Angkor Wat Research Paper 3 Sources

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Angkor Wat Angkor Wat, a temple complex located in Angkor, Cambodia is the world’s largest religious building, complex, and temple. It has such historical importance that it has been on the Cambodian National Flag since 1863. Amazingly, the temple, while it was somewhat neglected after the sixteenth century, has never been completely abandoned and is still in use as a Buddhist temple to this day. Its biggest and most interesting aspects are its location, planning and building, its decorations and breathtaking architecture, and what is going on now with the temple in its use and restoration. Angkor Wat is located 5.5 km north of the modern town of Siem Reap, and a short distance south and slightly east of the previous capital, which was centered at Baphuon Built in the twelfth century. The amazing temple was originally a Hindu site dedicated to the god Vishnu. It was built around the time Khmer architects were perfecting sandstone so the temple was built with sand stone bricks with mortise and tenon joints combinations and the use of dovetails with gravity to hold the stones together. This was used as opposed to mortar. The blocks were put together so well that between some of them you can barely find a seam. The temple used five million tons of sandstone to build the entire permanent structure. The stones had to be transported 25 miles from a quarry called Mount Kulen. The stones are believed to have been transported by raft down the Siem Reap River. It is believed to be the highest classical style of Khmer architecture available at the time. The temple is thought to have been built as a funerary temple for its commissioner and king of the Khmer empire, Suryavarman II, because the temple has a western orientation and counter-clockwise formation of stories in bas-relief on the walls. The god Vishnu is also the god of the west, offering another explanation of the non
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