Khmer temple decorations at Beng Mealea

1150

The Khmer king Suryavarman II's builders, freed up after the completion of Angkor Wat, began work on satellite temples including Beng Mealea. Its sandstone bas-reliefs of Vishnu and Rama were carved by the same workshops that had decorated the central mausoleum. Today Beng Mealea lies engulfed by jungle, its galleries split by strangler figs whose roots thread through the carved stone like veins through a living body.