Heritage site
Oc Eo
Oc Eo is an archaeological site in Oc Eo commune, An Giang province, in the Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam.[1][2] Malleret's excavations suggested that it was a coastal trading port of the early state the Chinese called Funan.[3] Vietnam protects it, together with nearby Ba The hill, as the Oc Eo - Ba The site, and the site joined UNESCO's Tentative List of World Heritage sites in 2022.[2]
Discovery
Two stone steles were found at Ba The in 1879, where Linh Son pagoda now stands, and a statue of Vishnu was found there in 1912.[4] The mound of Go Cay Thi was found in 1942 and excavated in 1944. The French archaeologist Louis Malleret, of the École française d'Extrême-Orient, labeled the brick structures of the Oc Eo field with the letters A to S.[4] Viet Nam News writes that he named the site after the Oc Eo mound.[1] Bui Minh Tri, director of the Institute of Imperial Citadel Studies at the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, writes that Malleret traced a rectangular walled town about 1,500 meters wide and 3,000 meters long, covering some 450 hectares.[5]
Dates
Stark, drawing on Malleret, dates the port to the 2nd through 6th centuries CE.[3] Vietnamese state media place the height of the Oc Eo culture between the 1st and 7th centuries.[1][2] Bui reads the excavations of 2017 to 2020 as showing the culture's growth from the 1st century CE to the 8th.[5]
Finds
Stark lists Malleret's finds as glass beads, intaglios, Roman coins, beads of semiprecious stone, high-tin bronzes and Rouletted Ware, a kind of pottery.[3] A 2016 paper from Can Tho University, quoted by Angkor Database, names gold coins from the reign of Marcus Aurelius and a gold medal of Antoninus Pius dated 152 CE. From China came a bronze mirror of the later Han dynasty. The paper finds fewer objects of Chinese origin at Oc Eo than of Mediterranean origin.[6] Bui adds Persian bronze lamps to the goods from abroad. At Lung Lon, an old canal through the center of the town, excavators recovered 218,000 glass beads.[5]
Canals and Angkor Borei
Pierre Paris saw possible canals between Oc Eo and Angkor Borei, in Cambodia, on aerial photographs in 1931 and 1941.[3] The larger Paris 4 canal connects Angkor Borei with Oc Eo, about 80 kilometers to the south.[7] Stark wrote in 2006 that early dates from the canals give provisional support to Paris's view that a canal linked the two sites.[8]
Ba The and Linh Son pagoda
Linh Son pagoda, on the eastern slope of Ba The, keeps the two steles and the Vishnu. One stele is carved in Sanskrit. The Vishnu, carved from dark gray sandstone, has four arms and stands about 3.3 meters tall. Local people turned it into a seated Buddha, and the pagoda is also called the Four-Handed Buddha Temple.[4] Bui describes Ba The as a large religious center of temples, gates, walls, ritual paths and sacred wells, built between the 1st and 12th centuries.[5]
Protection
The steles and the Vishnu statue were ranked as national relics in 1988.[4][1] Vietnam made Oc Eo - Ba The a special national relic in 2012.[2][9] The protected area covers about 433 hectares, in two zones: one on Ba The hill and one in the Oc Eo field.[4] On January 4, 2022, the World Heritage Centre added the site to its Tentative List.[2] In January 2026 the government approved sending the scientific dossier to the World Heritage Centre before January 30, 2026.[2] The province aimed for a listing in 2027.[10]
Excavations since 2017
In 2015 the Vietnamese government gave the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences a project on Oc Eo, Ba The and Nen Chua.[5] From 2017 to 2020 archaeologists excavated more than 16,000 square meters at eight sites in the Oc Eo field and on Ba The.[11][5]
Museum
Since 2016 the Oc Eo Culture Exhibition House has served as the site's main place for showing its finds, with more than 3,350 original artifacts on display.[9] Viet Nam News wrote in 2015 that many artifacts were on show at the Vietnamese History Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.[12]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Viet Nam News, Famed Óc Eo culture set for preservation (October 24, 2021)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 VietnamPlus, Dossier finalised to seek UNESCO recognition of Oc Eo – Ba The archaeological site (January 27, 2026)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Miriam T. Stark, New Perspectives on Early Cambodia from the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project (about 2001)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Oc Eo - Ba The archaeological site, Tentative List (submitted January 4, 2022)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Bui Minh Tri, Memory of Oc Eo Ancient City and Funan Kingdom in Light of Recent Archaeological Discoveries, Russian Journal of Vietnamese Studies 7(1) (2023)
- ↑ Angkor Database, summary of Nguyễn Thị Huýnh Phượng, Oc Eo Culture: A Case Study of Oc Eo Artifacts in Southern Vietnam, Can Tho University Journal of Science 3 (2016)
- ↑ D. C. W. Sanderson, P. Bishop, M. T. Stark, S. Alexander and D. Penny, Luminescence dating of canal sediments from Angkor Borei, Mekong Delta, southern Cambodia, Quaternary Geochronology 2 (2007)
- ↑ Miriam T. Stark, Pre-Angkorian Settlement Trends in Cambodia's Mekong Delta and the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project, Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 26 (2006)
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 VietNamNet, Digitisation breathes new life into Oc Eo cultural heritage in An Giang (February 2, 2026)
- ↑ An Giang Provincial People's Committee, An Giang announces two National Treasures and three Vietnam Records related to Oc Eo culture (November 28, 2025)
- ↑ Quan Doi Nhan Dan, More evidence supports recognition of Oc Eo archaeological relic as World Cultural Heritage site (May 1, 2022)
- ↑ Viet Nam News, Oc Eo archeological site recognised as nat'l relic (June 30, 2015)