KÖSZ's staff of professionals will assist in the excavation of Koh Ker, an Angkorian site in northern Cambodia that was briefly the capital of the Khmer empire in the 10th century, and in the restoration of the room of the Hungarian explorer Alexander Csoma de Körös, who wrote the first Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar, at the Zangla Monastery in northern India.
János Jelen, chairman of the Angkor Foundation and Hungary's former ambassador to Cambodia, said a Hungarian team could start excavating an 80-square-kilometer site at Koh Ker, after a contract between Hungary and Cambodia is signed at the end of April.
Archaeologists will be granted access to the site already in January in order to gather precise data on the site for the contract, said archaeologist József Laszlovszky.
The three-year programme will involve a dozen Hungarian archaeologists as well as experts in environmental protection and city development who will excavate the 81-square-kilometre area, which lies in the middle of the jungle. The team will also prepare a proposal to the Cambodian government on using the site as a tourist attraction.
The project will be funded with USD 1 million from the owners of the Hungarian Indochina Association.
Last summer, a team of five Hungarians and one French national, including architects, an engineer - Emese Olosz from KÖSZ, a cinematographer and an archaeologist, visited the Zangla Monastery to take the first steps to save the room of Csoma de Körös.
Balázs Irimiás, the expedition leader, said planning for further work on the project could start at the beginning of next year. He added it was hoped the Ministry of Education and Culture's National Cultural Fund would contribute HUF 2 million to the further renovation of monastery.
De Körös (1784-1842) stayed in the monastery for 16 months in 1823 and 1824 to study the Tibetan language. Ervin Baktay retraced De Körös's route on an expedition in 1926-1929 and identified the room from the inscription on the door: "Csoma's room".
Source: Múlt-kor
