Photo 983(4)

Genre: Architectural Photography

View looking along the length of the pillared arcade, with a Cambodian figure seated half-way along the colonnade to indicate scale. This is the interior of the western gallery seen in print 3.

'From this photograph, taken in connection with the exterior represented in the preceding one, a general idea may be formed of the construction of the lowest galleries of Nakhon Wat. The mechanical arrangements of the galleries or colonnades are as perfect as their design is artistic. On the left side is a solid wall of the most exquisite masonry, where the stones are fitted together without mortar or cement of any kind, and this is a characteristic of the entire building...The rows of pillars on the right are removed from the back wall a distance of 10 feet 6 inches. The pillars have no bases, but are adorned with the figure of a devotee in the attitude of worship. Above this figure, and running along the edge of the shaft, is a delicately cut ornament; the pillars carry an architrave, and a deep frieze, and cornice. Above the cornice is pointed arch formed by corbeling. This arch I believe to have been originally concealed by a richly-carved wooden ceiling, a fragment of which I discovered still in its place, in an obscure part of the temple. Outside this gallery is a second, supported by the short pillars shewn in the exterior view. This outer range supports what Fergusson terms a tie-beam. One end of this beam is inserted into the inner column just below the capital, so beautifully that M. Mouhot asserts the inner columns are monoliths. The joints will be detected by a careful examination of the photograph.'

('Description of the Photographs', p. 33).

[Albumen print, signed 'J. Thomson' in the negative, 187x232mm].

Subjects = Khmer architecture; printed books; temples; Thomson, J., 'The antiquities of Cambodia' (1867)