Five years ago on a homestay in Cambodia’s rural Kampong Thom province we were taken for a walk to see the Sambor Prei Kuk temple and were absolutely amazed to be seeing 6-9th century pre-Angkorian ruins in the nearby jungle. At the time I wrote that “they are fabulous and I hope they are able to preserve them as a draw card for visitors”. Well, preserve them they have! I was delighted to discover that Sambor Prei Kuk had been listed as Cambodia’s third UNESCO World Heritage Site last year, placing it along with the much more famous Angkor Wat.
My friend Eke at Sambor Prei Kuk
Cambodia’s newest UNESCO site is a cultural and archaeological site: the Temple Zone of Sambor Prei Kuk. The name means “temple in the richness of the forest” in the Khmer language. It is located in the province of Kampong Thom, about 200 km north of the capital Phnom Penh and about 176 kilometers east of Angkor Wat. This temple complex is now in a ruined state but had been identified as Ishanapura, the capital of the ancient Chenla Empire, a civilization that flourished in the late 6th and 7th centuries and continued on until the Khmer Empire in the 9th century.
The structures that make up this complex were constructed at different time periods. They mainly used brick for construction although sandstone was also built on certain structures. These temple complex structures also had various features such as octagonal towers, ponds, reservoirs, lion sculptures, and more. According to UNESCO “Some of these elements, including lintels, pediments and colonnades, are true masterpieces”.
Shaivism was the religion of Chenla, including elements of Hinduism, Buddhism and indigenous ancestor cults. In the Sambor Prei Kuk temples, it is possible to see stone inscriptions in both Sanskrit and Khmer, naming both Hindu and local ancestral deities with Shiva.
Sambor Prei Kuk is located in mature sub-tropical forests with limited undergrowth. In 1970 during the Vietnam war, US President Nixon ordered a secret bombing of Cambodia to fight the Khmer Rouge guerrillas and any influence of North Vietnam in the country. US aircraft bombed positions inside the archaeological site, causing craters near the temples, whilst the Khmer Rouge left several mines on the land that were cleared only in 2008.
Leave a Reply