Baphuon Temple Completed at Angkor

1060

Udayadityavarman II's great state temple, the Baphuon, reached completion after years of construction. Its sandstone galleries enclosed bas-reliefs depicting both cosmic mythology and the quotidian rhythms of Khmer life - rice harvests, cockfights, market scenes. The temple's sheer mass would later prove its undoing: the soft ground beneath began to subside almost immediately, a problem restorers would still be solving a thousand years later.