Though it’s perhaps the most heavily looted archaeological site in Cambodia, the huge payoff of Preah Khan of Kompong Svay still beguiles archaeologists and tourists using its beauty and size. Some 50 km east of Angkor-the capital of the Khmer Empire, which spanned a lot of mainland Southeast Asia between the ninth and fifteenth centuries A.D.-Preah Khan is believed to have functioned as an important Buddhist pilgrimage center and a rich way channel to the raw materials which fueled the empire’s growth. First buit from the eleventh century, the website consists of four concentric enclosure walls which surround several temples made from brick, laterite, and sandstone.
“Preah Khan is an enigma as it’s the single largest construction ever built from the Khmer,”says archaeologist Mitch Hendrickson of the University of llinois in Chicago. “It is even bigger than the complex of Angkor Thom insile Angkor itself”
Although lots of artifacts and reliefs were stolen from Preah Khan in the 1970s and 1980s, the archaeological substances that do survive suggest the site might have been almost as wealthy as Angkor. For years, scientists have pointed to slag piles and possible fumace locations asevidence that Preah Khan was a middle of iron production. Howeve; Hendrickson anod his coworkers have dated samples obtained from multiole locations in the site and decided that smelting actions tookplace there beginning just from the early fifteenth century. Hendrickson notes that Preah Khan was situated roughly 20 miles from Phnom Dek, Cambodlia’s biggest source of iron oxide, an essential component in the smelting procedure. This placed the settlement at its peak to Serve as a conduit between iron smelters based at Phnom Dek-who were members of an ethnic minority called the Kuay-and the metropolis in Angkor:”Part of this reason Preah Khan managed to reach the riches it haod,”
Hendrickson explains,”was that it functioned as a meadiator for the creation of iron between these two locations.”
THE SITE The trip to Preah Khan requires four hours by car from the city of Siem Reap and the Angkor ruins. Four-wheel drive is advisable.Hendrickson recommends hiring a guide to help find Preah Khan’s most impressile constructions,including the island temple of Preah Thkol in the middle of the website’s reservoir, and Preah Chatumukh,a tower depicting a standing Buddha.
WHILE YOUPRE THERE Regardless of the grandeur of Preah Khan，the site’s remote location means you will likely be among just a handful of people on any day.Bring binoculars to catch sight of the many species of birds or take a book and enjoy the solitude.