Koh Ker Becomes Cambodia’s Fourth World Heritage Site
The 10th-century Khmer capital, with its seven-tiered pyramid in the forest north-east of Angkor, was inscribed on 17 September 2023 as Cambodia's fourth World Heritage site.
Koh Ker, the remote temple city that was briefly the capital of the Khmer empire, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List on 17 September 2023. It is inscribed as Koh Ker: Archaeological Site of Ancient Lingapura or Chok Gargyar, and it became Cambodia’s fourth World Heritage site, after Angkor, Preah Vihear and Sambor Prei Kuk.
For a short period in the first half of the 10th century, King Jayavarman IV moved the seat of the empire away from Angkor to this site in the forests of what is now Preah Vihear province, about 120 kilometres to the north-east. In some two decades he and his successor built a city of temples, sanctuaries containing enormous lingas, reservoirs and dykes. After that the capital returned to Angkor, and Koh Ker was left to the forest.
Its best-known monument is Prasat Prang, a pyramid of seven tiers rising 35 metres at the end of the main temple complex, Prasat Thom. Nothing like it exists elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and a wooden stairway now allows visitors to climb to the top for a view over the canopy. Around it, dozens of smaller temples in brick, laterite and sandstone stand among the trees, some of them held in the roots of strangler figs.
Koh Ker also gave its name to a style of sculpture. The statues made here were larger than anything attempted before in Khmer art and were carved fully in the round, in poses of movement: wrestlers, dancers, and scenes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Many were looted in the 1970s and later, and a number have been returned to Cambodia from museums and private collections abroad in recent years.
The inscription followed years of work to make the site safe. More than 300,000 square metres of land within the property and its buffer zone were cleared of mines and unexploded ordnance.
Koh Ker can be visited in a day from Siem Reap, by a road that takes about two and a half hours and passes the temple of Beng Mealea. It receives a small fraction of the visitors who go to Angkor, and that is its attraction: a major Khmer site that can still be seen in something close to silence. The listing will bring more attention, and it is a place to see before that happens.