Angkor Thom Temple

 Angkor Thom

Date: Late 12th century and later (excluding some earlier monuments inside, such as the Bapuon and Phimeanakas)

Style: Bayon (excluding some earlier monuments inside) 

Visit: Several hours (see entries for individual monuments)

 This, one of the largest of all Khmer cities, was founded by Jayavaraman VII and probably remained the capital until the 17th century. For most visitors, the first sight of this monumental construction is the magnificent S Gate, with its towers with four faces pointing in each of the cardinal directions and elephants, preceded by the no less impressive avenue of gods and asuras  lining the bridge across the moat. 

Angkor Thom overlaps the SE corner of the first capital of Yasodharapura (end of 9th century), and incorporates temple of previous centuries, notably Bapuon and Phimeanakas. And, as it remained the capital of Jayavarman's successors, there are many later additions and some re-modelling. Its name which dates at least from the 16th century, appropriately enough, mean 'Great City'.
 

Plan

The city walls, surrounded by a moat, enclose a square, approximately 3km on each side. The total area, therefore, is 900 hectares, most of it now forest but originally a considerable city. These walls are pierced by four gates at the cardinal points, and the roads that pass through them converge on the central State Temple of Jayavarman VII, the Bayon. A 5th gate, known as the Victory Gate, pierces the E wall of the city 500m N of the E Gate, and its road leads directly to the Royal Palace (by tradition, the palace was always sited N of the State Temple).  

Visit 

The usual approach is from the S, passing through the S Gate and on to the Bayon in the exact centre of the city. There are, however, so many other monuments, most of them in the area N of the Bayon, that a single visit is rarely sufficient. Moreover, temple in the N, NE and E of the Angkor region are usually reached by driving through Angkor Thom, so that many people stop off at monuments inside the city while passing through. Because of this, individual monuments are dealt with separately in this guide in the following pages.

The S Gate

On the road from Angkor Wat and Siem Reap, this is the first point of entry to the city for most visitors. All  five gates are similar, but the S Gate has been the most extensively restored and is the most complete. Constant use has helped to save the statues of gods and asuras that line its approach; most of the heads at the other gates have been stolen, and only the N Gate retains a number of complete figures. 

The approach to the gate, crossing the moat, is lined by an avenue of statues. On the left and on the right, two rows of figures each carry the body of a giant serpent-- a seven-headed naga -- almost in the attitude of a tug-of-war. The figures on the left are gods, while those on the right, with fierce grimaces, are asuras (demons). The parallels with Churning of the Sea of Milk, particularly as sculpted on the gallery of Angkor Wat, are obvious; even the headdresses are the same. The question then remains, where is the actual churning taking place, with Mount Mandara as the pivot? The most likely focus is the State Temple of the city itself-- the Bayon. Support for this theory is the absence of enclosing wall and moat around the Bayon, suggesting that the walls of the city and its moat take their place. If so, this is a grand conception of religious symbolism, covering an entire city.

The symbolism does not stop there, however. the use of naga balustrades lining the approach to a temple and usually across a moat was common, and it is believed that the purpose was to link the world of men (outside the temple) to the world of the gods (inside). According to George Coedes and Paul Mus, such 'naga bridges' correspond to a rainbow, which provides the same function in Hindu traditions. So, even with tradition of gods and asuras, the approach to the gate of Angkor Thom are 'naga Bridge'. Another suggestion is that the nagas are the guardians of the city's royal wealth.

Angkor Wat temple

 Angkor Wat

Date: Early 12th century (between 1113 and 1150) with later additions

Style: Angkor Wat

Reign: Suryavaraman II 

For once, the modern name of a temple is completely justified. Angkor Wat, the city which become a pagoda, was not only the grandest and most sublime of all the Khmer temples, but also a city in its own right. It was built during the reign of Suryavaraman II, in the first half of the 12th century, both as the capital and the State temple dedicated to Vishnu.

 

 Plan

The outer limits of Angkor Wat are set by its broad moat, faced in laterite and sandstone. Including this, the total area is almost 200 hectares-a rectangle of 1.5 Km E-W by 1.3 Km N-S, the largest temple at Angkor. Two causeways at W and E cross the 190m-wide moat to the outer enclosure, bounded by a laterite wall of 1025m by 802m. Because of Angkor Wat's unusual orientation, the W gopura of this outer  enclosure is by far the largest of the four.

Within the 82 hectares of the outer enclosure, the temple itself stands in the middle on a terrace measuring 332m * 258m, nearly 9 hectares. The remaining 9/10ths of course no trace remains of these buildings, presumably constructed in light materials. Following tradition, the palace would have been to the north of the actual temple. 

The temple proper combines two major features of Khmer architecture: a pyramid and concentric galleries. Pyramids, which in most cases were created by means of stepped terraces, date back to the 8th century Ak Yum and the better 9th century Bakong, and were the Khmer method of symbolising the centre of the Hindu universe, Mount Meru, in the form of a temple-mountain. Galleries, however, evolved later, around the beginning of the 11th century; they were the natural succession to a growing number of annex buildings surrounding the sanctuary. Angkor Wat is, to put it as simply as possible, a pyramid of three levels, each one enclosed by a well-developed gallery with four gopura  and corner towers. The summit is crowned with five towers in a quincunx.

Banteay Srei Temple

Banteay Srei or Banteay Srey is a 10th century Cambodian temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva. This temple is Located in the area of Angkor in Cambodia. It lies near the hill of Phnom Dei, 25 km (16 mi) north-east of the main group of temples that once belonged to the medieval capitals of Yasodharapura and Angkor Thom. Banteay Srei is built largely of red sandstone, a medium that lends itself to the elaborate decorative wall carvings which are still observable today. The buildings themselves are miniature in scale, unusually so when measured by the standards of Angkorian construction. These factors have made the temple extremely popular with tourists, and have led to its being widely praised as a "precious gem", or the "jewel of Khmer art.

(Credit: Wikipedia article) 

Koh Keh Temple

The history of Koh Ker temple is linked to the obscure figure of King Jayavarman IV, about whom scholars cannot agree whether he was an usurper or not. About five years before he became king, Jayavarman IV left the then capital of Angkor Yashodharapura (which was under the reing of his uncle) and he established at Koh Ker. By moving the capital to this distant area King Jayavarman IV divided the empire and to do so he must have have held considerable power as a military leader. In 1880 Louis Delapore visited the site whilst undertaking a broader study of the Angkor temples. There has not been restoration works at the temple and archaeological surveys were undertaken by cambodia teams in the 1960s but these studies were destroyed during the Khmer Rouge regime.