Funan’s Port at Óc Eo Trades with Rome and India

In the low-lying plains of the Mekong Delta, in present-day southern Vietnam, lies the archaeological site of Óc Eo. Situated within Thoại Sơn District of An Giang Province, the site spans roughly 450 hectares crisscrossed by ancient waterways. French archaeologists identified the settlement in the early 1940s after examining aerial photography of the delta landscape. Formal excavations began on February 10, 1942, directed by Louis Malleret. His investigations revealed an urban settlement structured around water transport, where a primary canal divided the town lengthwise and transverse canals ran past what may have been dwellings raised on wooden piles.

The waterways around Óc Eo formed an integrated regional transport system. One canal connected the inland center directly to its maritime harbor on the Gulf of Thailand, while another extended sixty-eight kilometers north-northeast to the inland center of Angkor Borei. Later aerial surveys in 1958 demonstrated that during this era, a distributary of the Mekong River entered the gulf near Ta Keo, which was situated on the coast before river silt pushed the modern shoreline farther away. A canal joined Ta Keo to Óc Eo, granting direct maritime access and establishing the town as a vital crossroads for vessels traversing the regional sea lanes.