The Gods of Angkor Wat

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Originally built as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu, it was converted into a Buddhist temple in the 14th century, and statues of Buddha were added to its already rich artwork. Sometime later it was turned into a military fortification. Its foot-tall 65 meters central tower is surrounded by four smaller towers and a series of enclosure walls, a layout that recreates the image of Mount Meru, a legendary place in Hindu mythology that is said to lie beyond the Himalayas and be the home of the gods.

The city where the temple was built, Angkor, is located in modern-day Cambodia and was once the capital of the Khmer Empire. This city contains hundreds of temples. The population may have been over 1 million people. It was easily the largest city in the world until the Industrial Revolution. Angkor had an urban core that could easily have held , people and a vast hinterland that had many more inhabitants airborne laser scanning lidar research has shown. Researchers have also identified a "lost" city called Mahendraparvata, which is located about 25 miles 40 kilometers north of Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat itself is surrounded by a foot-wide m moat that encompasses a perimeter of more than 3 miles 5 km. This moat is 13 feet deep 4 m and would have helped stabilize the temple's foundation, preventing groundwater from rising too high or falling too low. Angkor Wat's main entrance was to the west a direction associated with Vishnu across a stone causeway, with guardian lions marking the way.

Recently, archaeologists found the remains of eight towers made of sandstone and laterite by the western gateway. These towers may be the remains of shrines that were in use before Angkor Wat was fully constructed. To the east of the temple was a second, more modest, entrance. The heart of the temple was the central tower, entered by way of a steep staircase, a statue of Vishnu at top. This tower "was at once the symbolic center of the nation and the actual center where secular and sacred power joined forces," writes researcher Eleanor Mannikka in the book " Angkor: Hidden paintings have been discovered in the central tower.

In the same chamber, there's also an intricate scene featuring people riding horses between two structures, which might be temples.

These two paintings are among that have been discovered in Angkor Wat since A mile long sand structure containing a variety of spiral designs was recently discovered beside Angkor Wat by archaeologists using lidar. It would have existed for a brief period during the mid-to-late 12th century. Archaeologists are not certain what it was used for, and it's possible that the structure was never completed. The remains of homes and ponds used by workers who lived near Angkor Wat, and serviced the temple, were also found recently during lidar research.

A usurper, he came to power in his teenage years by killing his great uncle, Dharanindravarman I, while he was riding an elephant.

An inscription says that Suryavarman killed the man "as Garuda [a mythical bird] on a mountain ledge would kill a serpent. Suryavarman's bloodlust would continue into his rule; he launched attacks into Vietnam in an effort to gain control over the territory. He also made peaceful diplomatic advances, re-opening relations with China.

Most of the visible areas are of sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer wall and for hidden structural parts. The binding agent used to join the blocks is yet to be identified, although natural resins or slaked lime has been suggested.

The temple has drawn praise above all for the harmony of its design. According to Maurice Glaize, a midth-century conservator of Angkor, the temple "attains a classic perfection by the restrained monumentality of its finely balanced elements and the precise arrangement of its proportions. It is a work of power, unity and style. Architecturally, the elements characteristic of the style include: Typical decorative elements are devatas or apsaras , bas-reliefs , and on pediments extensive garlands and narrative scenes.

The statuary of Angkor Wat is considered conservative, being more static and less graceful than earlier work. Glaize notes that this gopura both hides and echoes the form of the temple proper. These galleries have square pillars on the outer west side and a closed wall on the inner east side. The ceiling between the pillars is decorated with lotus rosettes; the west face of the wall with dancing figures; and the east face of the wall with balustered windows, dancing male figures on prancing animals, and devatas , including south of the entrance the only one in the temple to be showing her teeth.

The outer wall encloses a space of , square metres acres , which besides the temple proper was originally occupied by the city and, to the north of the temple, the royal palace.

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Like all secular buildings of Angkor, these were built of perishable materials rather than of stone, so nothing remains of them except the outlines of some of the streets. Each side also features a library with entrances at each cardinal point, in front of the third set of stairs from the entrance, and a pond between the library and the temple itself.

The ponds are later additions to the design, as is the cruciform terrace guarded by lions connecting the causeway to the central structure. The temple stands on a terrace raised higher than the city. It is made of three rectangular galleries rising to a central tower, each level higher than the last.

Mannikka interprets these galleries as being dedicated to the king, Brahma , the moon, and Vishnu. Because the temple faces west, the features are all set back towards the east, leaving more space to be filled in each enclosure and gallery on the west side; for the same reason the west-facing steps are shallower than those on the other sides. The gallery is open to the outside of the temple, with columned half-galleries extending and buttressing the structure. Connecting the outer gallery to the second enclosure on the west side is a cruciform cloister called Preah Poan the "Hall of a Thousand Gods".

Buddha images were left in the cloister by pilgrims over the centuries, although most have now been removed. This area has many inscriptions relating the good deeds of pilgrims, most written in Khmer but others in Burmese and Japanese. The four small courtyards marked out by the cloister may originally have been filled with water.

Beyond, the second and inner galleries are connected to each other and to two flanking libraries by another cruciform terrace, again a later addition. From the second level upwards, devatas abound on the walls, singly or in groups of up to four. The very steep stairways represent the difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of the gods. The roofings of the galleries are decorated with the motif of the body of a snake ending in the heads of lions or garudas. Carved lintels and pediments decorate the entrances to the galleries and to the shrines.

