Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tightrope walkers. To the right of the circus, the royal court watches from a terrace, below
which is a procession of animals. Some of the reliefs in this section remain unfinished.
A Land of Plenty
The two rivers, one next to the doorpost and the other a few metres to the right, are teem-
ing with fish.
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The Chams Retreat
On the lowest level of this unfinished three-tiered scene, the Cham armies are being de-
feated and expelled from the Khmer kingdom. The next panel depicts the Cham armies
advancing, and the badly deteriorated panel shows the Chams (on the left) chasing the Kh-
mers.
The Sacking of Angkor
This panel shows the war of 1177, when the Khmers were defeated by the Chams, and
Angkor was pillaged. The wounded Khmer king is being lowered from the back of an ele-
phant and a wounded Khmer general is being carried on a hammock suspended from a
pole. Directly above, despairing Khmers are getting drunk. The Chams (on the right) are
in hot pursuit of their vanquished enemy.
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The Chams Enter Angkor
This panel depicts another meeting of the two armies. Notice the flag bearers among the
Cham troops (on the right). The Chams were defeated in the war, which ended in 1181, as
depicted on the first panel in the sequence.
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Baphuon
Often coined the world's largest jigsaw puzzle, Baphuon OFFLINE MAP was the centre of
EFEO restoration efforts when the civil war erupted, and work paused for a quarter of a
century. The temple was taken apart piece by piece, in keeping with the anastylosis meth-
od of renovation, but all the records were destroyed during the Khmer Rouge years, leav-
ing experts with 300,000 stones to put back into place. The EFEO resumed restoration
work in 1995, and continues its efforts today. Baphuon is approached by a 200m elevated
walkway made of sandstone, and the central structure is 43m high. Clamber under the el-
 
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