via Khmer Times, 01 February 2024: Kent Davis’ quest to understand the significance of the 1,780 female figures carved into the walls of Angkor Wat and other temples is a fringe theory, but there was some interesting computational stuff methods that could have yielded some interesting data. Despite the lack of support and a hiatus, Davis is reengaging with his mission to decode these women’s roles, believed by him to be more profound than mere decorations.
Now, after a long break, his questions remain and his theories centre around aspects of his work that some deem contentious.
“For 150 years, scholars have dismissed the women as ‘ornaments’ that are there ‘to entertain the king in heaven’ or to ‘decorate the bare limestone walls’,” he told the Khmer Times this week. “But based on my evidence, I purport that these women served much more profound roles than mere decoration. And that their images contain critical data.
My theory is that the Khmer encoded these female images with information using poses, hand positions, jewellry, fabric patterns, attributes, and ethnicities. Much like the Mayan alphabet was indecipherable until the last century, my hunch is that these women may also embody as yet unread information, similar to astronomical and astrological information built into the temples.”
Kent also contends that few people realise that the massive Angkor Wat temple “has protected the most extraordinary royal portrait collection in the world for nearly 1,000 years”.
