By Seth Meixner
Siem Reap, Cambodia - High up on this mountain of sand and laterite, masons toil over large pieces of stone, their tools beating out a metallic rhythm across the hard surfaces.
Dozens of metres below, tens of thousands of blocks, some intricately carved with deities or flowing organic forms, lie strewn across the ground in loose rows extending deep into the trees surrounding this enormous ruin of a temple.
Baphuon, one of the oldest and largest monuments to the grand vision of Cambodia's ancient rulers, is emerging once again into public view, decades after French archaeologists dismantled the temple piece-by-piece with the intent of rebuilding its crumbling towers and lavishly ornamented facades.
Begun in 1960, the work on Baphuon would continue for 12 years before the temple was abandoned as Cambodia was convulsed by civil war.
More than two decades would pass before the area in northwestern Cambodia was again safe enough to work in.
In 1995, French architect Pascal Royere, heading a French government-funded team from the Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient (EFEO), arrived to again try to put Baphuon back together.
Baphuon was as unimpressive as it was large - its sand core spilling down the sides of collapsed walls.
The facades and towers taken apart by the earlier team lay scattered on the jungle floor around the temple - about 300 000 pieces of an enormous puzzle whose key was lost during the horror that engulfed Cambodia in the mid-1970s.
The meticulous record of each stone's placement disappeared when the Khmer Rouge ransacked the EFEO's office after the capital Phnom Penh fell to the communist guerrillas in 1975.
"It looked so complicated. It was impossible to imagine if we would succeed," says Royere, sitting in his spartan offices- a thatched hut built on the lowest of the temple's three massive tiers.
"When this project opened, it was the most ambitious for sure. It was the first time the Angkor conservation office had the vision to dismantle such a big temple," Royere says.
"It became the most complicated... due to the long interruption, the missing documentation," he says. "In the beginning, it was a nightmare."
Eleven years on, Baphuon has been re-opened - in part - to the public.
Visitors can view a 300-meter section of the temple's eastern face, as well as walk around the perimeter to watch the reconstruction of a 70-meter-long reclining Buddha that was built onto Baphuon's lowest terrace several hundred years after the 11th-century temple was constructed.
Royere says he hopes that most of the temple will be complete by late 2008, restoring some of the former glory to one of the Angkor temple complex's key monuments.
Built sometime around the year 1060 by King Udayadityavarman II, Baphuon was the largest temple at the time, only to be surpassed by Angkor Wat a century later.
Located near the royal palace, it was at the heart of the ancient Khmer capital.
"The Baphuon is one of the greater temples... This is significant for the history of Angkor... significant for the Cambodian people themselves," says French Ambassador Yvon Roe D'Albert, adding as well that "this is a very important event for France".
The French Foreign Affairs Ministry supports the project and has contributed roughly $5,8-million (about R40-million).
"The re-opening of the temple to the public is a way to show the people that Cambodians are working to preserve their own history," Roe D'Albert said.
"We hope very soon to give all of the temple back - not only to the people, but to the Cambodians."
The most pressing problem at the start of Royere's quest was the missing plans for fitting the temple back together. But working in Royere's favour was a large archive of photographs of Baphuon dating back to the early 20th century.
Using these visual records and the surviving portions of facade as a template, Royere was able to determine where the stones scattered about the jungle should go. Workers would walk through the vast "stone field" looking for the block with the right shape, size or ornamentation.
"We had kind of a database of different ornamentation that we had to look for and we started to look inside the forest," he said.
"Once we found a solution, it became easier ... more understandable."
As well, Jacques Dumarcay, the EFEO architect who had supervised the Baphuon project in the 1960s, and a number of Cambodians who originally worked on dismantling the temple, lent a hand.
But major work still has to be done to restore Baphuon, and a number of engineering challenges continue to frustrate conservators, Royere says.
"It's not normally easy to deal with restoration, but in this case... each year we have problems," Royere says.
The temple was constructed by creating three enormous stone boxes filled with sand- a building technique that had worked for Angkorian engineers in the past.
But Baphuon's unprecedented size - at its base it measured 130 meters by 104 meters and was nearly 40 meters high - led to problems.
The weight of the sand core was too much for the thin retaining walls that made up its three tiers.
Water leaking through the stones added to the weight, causing whole sections of wall to collapse.
In their zeal to create such a massive temple, Baphuon's builders had also created one of Angkor's most fragile monuments.
But since 1995 "a lot of things have been done - the level of our knowledge has increased and the results are not so bad", Royere says.
"So if you compare this now to what has been done, you can have some satisfaction."