Source: www.independent.co.uk
UNITED KINGDOM, September 5, 2010, (by Andrew Buncombe): More information about the mysterious women carved into the Cambodian temple could finally be revealed. Amid the splendor of the 12th-century Hindu temple at Angkor Wat, they stand and stare like silent sentinels, sensuous rather than erotic, carved with elegance and care. But exactly who are these 1,786 mysterious women?
Though Kent Davis had lived in South-east Asia during the 1990s, he did not have an opportunity to see Angkor Wat until 2005. “I went to Angkor as a tourist and I was startled when I got there to notice these women,” said Mr Davis, 54, a publisher and writer who now lives near Tampa, Florida. “I was not prepared for it. The human element of them struck me and I wanted to know who they were. I asked one of the guides and he said they were there to serve the king after he went to heaven.”
After turning for help to computer experts from the University of Michigan, a team was able to conduct facial mapping experiments on digital photographs of the women, or devatas. The team, whose findings were presented last month at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition, an academic convocation in Istanbul, concluded that there were at least eight different facial types, perhaps reflecting a variety of ethnicities in the Khmer kingdom.
The results are to be examined further by archaeologists and more computer mapping is planned. But for all the effort that went into the mapping, the results of which were published in DatAsia magazine, many questions about the women remain unanswered.