Toap Chey Temple

Also known as Prasat Teap Chei or Prasat Toap Chey Toch, it is a “resthouse” or “firehouse” that was a feature along the ancient East & Northwest Royal Road. It is currently kept cleared and there is a foot trail connecting to the nearby Toap Chey Thom.

Images 2024

Images 2021

Historical Notes

The neighbouring site of Toap Chey Thom was documented by French explorers/researchers as early as the 1870s during the expedition led by Garnier, and this particular site was later inventoried by Aymonier and Lajonquiere a decade or two later as Prasat Teap Chei. In early French research, “Tiep Chei” would be used to classify this type of shrine. In the 1920s, they were studied by Finot, who chose to label them with a Sanskrit term, “Dharmacala”, meaning rest house. Later research guided by the Preah Khan of Angkor inscription revealed them as Vahnigriha, or houses with fire, aka firehouses. According to their art style and the mentioned inscription, they are attributed to the reign of Jayavarman VII (r. 1181–1218 AD).

Prasat Teap Chei. This monument is located under a hill about forty meters to the N. of the basin track which leads further towards the E. to a large marshy plain, of regular shape, the western edge of which is approximately 120 meters from the building. The latter currently has neither external enclosure nor access road: three basins of now irregular shapes mark out only the path that connected it to the large marshy plain, which was perhaps a pond.

The construction, entirely in sandstone, is oriented E.-W. on its major axis and comprises three juxtaposed parts: 1. (A) west., a tower; (A) with a rectangular base whose grand axis is N.-S.; 2. (A) large central room (B) communicating with the tower room by a large bay; 3. a forebody (C) preceding the E. entrance of this room and forming a vestibule (fig. 158 and 159).

1. Tower (A) is of the ordinary system of sanctuaries and presents the same arrangements as regards the upper parts, with however some modifications necessitated by the very plan of the building, which is not square but rectangular. These modifications are as follows: the major axis of this special part of the building was N.-S.; the N. and S. faces with their doors or false doors were considered as projecting or avant-corps and, consequently, their pediment was connected to the wall of the first upper terrace by a two-sided ogival vault, interrupted by a flamed halo. The monument then continues with the ordinary terrace floors, the faces of each reproducing in successively reduced dimensions the decoration of the faces of the main body. These are very ornate except, of course, the E. face, which is hidden by the large room and almost entirely occupied by the communicating bay. This ornamentation is of the ordinary system of doors or false doors with ringed polygonal columns, decorative lintels, decorated pilasters and a wavy ogive pediment surmounting the entablature of the decorative lintel. This ornamental apparatus is completed by high niches, ending in constricted ogives, which, on each side of the bays, frame figurines of women holding a lotus flower in their right hand, their left hand placed on the belt in front of the body.

The decoration is identical for the three facades; however, the bays on the N. and S. faces do not have polygonal columns: these elements are here replaced by a kind of pilaster supporting the decorative lintel, which are perhaps only rough-hewn columns. The decorative lintels cut in finer sandstone, more friable than that of the rest of the monument, are all in very poor condition and indecipherable. The sculptures of the pediments have resisted better, although very damaged: the loggia is drawn by bodies of någas whose heads stand up on the capitals forming acroteria; the central head holds in its mouth a garland which falls back, marking the angle. On the tympanums are sculpted in bas-relief relatively large figures: in the center, a divinity standing facing, at his feet or below one or more rows of worshipers. On the pedestal of the N. face, which is the best preserved, the main character appears to have been removed with a chisel; only the two rows of worshipers placed below him remain intact.

(B) is a rectangular construction attached to the E face of tower (A).

The interior of this tower is bare; the four-sided corbelled vault and the two vaults which connected the N. and S. faces were hidden by a wooden ceiling which has disappeared.

The opening of the S. was perhaps a window, perhaps a door.

2, Room (B). The floor of room (B) is below the floor of room (A) with which it communicates by a large bay. This room reaches, by a particular arrangement of its vault, an unusual width; this vault, undulating on the inside, represents the vault and the two lateral half-vaults of the naves with four rows of columns, but the two colonnades in the middle have been removed, and the feet of the central vault rest, as a result, in cantilever on the half-vaults. This room is lit by four square windows with balusters pierced in the S face. The interior surface of the walls presents as ornamentation only the projection of the entablature on which the wooden ceiling must have rested The exterior decoration is reduced to the following elements: the window frames on the S. face, the false windows represented symmetrically on the N. face with balusters and falling blinds; the entablature moldings of the walls emphasizing the support of the lateral half-vaults and the vault; finally niches ending in an ogive, arranged between the bays and false bays, in which are represented women holding lotus flowers in one hand, the other being resting on the belt in front of the body. These female figures differ from each other only by the diversity of their hairstyles.

The vaults and half-vaults are built on the outside in the form of domed roofs covered with round tiles. The ridge was crowned with a crest of small flamed niches, framing seated hermits, most of whom have fallen.

In the thinned part of the facades which surmount the lateral half-vaults, loophole openings have been provided, pierced later without taking into account the details of the ornamentation.

3. The avant-corps (C), of ​​the same section as room (D) but of smaller dimensions, is placed on the very axis of the monument. This part of the building is very ruined.

Lajonquiere, 1902

In the vicinity of the building of Tap Cei, 220, two new monuments were found: one without a name, 220 bis, is a remarkable ensemble, from the time of Süryavarman, the other, Pr. Trapān Khna, a small sanctuary of the classical period without much interest

Chronique, Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient Année 1924