Integrated with the architecture of the building, and one of the causes for its fame is Angkor Wat's extensive decoration, which predominantly takes the form of bas-relief friezes. The inner walls of the outer gallery bear a series of large-scale scenes mainly depicting episodes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Higham has called these, "the greatest known linear arrangement of stone carving". On the southern gallery follow the only historical scene, a procession of Suryavarman II , then the 32 hells and 37 heavens of Hinduism. On the eastern gallery is one of the most celebrated scenes, the Churning of the Sea of Milk , showing 92 [56] asuras and 88 devas using the serpent Vasuki to churn the sea under Vishnu's direction Mannikka counts only 91 asuras, and explains the asymmetrical numbers as representing the number of days from the winter solstice to the spring equinox , and from the equinox to the summer solstice.

The northern gallery shows Krishna's victory over Bana where according to Glaize, "The workmanship is at its worst". Angkor Wat is decorated with depictions of apsaras and devata ; there are more than 1, depictions of devata in the present research inventory. In , Sappho Marchal published a study cataloging the remarkable diversity of their hair, headdresses, garments, stance, jewellery and decorative flowers, which Marchal concluded were based on actual practices of the Angkor period. The stones, as smooth as polished marble, were laid without mortar with very tight joints that are sometimes hard to find.

The blocks were held together by mortise and tenon joints in some cases, while in others they used dovetails and gravity. The blocks were presumably put in place by a combination of elephants, coir ropes, pulleys and bamboo scaffolding. Henri Mouhot noted that most of the blocks had holes 2. Some scholars have suggested that these were used to join them together with iron rods, but others claim they were used to hold temporary pegs to help manoeuvre them into place.

The monument was made out of 5 million to 10 million sandstone blocks with a maximum weight of 1. Moreover, unlike the Egyptian pyramids which use limestone quarried barely 0. The two believe that the Khmer used this route instead. Virtually all of its surfaces, columns, lintels and even roofs are carved.

There are miles of reliefs illustrating scenes from Indian literature including unicorns, griffins, winged dragons pulling chariots as well as warriors following an elephant-mounted leader and celestial dancing girls with elaborate hair styles. The gallery wall alone is decorated with almost 1, square metres of bas reliefs. Holes on some of the Angkor walls indicate that they may have been decorated with bronze sheets. These were highly prized in ancient times and were a prime target for robbers.

While excavating Khajuraho, Alex Evans, a stonemason and sculptor, recreated a stone sculpture under 4 feet 1. The skills required to carve these sculptures were developed hundreds of years earlier, as demonstrated by some artefacts that have been dated to the seventh century, before the Khmer came to power. As with most other ancient temples in Cambodia, Angkor Wat has faced extensive damage and deterioration by a combination of plant overgrowth, fungi, ground movements, war damage and theft.

The war damage to Angkor Wat's temples however has been very limited, compared to the rest of Cambodia's temple ruins, and it has also received the most attentive restoration. Criticism has been raised about both the early French restoration attempts and particularly the later Indian work, with concerns over damage done to the stone surface by the use of chemicals and cement. The project restored the traditional Khmer roofing system and removed cement used in earlier restoration attempts that had resulted in salts entering the structure behind the bas-relief, discoloring and damaging the sculpted surfaces.

Within the largest city in the world

The main phase of work ended in , with the final component being the installation of finials on the roof of the gallery in The dehydration- and radiation-resistant filamentous cyanobacteria can produce organic acids that degrade the stone. A dark filamentous fungus was found in internal and external Preah Khan samples, while the alga Trentepohlia was found only in samples taken from external, pink-stained stone at Preah Khan. Since the s, Angkor Wat has become a major tourist destination. The influx of tourists has so far caused relatively little damage, other than some graffiti ; ropes and wooden steps have been introduced to protect the bas-reliefs and floors, respectively.

The prospect of developing such large tourist accommodations has encountered concerns from both APSARA and the ICC, claiming that previous tourism developments in the area have neglected construction regulations and more of these projects have the potential to damage landscape features. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the American thrash metal band, see Angkor Wat band.

A temple complex in Cambodia. Four Stages Arhat Buddha Bodhisattva. Facade of Angkor Wat, a drawing by Henri Mouhot , c. Sketch of Angkor Wat, a drawing by Louis Delaporte , c. Plan of Angkor Wat. General plan of Angkor Wat with central structure in the middle. Hinduism portal Buddhism portal Cambodia portal Architecture portal. Retrieved 29 April Richter 8 September Retrieved 7 June Early Mainland Southeast Asia.

Angkor Wat: History of Ancient Temple

History of Ancient Temple". Retrieved 28 July A Record of Cambodia: The Land and Its People. Translated by Peter Harris. Retrieved 27 April The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press. Retrieved 18 October A Past Regained Retrieved 22 November Krishna and the Plaster Cast. A Transcultural Perspective on Architectural Museums. Cultural Heritage as Civilizing Mission. From Decay to Recovery. Heidelberg, New York, pp. Retrieved 10 December The City of Angkor Wat: A Royal Observatory on Life? This page does not cite an author's name.

Journal of Archaeological Science. The Complete Pyramids , London:

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