Photograph by W.E. Garrett
A Cambodian militiaman stands guard over the temple of Angkor Wat. The monument has stone porticoes and galleries and carved lions, seven-headed snakes, goddesses, celestial dancers, and demons. The Khmer capital of Angkor was located near today's Siem Reap, Cambodia.
At its height in the 12th century, the Khmer Empire (A.D. 600 to 1150)
dominated the southern half of the southeastern Asian peninsula. Its heart was in present-day Cambodia, in the city of Angkor.
Angkor was twice the size of today's Manhattan and was home to perhaps a million people. Early Khmer rulers embraced the Hinduism brought by Indian traders.
In Angkor a succession of kings built more than 700 temples. The largest of them all, Angkor Wat, alone covers nearly 500 acres (200 hectares) and is one of the largest monuments ever built—and, some say, one of the most beautiful.
Temple carvings tell of daily Khmer life: fishing in canoes, buying and selling at markets, watching cockfights.
One of the empire's greatest achievements was its elaborate water system. The Khmer built a complex network of canals and dams to divert and retain monsoon waters. This allowed the people to reap an extra rice harvest every year, a regular abundance that helped sustain the empire for more than five centuries.
Ruler Jayavarman VII's death around 1220 sent Angkor into decline. The Siamese invaded the capital from the west 200 years later, and the Khmer fled the city for good. They reestablished at Phnom Penh, the capital of today's Cambodia.
Abandoned, Angkor faced decades of war and unrest in the 1900s at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime. Even more destructive, looters have destroyed many temples and relics, beheading statues and dismantling walls stone by stone.
