Suryavarman II completes Angkor Wat

1150

On the Cambodian plain, after about forty years of labor, the Khmer king's funerary temple was completed. Bas-reliefs unrolling for nearly half a mile showed the churning of the ocean of milk and Suryavarman reviewing his armies. It was the largest religious structure ever built. Its moat, over five kilometers in perimeter, created a cosmological diagram visible from the air, mapping the Hindu universe in water and stone.