Khmer Empire

The state that built the largest religious monument on earth and an engineering system that supported the biggest pre-industrial city known. Jayavarman II declared independence from Java in 802 and founded a kingdom that governed most of mainland Southeast Asia for six centuries from the Angkor region. Its rulers were god-kings in a Hindu and then Mahayana Buddhist framework, and each built temples as an act of merit and legitimacy - Suryavarman II raised Angkor Wat in the twelfth century, aligned to the equinox and covering more ground than any temple complex anywhere. Jayavarman VII built the Bayon with its faces, plus over a hundred hospitals and rest houses recorded in inscriptions. The real achievement was hydraulic: enormous reservoirs and canals stored monsoon water and released it through the dry season, supporting a population estimated near three-quarters of a million. Lidar surveys since 2012 have revealed the full extent of that urban grid under the forest. Decline followed drought, the silting of the system, and Ayutthayan attacks; the capital was abandoned in the fifteenth century. The temples were never lost to Cambodians, only to Europeans. Angkor Wat appears on the Cambodian flag, the only building on any national flag. The empire ran from 802 to 1431. Its inscriptions are in Sanskrit and Old Khmer, giving two registers of record. The West Baray reservoir is eight kilometres long and still holds water. Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan left the only detailed outsider's account, written in 1296 and describing a functioning city rather than a ruin.

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