École française d'Extrême-Orient

The École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO, French School of Asian Studies) is a French research institute that has worked at Angkor since 1907. For more than a century it has restored the temples of Angkor and supported research on Khmer history and language, and it runs a research center in Siem Reap.

The École française d'Extrême-Orient at 22 avenue du Président Wilson, Paris, 2021. Photo: Polymagou, CC BY-SA 4.0

Organization details
Alternative names	EFEO; French School of Asian Studies; French School of the Far East
Type	Education
Focus areas	Research on Khmer history, art and language; conservation and restoration at Angkor
Subjects	History & Remembrance; Visual Arts & Design
Country	Cambodia
Headquarters country	France
Cambodia operating location	Siem Reap
Address	Phum Boeng Daun Pa, Slorkram, Siem Reap, Cambodia
Website	Website
Operating status	active

Early work at Angkor (1900 to 1953)

In 1900 the EFEO sent Étienne Lunet de Lajonquière, Louis Finot and Henri Parmentier to make an inventory of the historic monuments of Cambodia, a French protectorate since 1863. The mission went on in 1907, after Siam returned Siem Reap province to Cambodia, and that year the EFEO was put in charge of studying and preserving Angkor. Jean Commaille began clearing the undergrowth at the site in December 1907. The post of Conservator of Angkor was created in March 1908, and Commaille, appointed by a decree of July 14, 1908, became its first holder.

The office became known as the Conservation d'Angkor. It is dated to 1908, although no official document ever set it up as a body: only the conservator's post was created, and the Conservation existed through the people who held it. Commaille's first task was mainly to clear temples that vegetation was pulling apart. Over the following decades, EFEO teams cleared temples such as Angkor Wat, the Bayon and Ta Prohm, and tried out anastylosis, the method of taking a monument apart and rebuilding it on a sound base. The architect Vann Molyvann recalled that the EFEO had sent Henri Marchal, an architect, to Java to learn the method, and that Marchal first used it at Angkor on Banteay Srei in the 1930s.

Objects found during clearing and excavation, or seized, were numbered and kept in the Conservation's depot. Most stayed in Siem Reap; others went to the museum in Phnom Penh or, in the 1930s, to the Musée Guimet. Until 1945 the Conservation could take pieces of lesser importance off its inventory and sell them on the open market. From the start, EFEO teams photographed the monuments; one print of every photograph went to the National Museum of Cambodia and a second to the head office in Paris.

After independence (1953 to 1975)

Cambodia became independent on November 9, 1953. The Conservation then came under the Royal Government of Cambodia, which gave the EFEO a mandate for the exploration and study of Angkor, and the EFEO kept scientific direction of the work. Many documents from these years carry the joint heading of the Conservation and the Khmer ministry of culture. In 1960 the EFEO opened its own center in Siem Reap for research in history, philology and anthropology.

Bernard-Philippe Groslier became conservator in 1960 or took charge in 1963. He had stores, an analysis laboratory and restoration workshops built, and set up a drawing office led by Jacques Dumarçay and Guy Nafilyan. The office drew the surveys and plans for the large restoration projects, close to 3,500 plans and drawings in all. By the 1960s the walled compound in Siem Reap also held many statues and carved reliefs moved from sites exposed to looting, along with workshops for restoring stone, iron, bronze and ceramics. Shortly before the civil war, the Conservation planned a Museum of Ancient Khmer Art for Siem Reap.

The Baphuon became the most ambitious restoration the Conservation had taken on. From 1960 Groslier gave the Conservation architects, engineers and skilled stonecutters for it, and the team set out to take the temple down stone by stone, strengthen its core and rebuild it. By June 1970, three of its four faces had been taken down over the full height of the monument, and tens of thousands of carved stones lay on about 10 hectares (25 acres) of forest around it. Groslier and Dumarçay also began work on the Terrace of the Leper King in 1962.

