Ak Yum

Ak Yum is a brick temple at Angkor (អង្គរ), probably begun in the 7th century and buried in the southern bank of the West Baray (បារាយណ៍ខាងលិច). Its ruins lie about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) east of the reservoir's southwest corner. The temple was dedicated to Gambhiresvara, a form of the god Shiva, and rose in three terraces to a single tall tower. Maurice Glaize wrote that its remains were the oldest in the region, older than the first city of Angkor.

The ruins of Ak Yum, 2009. Photo: Stefan Fussan, CC BY-SA 3.0

Heritage site details
Site type	Temple
Location	South bank of the West Baray, Angkor
Country	Cambodia
Period	7th to 9th century
Subjects	Religion & Spiritual Life; History & Remembrance

History

The temple's founding date is uncertain. In the text of his guide, Glaize wrote that it was probably started in the 7th century and reached its final form only early in the 9th, with many stones reused as it was altered. The chronology table in the same guide dates its earliest parts to the second half of the 8th century, and a 2019 report calls it an 8th-century temple.

Inscriptions found at the temple name its god. Glaize dated those on the door jambs and on a stone of the nine deities to 609, 704 and 1001. Dominic Goodall cites inscription K. 749, of the year 647, as showing that a Gambhiresvara stood at Ak Yum. The name means "Lord of the Depths". Heng and Lavy write that a god of the same name was the chief deity of the northern temples at Sambor Prei Kuk and seems to have been closely tied to King Bhavavarman I. Goodall, citing Christophe Pottier, writes that there is no firm proof of a Gambhiresvara at Sambor Prei Kuk.

Ak Yum has been tied to more than one early royal city. Piphal Heng and Paul A. Lavy link the area around the temple with Purandarapura, the city from whose palace King Jayavarman I issued royal orders from 657. His daughter Jayadevi kept a different palace, Kamyarama, in the same area, as an inscription of 713 records. Goodall, following Christophe Pottier, writes that Ak Yum may have been the center of Bhavapura, the capital of the earlier King Bhavavarman I. Inscription K. 53, of a King Bhavavarman whom Goodall takes to be Bhavavarman I, seems to name a Gambhiresvara as the center of his realm, but Goodall calls it unclear whether that god was the one at Ak Yum. Glaize thought the temple must have stood at the heart of the "city of the baray" investigated by Stern, who dated that city to the years after King Jayavarman II left for Phnom Kulen and before Indravarman I came to the throne in 877. In his list of royal capitals, Glaize tentatively identified Amarendrapura, one of the cities of Jayavarman II, with Ak Yum.

Heng and Lavy put the area around Ak Yum, bounded by known temples of the period, at about 16 square kilometers (six square miles). The area had natural channels, reshaped by its people, that linked it to the Tonle Sap and point to routes of travel by river. Glaize wrote that the temple was probably partly buried when the road running west from the first Angkor, the city around Phnom Bakheng, was laid out. The West Baray was dug in the 11th century, though sources differ on which king built it, and Glaize wrote that its raised southern bank covered the temple completely. Goodall calls the temple largely buried in that bank, and the 2019 report partly submerged. The reservoir also covered most of the old settlement around it.

Excavation

G. Trouvé cleared the temple from 1932 to 1935. So much earth had to be moved that the bank of the baray was blasted open to reach the buried shrines. A well beneath the central shrine led Trouvé to carry out similar searches at the Bayon and at Angkor Wat, where he found the great Buddha image of the Bayon and the foundation deposit of Angkor Wat. Glaize recorded that the site could be reached only by boat after the water level of the reservoir had been raised.

A report of April 2019 said that low water in the West Baray let archaeologists from Cambodia's Department of Conservation of Monuments uncover parts of the temple's foundation. They also found several large stones that may have held back water at the north end of the temple.

Architecture

Ak Yum is built entirely of brick, with sandstone only around the doorways of the shrines. It stands on a base about 100 meters (330 feet) on each side. The lowest of its three levels is an earth mound held in by a plain brick wall, and the two upper levels were paved in brick. Twelve towers stood on the second level, one at each corner and two along each side, and a single tall tower crowned the third. Glaize saw the plan as close to the temple-mountain, the stepped pyramid later built for the royal linga, though not yet a true example of it. A linga is a stone phallus, and at Angkor a state linga could bear the king's name. Glaize counted Ak Yum, with Rong Chen on Phnom Kulen, among the early attempts at the pyramid form that came before the Bakong. Goodall describes it as a terraced "mountain" temple.

The central shrine first opened to the east, with false doors on the other sides, and was probably roofed with a timber frame; Glaize recorded the holes for its posts in the walls. It was later wrapped in a thicker brick skin able to carry a corbeled brick vault, with doorways on all four sides. Its chamber, 5.5 meters (18 feet) square, holds a pedestal 2.75 meters (9 feet) across that probably bore a linga. Below it, a shaft 12.25 meters (40 feet) deep reaches the level of the surrounding plain and ends in a small brick-vaulted chamber 2.7 meters (8.9 feet) square, which Glaize thought once held a sacred deposit.

Glaize saw the temple's decoration as rare evidence of primitive Khmer art. The lintels, many of them reused, are low and simple, some with medallions and pendants and others with leafy branches ending in scrolls. The colonnettes, small decorative columns, are round, with rings of beads and leaves. Devatas, or female deities, are carved into the brick of the southeast shrine, which also has a notable false door on its east side. Small lions in round medallions appear among the decoration.

References