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Jun 04, 2023

Manual labour comes to the rescue of Bakan Tower works

In a groundbreaking effort to achieve authenticity, the Apsara National

In a groundbreaking effort to achieve authenticity, the Apsara National Authority is employing manual labour – the same kind of hard work used by ancient Khmers – to restore and consolidate the southeastern platform of Bakan Tower at Angkor Wat.

The restoration team of Apsara National Authority is assembling scaffolds to remove large stones. Each stone must be carefully slipped off from the top down before restoring them to their original condition.

The first step is to clean all the small stones from the southeastern platform of Angkor Wat's Bakan Tower. This corner of Angkor Wat temple has remained in a damaged state for centuries.

Kham Mony, technical officer of the Department of Conservation of Monuments and Preventive Archaeology of the Apsara National Authority, said that the restoration team is using raw human muscle to lift all the large stones from the original site.

Each stone must be slid off from one to 27 centimetres before it can be lowered for transport and storage. Workers are employing a system of five chain blocks to hoist the stones up and down again.

The effort requires several hours to pull out each large stone.

New stones will be employed to replace some of the ruined old ones. Apsara is using a traditional wooden cart to transport the new stones to the temple. To lift each stone from the ground up to the platform requires the strength of at least 15 workers. They can drag, pull and push only six to eight stones daily.

Mony added that hauling the large stones up to the southeastern platform of Bakan Tower is no easy task, as the team must shift each stone up to 30 to 40 metres above the ground. Each mammoth stone weighs around 1,500 kilogrammes.

The difficulty of hauling large stones using human labour demands the experts persevere to discover all the most innovative techniques. Most important, the work must be performed with great care, so that the old, dilapidated structures are not damaged, and to ensure the safety of the work team.

Kim Sothin, deputy director of the Apsara Authority, said that the great height and the poor condition of the platform and Bakan Tower make it impossible to perform renovations with modern equipment like cranes and tractors.

"The damage over the centuries has been caused by the effects of natural weather conditions as well as vegetation that grew on the stonework," he said.

"In our history, the restoration of this part was performed once during the French colonial period. However, it was not done properly, because the restorers at that time used cement to fix the temple, which washed away."

Sothin said the authorities are on schedule to complete the restoration within eight months.

"The restoration will not disturb tourism in Angkor Wat, but visitors are not allowed to approach the working site," he said.

Sothin added that funding for repairs comes from tickets purchased by tourists.

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