 766 of them are temples, 996 are ancient tombs, 487 are ancient pagodas, 89 are ancient bridges and 265 are ancient walls and ancient sites.

Members of the search team comprised of Mr. Phan Nady, Project Co-ordinator, Mr. Chrin Narong, a mapping expert, Mr. Chan Sovichet and Mr. Chamroen Chamrong, field officers and Mr. Bruce Nobruckier (spelling?), scientific expert.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If we count the Khmer temples dotted in Thailand Cambodian ancestors have built far higher than 4000 temples. Cambodia was a South East Asian superpower in the 13th century.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how many Khmer temple are there if we count present-days Thailand, Laos, northern Malaysia.

-sk