Of Gods, Kings and Men

The rich and evocative bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat have captured the imagination of travelers, artists, and scholars for centuries. Built for the Khmer king Suryavarman II in the twelfth century, the enormous temple complex consists of an outer enclosure surrounded by a moat, with three further concentric rectangular enclosures inside it. The bas-reliefs featured in this book are carved on the walls of the third enclosure. Jaroslav Poncar has brilliantly captured the detail of these huge reliefs, measuring more than two meters in height and five hundred meters in overall length, using the high-precision technique of slit-scan photography. One hundred full-page panoramic photographs bring readers within the very walls of Angkor. Scenes from the great Indian epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata are expansively explained and interpreted by Angkor expert Thomas S. Maxwell.