Cambodian Temple Architecture For Dummies

Cambodian temples tend to be built in concentric squares. You have a moat, an outer wall with a gate, then internal "galleries" (roofs with columns supporting them), and then temples in the middle.

Angkor Wat layout/floorplan, image from Wikimedia Commons

The isolated buildings on the left are referred to today as "libraries." I may or may not have get around to writing about them some other time. Everything between the outermost wall and the edge of the image is a moat, by which I mean an actual water-filled moat, not the dry ditch common in European castles:

Angkor Wat from the ground, our photo

Angkor Wat from the air; again, thanks to Wikimedia Commons. See why we opposed SOPA/PIPA?

Khmer architects dug moats not for defense against attackers, but from defense against nature. In Cambodia, you have a rainy season so intense that Tonle Sap lake, the largest freshwater lake in Asia, goes from ~2,700 square kilometers and 1 meter deep to ~16,000 square kilometers and 9 meters deep. That's 141,300 cubic meters of water, or basically adding Lake Ontario.

So the moats get dug up for two reasons: one, you move the land you dug up into the middle, to support the weight of the huge temple you're about to build. Otherwise, the thing will sink into the ground under its own weight. Second, the moat provides a drainage location for the huge amounts of rain which come down during the monsoon season. They may also have theological significance, as many temples reference the Hindu myth of the churning of the ocean of milk. I have this idea that the conversation between the kings and their designers went something like this:

Architect: Which story would you like for this first temple, sir?
King: ... What about that ocean of milk story? That's a good one.
Architect: Very good, Your Majesty. And the temple to honor your parents?
King: You know, I've always been fond of that churning story.
Architect: I see. Well, we can do that. Have you thought at all about your mausoleum temple?
King: (thoughtful pause) The ocean of milk?

Moat outside Bayon Temple, and creatively frustrated architect.

According to our guide, the reason that there are so many temples in Cambodia was that basically every time the king changed, the new king had to build a whole new capital with its own set of temples. So my guess is some of the early temples actually did sink, and that's how they learned what not to do. Reminds me of the point my high school US history teacher made, that by the time of the Constitutional Convention. the US delegates had written multiple constitutions for each of the original 13 states and also national constitutions. They were the world's leading experts on Constitution writing. Same with Khmer architects and swamp temples.

The concentric squares shown in the Angkor Wat drawing are like layers of a layer cake. As you go up, you go up to the surface only; There is no "inside" of the buildings (like an Egyptian pyramid). The middle section of the cake is just cake. If you hollowed out the supporting ground (the cake part) and filled it with, say, Mystical Treasure Traps, or Tunnels o' Death, the cake would collapse in on itself due to the weight of the cake topper. (So yes, Eddie Izzard fans, it does all boil down to cake or death.)


The inside of the temple structures are often different from the outside in one way, which is in materials. To go back to the cake-and-frosting metaphor (am I hungry or what?) the cake is a substance called "laterite," which is essentially clay which bakes into a hard stone brick when exposed to air. It is porous, cheap, and locally available, just what you want for the bulk of your construction. The porousness helps with the drainage, as water seeps into the stone, down through the building, and out into the moat.

Laterite (spongy-looking rock to the right of the door)

Laterite used as interior, visible behind sandstone

But laterite, like cake, has no nice surface. Imagine making frosting roses out of cake itself - it would crumble. (Many older, smaller temples were just made out of brick, which has the same advantages of laterite but is better for smaller buildings. It has the same disadvantage of being very difficult to carve).

Which did not stop them from trying.

So detailed carvings had to be made out of something different different. Early on, that choice was stucco, which was plastered over the brick or laterite and then carved:

Lolei Temple

Stucco, brick, and Justin.

Later, sandstone came into use. Sandstone comes in many beautiful natural colors:



Which can be used to decorative effect:

It is also comes from very far away, and is very heavy. Chhaiy told us that the most popular method was to ship it on bamboo rafts in the rainy season, but it could also be loaded and moved via elephant.

There is one final danger with sandstone: the carving may be so precise and detailed that it seems real.

 

One of these photos is not of sandstone. Can you tell which?