East Mebon Temple

East Mebon Temple

East Mebon Temple was built in 953 AD as a temple dedicated to King Rajendravarman II’s parents. It is located on a small island in the center of the artificial East Baray (East Reservoir). At that time, visitors had to take a boat to reach the temple. Research suggests that the stone steps outside the current entrance gate of East Mebon Temple were once the landing dock for accessing the temple. However, the reservoir has long since dried up, the East Baray has turned into farmland, and the former island has become a barely noticeable slight mound.

Built around the same time as the royal crematorium, Pre Rup, East Mebon Temple shares a highly similar architectural style and both belong to Brahmanic temple architecture. The entire temple has three tiers of platforms. On each of the four corners of the first and second levels stand large elephant statues of the same size, inspired by the ancient Hindu myth of four giant elephants supporting the universe. At the entrance of the third level are stone lion statues, while the uppermost platform features five towers in total — one at each corner of the square base and a central, tallest main tower. Observant visitors will notice that the bricks used to build East Mebon Temple have small holes — this is because cranes did not exist at the time, so workers had to thread ropes through these holes to lift the bricks up to higher levels during construction. These holes have now become one of the temple’s distinctive features. Both East Mebon Temple and the East Baray are mentioned in the historical text “The Customs of Cambodia” (Zhenla Fengtu Ji) written by Zhou Daguan of the Yuan Dynasty.

East Mebon

Why Visit: One of the most unique temples among the Angkor ruins

Continent: Asia [Asia]

Country/Region: Cambodia [Cambodia]

Province/State: Siem Reap Province [Siem Reap Province]

City: Angkor [Angkor]