Building of Angkor Wat by Suryavarman II

Date

c. 1122–1150 CE

Category

Culture, arts & philosophy

Region

Khmer Empire (Cambodia)

Era

Post-Classical / Medieval

Significance

Commissioned by the Khmer king Suryavarman II in the first half of the 12th century and built over roughly three decades, Angkor Wat at Yasodharapura (Angkor) is the largest religious structure in the world, covering some 160 hectares.

Conceived as the king's state temple and intended mausoleum, it was dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu and laid out as a vast architectural model of the Hindu cosmos, with five towers representing the peaks of Mount Meru ringed by a moat symbolising the cosmic ocean. Its galleries carry nearly a kilometre of bas-reliefs depicting Hindu epics and the king's court, while a sophisticated hydraulic landscape of reservoirs and canals sustained the surrounding city, one of the largest pre-industrial urban complexes on earth. Toward the end of the 12th century the temple gradually became a Buddhist site, and it has remained in use ever since. Angkor Wat marks the apogee of Khmer art and engineering and today appears on Cambodia's national flag.

Empires active in c. 1122–1150 CE

• Song Dynasty
  960 CE – 1279 CE
• Almoravid Empire
  1056 CE – 1147 CE
• Jurchen Jin Dynasty
  1115 CE – 1234 CE
• Abbasid Caliphate
  750 CE – 1258 CE
• Kanem-Bornu Empire
  700 CE – 1900 CE
• Byzantine Empire
  330 CE – 1453 CE

Related culture, arts & philosophy events

• Zhu Xi completes the Neo-Confucian synthesis and the Four Books
  c. 1175-1190
• Birth of Gothic architecture at Saint-Denis
  c. 1140–1144 (Saint-Denis choir)
• The Toledo School and the Latin translation of Greek-Arabic learning
  12th century (Gerard of Cremona d. 1187)
• Al-Ghazali completes The Incoherence of the Philosophers
  c. 1095 CE
• The rise of the European university (Bologna and Paris)
  c. 1088 (University of Bologna)
• Ibn Rushd writes his commentaries on Aristotle
  1170s–1190s CE

Further reading

The Story of Art

The wider story

The Story of Art

E. H. Gombrich

The best-selling art history ever written, from cave paintings to the modern age.

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