S1 Ep3: The Rise of the Khmer and Angkor (Part Two)

Time Period Covered: 802 – 1296 CE

How do you build the largest city in the medieval world? What does it actually take to construct Angkor Wat? And what happens when the greatest king in Khmer history dies and leaves an empire stretched to its limits?

In this episode, Lachlan traces the rise of the Khmer Empire from Jayavarman II's ceremony on Phnom Kulen to the death of Jayavarman VII, the most prolific builder in Angkorean history. The three-step blueprint of the early kings — waterworks, ancestral temple, state temple. The building of Yasodharapura and the East Baray. The interlude at Koh Ker and why it failed. The mystery of Suryavarman I's blood oath and the patronage networks that held the empire together.

We cover Suryavarman II and the construction of Angkor Wat in detail — the labour, the materials, the corbelled architecture, the astronomical alignments, and the sheer organisational achievement of moving and placing millions of tonnes of stone. Then Jayavarman VII: the Cham sacking, the comeback, the building programme that outstripped every king before him combined, and the contradiction at the heart of his reign between compassion and extraction.

Sources
Chandler A History of Cambodia 
Coe and Evans Angkor and the Khmer Civilization Hendrickson 
Stark and Evans (eds) The Angkorian World 
Tully A Short History of Cambodia