Angkor Wat: A Temple-Mountain in Stone

In the early 12th century, the Khmer king Suryavarman II built Angkor Wat in present-day Cambodia, dedicating it to the Hindu god Vishnu. Its five towers represent Mount Meru, the mountain at the center of the universe in Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, and its moat represents the cosmic ocean. Long galleries are carved with bas-reliefs, including the 'Churning of the Ocean of Milk', and hundreds of graceful female figures called devatas.

Unusually, the temple faces west, which some scholars link to Vishnu or to a funerary role. Later Khmer rulers turned to Buddhism, and Angkor Wat became a Buddhist site. Angkor was the center of a vast city supported by reservoirs and canals, recently mapped with lidar. The temple shows how religion, kingship and engineering combined to create one of the world's largest religious monuments.