Imagine a place frozen in time, with mysterious faces looking out at you from the rock. Sound creepy? What if you could find the most divine sculptures and bas relief carvings right out in the open, not behind glass, and could practically reach out and touch any one of them (though you should not!). This seemed like a fantastic way for us to spend some of our time in Siem Reap.
The temples around Siem Reap area cover quite a large area. Each of the larger temple complexes were small cities in their own right.
The blue arrow at the bottom of the map indicates the present-day town of Siem Reap, and as you can see Angkor Wat alone almost covers the same sized area.
Evidence of earlier temple construction date back to about 790 AD, though most were destroyed through various conflicts throughout the years.
But why were they built?
While it is known that the Khmer’s traded with China, it was the Buddhism and Hinduism influences of India which led to the construction of the temples at Siem Reap. However, these were not places of worship as we might consider them today. They were built by the kings as palaces for the gods, and were built to essentially bestow favour upon the person who built the temple and their families. The temples were designed with the thought that it was being built for an immortal god – so it had to be durable, yet beautifully decorated.
Angkor Wat
This is the most well-known of the temples in Cambodia. If you say to someone “I’m going to Siem Reap”, their first reaction may be something like “oh, you’re going to see Angkor Wat”. The word “Angkor” translates to city, and Wat translates to “Temple”…this literally was the “City-Temple”. Originally, Angkor Wat was both the capital city and the State Temple.
To say that this temple is breathtaking is an understatement. Every corridor you walk through, every corner you turn, and every flight of stairs you climb brings new delights.
And it is massive! To give a sense, there is a “moat” around the temple which measures 1.5 km (yes, kilometers) long and 1.3 km wide! To get to the first walls of the Angkor Wat from the road, you need to cross a causeway that’s about 190 m long.
And the causeway is guarded by a lion and a “naga” – a 7-headed snake.
Common in the Khmer style, the centre of Angkor Wat contains 5 pyramids in what essentially results in a temple-mountain to represent Mount Meru, the centre of the universe in the Hindu faith. The pyramids are built from sandstone blocks.
Throughout the temple you will find both Hindu and Buddhist influences, and people continue to come to the temple today to make offerings of incense.
The temple is divided in half, with one half dedicated to Buddah and the second half dedicated to Hinduism. There is a stone right in the middle of the temple which divides the two halves…and of course we found the stone…
The carvings around the temple are amazingly intricate.
In particular, there was a wall that must have been 30 m long full of interconnected carved panels which tell a variety of stories.
Each panel was carved by a different craftsman, and they all needed to line up properly as portions of the carvings would cross over panels. Each panel had a timeline to complete, and if the artisan did not complete the panel on time…they were executed. Talk about pressure from your boss!
Other images I saw all around the temple were the Apsara dancers. These were the concubines of the king, and it was said that there are over 1800 carvings of the Apsara around Angkor Wat.
The girls who were selected to be Apsara started to learn the intricate dances around age 9. By age 17 or 18 they may be selected by the king to join his many concubines. If they were lucky, they may have a child with the king…and if they were really lucky, they had a male child who could one day perhaps become king. The king would select the girls while he was having his bath in one of the massive pools within the temple.
Angkor Thom
If you take another look at the map above, you will see that Angkor Thom is simply enormous. The loose translation of the name is “Great City”, and it was the capital for a time in the 9th century. Each side of the city was enclosed by a wall 3 km long, each of which was accessed through a gate like this…
A similar gate exists at each point of the compass (north, east, south, and west) along the wall, though now it is used by tourists to access the city and the temples enclosed within the walls.
After a short drive within the walls of Angkor Thom we came to…
The Elephant Terrace
The Elephant Terrace was used to host receptions. It gets its name from the figures of elephants carved into the walls.
Carved into the base of the terrace are statues which appear to be holding up the floor.
I found this terrace to be very impressive…but wait for it…
The Leper King Terrace
This massive terrace measures about 25 m on each side, and was named after the statue that was found on the top. While the sheer size of this terrace is impressive, what makes it truly remarkable are the intricate carvings found throughout.
At first glance, you see these carvings all around the outside of the terrace…
And then you find this little hidden alley (on the left side with the boards on the ground in the picture above) in behind that leads into a sort of labyrinth which creates a trench inside the terrace along the outer edges, and the carvings here are absolutely amazing.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, you climb the stairs out of the trench and up onto the terrace itself. You find a statue of the Dharma (or Yarma), the god of the underworld. Because of the corrosion over time the statue became known as the Leper King…
Today the statue is a concrete copy, with the original housed in the national museum in Phnom Phen for safe keeping. Good thing, too…even the concrete copy has been decapitated several times over the years.
Look to the left, and you find more amazing elephants carved into the rock…
Banteay Kdei
Having wrapped up our time at Angkor Thom, we headed a bit further east to the smaller, but beautiful Banteay Kdei. Again, the mysterious faces facing the four cardinal points on the entrance gates…
While not massive as some of the other temples, it does have the same easily identified ‘honey-comb’ shaped towers as part of its construction.
What it lacks in size, Bantaey Kdei makes up with a certain ‘confusion factor’!! The corridors and courtyards were like a maze, and we had some difficulty getting out afterwards (think “Hotel California”!). However, everywhere I looked I was amazed by the beautiful carvings. By this time we had already seen several temples, and I suppose I should not have been surprised to find such beautiful art carved into the walls..and yet I was.
As with most of the other temples in the Siem Reap area, the amount of refurbishment has been kept to a minimum, so what you see is more or less how things were when they were rediscovered.
Some interesting observations
Despite the 40 C heat, I really enjoyed exploring these temples. A couple of things that I remarked upon as we made our way through the ruins:
These temples are quite “new” – generally less than 1000 years old. Why did this register with me? As I walked through I could see that the structures were slowly falling apart. Window frames out of square, cracked walls etc. When I think back to our time in Rome and seeing the Coliseum, or the Pont du Gard in France in such great shape – albeit with considerable conservation efforts on the part of the government – I really appreciated the work of the Romans that much more.
While the structures were not as “solid” as the Romans, their artistry was unbelievable. The intricate carving in the columns, the various scenes in the bas reliefs on the walls were quite simply breathtaking.
Imagine how these buildings would be if there hadn’t been any wars in Cambodia?
Comments
3 responses to “What’s a Wat?”
Hi Oliver,
Thanks you for sharing this beautiful artistic blog accompanied with all the great photos! Is there any indication as to the length of time it took to build this city? Love, Mom P.
Yes….as John Lennon said/sang…’Imagine’….As I read your blogs and see all of your amazing pictures, I am swinging back and forth between the brilliance and the idiocy of humanity. Not a topic for a travel blog, but maybe a motivation for your readers to try to “Imagine”…..
Hi, Oliver, I am glad you posted the map first, this gives an idea how huge these structures are. Your posting is absolutely amazing and I like the commentary with the photos. But I am sure one can only “imagine” what it’s like, to look at the sculptures in person. And I think I found Katina, Mikhaila and Zoe in the photo, due to the pink T-shirts, I think. Totally amazing, thank you for the detailed description.