Go Cay Thi and Oc Eo

Under the alluvial soil of the Óc Eo fields, in the Thoại Sơn area of An Giang, brick foundations a thousand years old lie quiet. Every brick here is more than a piece of building material. It is a fragment of the memory of a civilization that once traded with India, China, Persia and even the Mediterranean region.

The Óc Eo and Ba Thê relic site lies at Óc Eo, in An Giang province. According to the Government's online newspaper, the Prime Minister ranked it a special national relic site on September 27, 2012, under Decision 1419. That is the clearest proof of the importance of a culture that Vietnamese people only began to understand in full in the 20th century.

The Óc Eo Cultural Relic Management Board introduces the Óc Eo culture as one that formed and grew from about the 1st century to the 7th century. It may have lasted into the early 8th century AD. It was tied to the kingdom of Phù Nam, in the lower Mekong. In English, Phù Nam is called Funan, an early kingdom of Southeast Asia strongly influenced by Indian culture. It was a powerful maritime kingdom, with port towns and a wide network of trade. The An Giang provincial web portal cites research showing that Óc Eo was linked with China, Southeast Asia, India, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean along ancient trade routes. So more than a thousand years ago, this land was already a center of international trade.

In 1944, the French archaeologist Louis Malleret led an excavation on the Óc Eo field. It was the first milestone in understanding this culture. Nearly eighty years later, from 2017 to 2020, large-scale excavations opened across more than 16,000 square meters. The Óc Eo field and the slope of Ba Thê mountain gradually revealed traces of an ancient urban settlement, with canals, houses and spaces of religious belief belonging to the Phù Nam people.

The Óc Eo Culture Exhibition House has been open since January 2016. It arranges its objects in five main groups: dwelling, burial, handicraft production, trade and religious belief. Arranged this way, Óc Eo is not a scatter of loose brick foundations. It lets a listener see the shape of a community with a rich life of daily living, production, exchange of goods and faith.

Gò Cây Thị A is one of the two most important archaeological points at the site. According to the Management Board, it covers 488 square meters. Excavations here found pieces of roof tile, tile edging and tile finials, typical of the architecture of a royal court. They also found a gold object carved with the figure of the god Surya of Hinduism, and a bronze Buddha statue in the Northern Wei style. The Northern Wei was a Chinese dynasty of the fourth to the sixth century. These two layers of objects show a remarkable religious change, from Hinduism to Buddhism within the same complex. The shift mirrors a change in the culture and politics of the kingdom of Phù Nam over time.

Gò Cây Thị B lies close by and covers about 300 square meters. Its structure of brick and stone has two walls around a rectangular platform of piled earth and sand. Inside is a floor of rammed earth in many layers, and outside, a brick corridor runs around it. Some assessments suggest it may be an unfinished cremation tomb of brick and stone. That is the view of researchers and not a final conclusion. Archaeology is a field where each new dig can completely change how earlier finds are understood.

The kingdom of Phù Nam was once among the greatest centers of power in ancient Southeast Asia. Then it faded into history, as so many empires have. But here, under the Thoại Sơn fields, the soil still holds its layers of brick, its pieces of gold, its statues of gods. And with each new excavation season, the soil tells one more part of a story not yet known.