When the civil war reached the area, the EFEO negotiated to keep the restoration sites working. The sites lay in territory held by the opposing side, and a truce twice a week let the conservator visit them. Groslier had to leave the Conservation's premises on January 20, 1972, as fighting came close to Angkor. Work on the Terrace of the Leper King stopped for good at the end of 1972, and in 1973 the Conservation had to end its work. Its archive had been sent to France between 1970 and 1972. All of the EFEO's work in Cambodia stopped when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. The Baphuon site records were looted in April 1975, when Phnom Penh fell.

Return to Cambodia (from 1992)

The EFEO's first missions back to Angkor took place in 1989, to help Cambodia take stock of its heritage. In 1992 the Cambodian government invited the EFEO to return and reopen its Siem Reap center. Its work then included cataloging and sharing the Conservation's archive and finishing restorations the civil war had halted, such as the royal terraces and the Baphuon. It also carried out archaeological surveys across the Angkor region and excavations in Angkor Thom. It worked closely with the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts and later the APSARA National Authority, within international cooperation coordinated by UNESCO.

Work on the Terrace of the Leper King resumed in 1993, with 2,274,000 francs from the French government over 24 months. Dumarçay and Christophe Pottier led it under a contract between UNESCO and the EFEO, and the finished restoration was handed over on March 17, 1996.

King Norodom Sihanouk opened the renewed work on the Baphuon in February 1995. The EFEO put the architect Pascal Royère in charge that year. With the 1960s notes lost, the team worked from 940 photographs of the temple held in Paris, the oldest from 1910. Dumarçay, who had supervised the 1960s work, came out of retirement to help. About 30 Cambodian workers who had restored temples at Angkor in the 1960s and 1970s also came back to the project. The 1960s team had planned to remove the large reclining Buddha that builders formed from the temple's own stones on its west side in the 16th century. As restoration principles had changed, the EFEO chose to keep it, and the Buddha was consecrated in June 2008 at a ceremony attended by King Norodom Sihamoni. The restored Baphuon was inaugurated in July 2011, at a ceremony attended by King Sihamoni and French Prime Minister François Fillon, and France paid for the work. The Cambodia Daily gave the project's total budget as about $37 million in 2002, and BBC News gave its cost as 10 million euros in 2011.

The Siem Reap center

As of 2026, six EFEO researchers lead the Siem Reap center's projects at Angkor and elsewhere in Cambodia, among them Christophe Pottier and Damian Evans. The center takes Cambodian and foreign trainees on its excavation and restoration sites and hosts doctoral students and visiting research teams. It holds a monthly series of bilingual lectures on new research about Khmer history and culture, and keeps a specialist library open to the public. Its partners include the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, the APSARA National Authority, the National Museum of Cambodia, the Royal University of Fine Arts and the national authorities for Preah Vihear and Sambor Prei Kuk.

Archives

The archive of the Conservation d'Angkor is held by the EFEO in Paris. Its 25 handwritten journals record the conservators' daily work from 1908 to 1955, alongside monthly and later yearly reports, plans and object inventories. From July 1990 to December 1991, UNESCO funding from the Japanese government, deposited with the EFEO, paid for indexing and conserving the archive. The reports, journals, plans and inventory cards were later digitized and put online. In 2010 the EFEO and Éditions Findakly published Archaeologists in Angkor, a book of photographs from its archives showing the main temples before, during and after their restoration.

Khmer language and Buddhism

In 1922 and 1923 the monk Chuon Nath (ជួន ណាត) studied Sanskrit and epigraphy, the reading of inscriptions, at the EFEO's office in Hanoi. His teacher was Louis Finot, then director of the EFEO, and the monk Huot Tat trained with him. George Cœdès, who later became director of the EFEO, had suggested the royal commission set up in 1915 to prepare a dictionary of the Khmer language and worked with it in its early years. Chuon Nath revised the texts and directed the work through to its completion.

References