Quote:
Originally Posted by NQLD_Newby
Fantastic images Gary, this must have been a wonderfully inspiring trip. Shots like these make me ponder what life back in those days far gone would have been really like. Once again, great shots and thanks for sharing.
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Hi Rex,
Thanks.
With regards the Angkor Empire, it is indeed interesting to ponder what
life must have been like back then.
One thing I know for sure and like Mel Brookes says in his movies,
"It's good to be The King!".
This was certainly an empire that was dressed to impress. The scale
and technical complexity of the constructions and their artistry were
stupendous. I'll give you an example. One pyramidal temple that
I didn't include pictures of was called Baphuon and it was constructed
in the 11th Century. It has been undergoing some restoration work
and whilst we were there, there were two of those giant construction
cranes on top of it. Now they didn't have the benefit of those construction
cranes back in the 11th Century. If you were driving in a major city
today and saw a building of that size going up with the two cranes on it,
you would turn your head and say, "Whoa!
That's a huge thing they're
building. Bet that will take years and probably run over budget".
Certainly anyone visiting Angkor at the time would have been impressed.
This undoubtedly also helped re-enforce the authority of the King.
For those not directly involved in construction itself, I would speculate that
much of the surrounding activities would be much like it is today, namely
rice agriculture. Apart from the temples, they constructed absolutely
enormous water reservoir projects that would have assisted in irrigating
the crops and sustaining the city. In fact, the Angkor Empire was fixated
with the worship of fertility symbols and in places water that was used
for irrigation was designed to flow over fertility symbol carvings. The idea
was that this would make the water scared and magical and benefit the crops.
Depending on the period, they were also involved in worship of
elements of the Hindu and Buddhists faiths, in particular the Hindu
myth of Mt. Meru and its surrounding waters, hence the temples
were often built to resemble Mt. Meru. A central part of many of the
temples was often the cult of these fertility symbols, so they were
therefore also worshipping these symbols which they believed were helping
give life to their crops.
Thus the hallmarks of the Angkor Empire were huge water projects, the
fertility symbol cult which was seen to benefit argriculture, the
agriculture itself, massive temple construction projects which were
used to celebrate the fertility symbols and other religious elements and at the
same time further re-enforcing the authority of the King.
They had their usual wars, namely with the Thai to the west and the Cham people
to the east and there was a four year dark time for them when they lost a war
and were under Cham occupation. As for working on the temples,
it must have been impossibly damn hard work and when you visit the
old sandstone river beds were you can still see they were hand chiselling out
the stone, it couldn't have been a lot of fun. Aparently one problem they
eventually faced is they just ran out of sandstone!
Best regards
Gary
