Phnom Bakheng, ca. 900, built by Yashovarman I

Description

Sandstone, 5 square terraces, 12 small prasat or towers on each terrace (60 in all), 44 larger towers around the base of the temple, a central tower, and 4 corner towers on the upper level. Two libraries flank the eastern axial entrance to the temple

The temple is on top of a large hill, with staircases on the north, east, and west sides of the hill but none on the south (planned but not executed). Statues of Nandin, Shiva's bull mount, were once at the bottom of each of these staircases. A shaft underneath the central sanctuary contained a stone casket-like box. The remains of hinges and other metallic debris indicating another box was once inside that one. Many small Buddha statues were found, as well as evidence of a burnt offering. Clearly, the sanctuary was rededicated at the end of the 12th century to a Buddhist deity.

The remains of a city wall 2 miles long indicate that the Bakheng was once at the center of the largest enclosed site at Angkor. Although plans often show a moat around the city, there is really no evidence that the moat was ever completed, or that it was contemporaneous with the temple.

Other information

Angkor lies cradled between the long, southeasterly expanse of the Tonle Sap Lake to the south, and the Kulen mountains to the northeast and north. In-between the Kulen range and the lake, four solitary hills have overlooked the Angkorian plain for thousands of years. The hills are weathered, and each is isolated in the middle of flat land. Phnom Krom sits alongside the head of the lake, Phnom Bok looms 14 km. away from Angkor to the east-northeast, Phnom Dei is almost twice as far away as Phnom Bok, further to the northeast, and Phnom Bakheng dominates the road about 200 meters from the south gate of Angkor Thom. Bakheng is the centermost of the four "mountains," or phnom as they are termed in inscriptions. In fact, this last mountain is called Phnom Kandal or Central Mountain when it is first mentioned in a 1052 inscription. It has always been assumed that the name "Central Mountain" came from Phnom Bakheng's location at the center of the city of Yasodharapura (900 A.D.). However, it is not at all clear that the Khmers envisioned their cities as having a line-drawn boundary, something we take for granted in our modern world. Yasodharapura was the first known capital at Angkor, and every successive capital at Angkor was also called Yasodharapura. Obviously, the original Yasodharapura was not conceptualized as a rigidly bounded site, but rather as a fluctuating socio-political sphere that could expand and contract as times changed. Such a sphere could have a symbolic center, and "Central Mountain" was certainly the symbolic, if not geometric center of the original city of Yasodharapura. (When it is placed in regard to the city around it, the mountain is also called Yasodharaparvata in the inscriptions, the mountain of Yasodharapura.) As future kings erected their own central pyramid temples at the expanded site of Yasodharapura, "Central Mountain" would not longer apply as a symbol for the center of the city. However, Central Mountain would always and forever define the location of Phnom Bakheng in regard to the three mountains on the north, south, and east.

If we stand on top of Phnom Krom and look northward at the very distant Phnom Bakheng, a curious feature appears. From this vantage point, the top of Phnom Bakheng is precisely even with the horizon line formed by the ridge of the Kulen mountains. From the vantage point of the East Mebon temple, the top of Phnom Bok is also exactly identical to the top of the far away Kulen ridge. The summits of these two mountains were flattened to better accommodate the construction of a temple complex. However, it is highly unusual that they were flattened so as to be perfectly even with the line of the Kulen mountains when seen from the East Mebon and Phnom Krom.

This sensitivity to the location and presence of the four Angkorian mountains and the large Kulen plateau extends to more than a visual concordance with the horizon line or an awareness of the position of Phnom Bakheng. When King Yasovarman (r. 889-@910) moved the capital to Angkor from Hariharalaya in the southeast, he built temples on all four mountain peaks. While his temple on Phnom Bakheng was being surveyed in the 1960s, the remains of a wall were found underneath one of the eastern buildings. We cannot be certain whether King Yasovarman leveled these mountain peaks to build his temples, or whether the peaks were leveled earlier and already had temple ruins on them. Regardless of any possible antecedents, King Yasovarman obviously considered the mountains to be highly sacred, powerful locations. He took advantage of their lofty pre-eminence to dedicate temples to the worship of Brahmanical gods on their peaks. In a way, he was asserting his authority over the region, as well as propitiating its gods, by building temples on these geographic markers.