Suryavarman II and the Building of Angkor Wat
Suryavarman II began Angkor Wat around 1113 and it is the largest religious structure ever built. The Khmer empire at that point covered most of mainland South-East Asia, and its capital region held perhaps 750,000 people — by some estimates the largest pre-industrial urban complex in the world, spread over a thousand square kilometres of settlement, temples and rice fields. What made it possible was water. An enormous system of reservoirs, canals and channels captured the monsoon and released it through the dry season, permitting two or three rice crops a year and supporting the population that built the monuments. The temple was dedicated to Vishnu rather than to Shiva, which was a departure, and was oriented west, which is unusual and has been read as funerary. It covers some 160 hectares within a moat 190 metres wide, and its five towers represent the peaks of Mount Meru. The galleries carry about 1,200 square metres of bas-relief, including the churning of the sea of milk and a procession of Suryavarman's own army. Construction is estimated to have taken about thirty years and some five million tonnes of sandstone floated down a canal from a quarry forty kilometres away. The empire declined from the fourteenth century, and the site was never abandoned — Buddhist monks maintained it continuously, and the temple was converted to Theravada use. It appears on the Cambodian flag, the only building on any national flag. The water system is also the best explanation for the decline. Sediment cores and tree rings show severe drought alternating with violent monsoons in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and a network of that scale silts, breaches and cannot be repaired faster than it fails.
- Year: 1113 CE
- Category: Architecture
