192 pp, 232 x 170 mm
Paperback, 300 colour photographs
ISBN 978 616 7339 20 7

Price $ 0.00

Banteay Chhmar is the second monument of ancient Cambodia’s greatest king, Jayavarman VII. This temple, built in the late 12th century by of one of Cambodia’s most original stone-carving and architectural workshops, lay in ruins for almost a thousand years under a remote forest halfway between Angkor, the declining capital of the once mighty Khmers and Ayutthaya, the burgeoning new hub of the rising Thai kingdom. At first the remoteness of Banteay Chhmar made it a distant jewel in the magnificent monumental landscape of the Khmers, but after the Khmer Empire declined in the 14th century, the temple’s art was left exposed to generations of looters.

To uncover the secrets of this large, beautiful and still forest-draped complex, Peter Sharrock has brought together a team of international experts, including Claude Jacques, Olivier Cunin and Thierry Zephir, to decipher the reliefs of the master carvers, identify the esoteric Buddhist deities and open a new vista on Jayavarman’s reign. In keeping with the tradition of River Books of Bangkok, the guidebook is illustrated with 200 superb colour photographs by Paisarn Piemmettawat.