Heritage site

Phnom Krom

ភ្នំក្រោម

Phnom Krom (ភ្នំក្រោម) is a hill crowned by a temple of King Yasovarman I (យសោវរ្ម័នទី១), built in the late 9th or early 10th century.[1][2] It stands on the shore of the Tonle Sap (ទន្លេសាប) near Angkor (អង្គរ).[1][2] Its name means "the lower mountain".[1] The hill rises 137 meters (449 feet). Glaize places it 16 kilometers (10 miles) southwest, in a straight line, of the "Central Mountain" of Yasovarman's three hilltop temples.[1] It is one of three hills that Yasovarman crowned with temples, with Phnom Bakheng (ភ្នំបាខែង) at the center of his capital and Phnom Bok (ភ្នំបូក) to the northeast.[1][2][3][4]

History

The World Heritage Centre of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) gives Yasovarman I's reign as 889 to 910 and attributes the three hilltop temples to it.[3] Chun Chanboth gives his reign as 889 to 900.[2] Hello Angkor notes that no foundation stele has been found at Phnom Krom or at Phnom Bok, and that no other inscription names either temple to give its date.[5] It writes that experts connect both to Yasovarman's era by their style and their close link to Phnom Bakheng.[5] Seen from the summit of Phnom Bakheng, Phnom Krom stands to the south near the lake and Phnom Bok to the northeast.[6] Giulio Magli wrote that with the temples on these two small hills, the king marked out the sacred ground of the future Angkor.[7]

The temple belonged to the Brahmanic cult.[1] Its three towers sheltered the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity: Shiva in the center, Vishnu to the north and Brahma to the south.[1] In Glaize's reading, by setting temples to the three gods on the hills around his capital, Yasovarman placed all of his subjects, in the city and the countryside, under their protection.[8]

Maurice Glaize, the conservator of Angkor from 1936 to 1946, cleared the temple in 1938.[1][8] In his guide he regretted a pagoda and military buildings set up a short time before in the southwest corner of the site. A later note to the guide records that the camp had gone and the pagoda had grown.[1][8] In Glaize's description, a village of straw huts moved with the water level below the hill, standing at its foot for part of the year and at the far end of a raised road during the fishing season.[1]

The temple

A laterite wall 50 meters (164 feet) square encloses the temple. Glaize found it carefully built and well preserved.[1] The temple faces east, and the main entrance is on that side.[1][7] Four cross-shaped gateways (gopuras) served the enclosure, but Glaize found little left of them beyond some laterite wall bases and sandstone pillars.[1] Long laterite halls once lined the inside of the wall, about 1 meter (3 feet) away from it, as rest galleries. Their roofs were of timber and tile. Only their platforms, foundations and a few pieces of wall survive; one piece keeps a rectangular window with five laterite bars.[1]

Four small annex buildings stand in a row in the eastern part of the courtyard, two on each side of the central path, and open to the west. Each measures 3.10 by 3.50 meters (10 by 11.5 feet) and has a vaulted roof. The outer two are of brick and the inner two of sandstone, plain except for a row of diamond-shaped air holes.[1] Glaize found them standing, though barely.[1]

Facing them, three sandstone towers stand in a line from north to south on one shared platform of laterite faced with sandstone. Stairways guarded by lions climb the platform.[1] The towers are square with stepped corners, and each opens to the east and the west, with false doors carved on the north and south sides. They differ in size: the shrine room is 4 meters (13 feet) wide in the central tower and 3.40 meters (11 feet) in the other two.[1] Each tower must have had four upper tiers, Glaize wrote. He judged that of the three temples Yasovarman built on hills, Phnom Krom kept the most complete outline. In his account only the top tier of the north and south towers and the top two tiers of the central tower were missing.[1]

Ground on the hill's north slope appears to have been readied for a large stairway, matching two pools on the plain below. Glaize found no trace of steps and doubted that the work was ever finished.[1]

Decoration

Glaize found that little of the carving survived.[1] Female divinities (devatas) stand in niches on the towers. Their skirts fall in small vertical pleats like those at Phnom Bakheng, and their upper bodies are bare; each rests one hand on a staff and holds a lotus in the other.[1] Glaize saw in the carved panels above the doors the first important work of this kind in sandstone after those on the small buildings at the foot of Bakong (ប្រាសាទបាគង).[1][2] Small model towers decorate the upper tiers, with a dancer in a wide, pleated bell-shaped dress, a figure that appears again on a smaller scale at Phnom Bakheng and Banteay Srei.[1]

The statues of the three gods were broken. Glaize judged them heavy and coarse, but praised their pedestals, above all the round one of Brahma in the south tower, carved with lotus petals and sacred geese (hamsas). It held a round foundation stone with 16 holes.[1] The statues had been returned to their towers when Glaize wrote; a later note to the guide records that only their broken pedestals were left.[1][8] The north sandstone annex held a badly worn "stone of the nine planets". A door guardian (dvarapala) 3.20 meters (10.5 feet) tall, carved later than the temple, was found in front of the east side of the tower platform.[1]

Condition

The towers are built of a soft, porous sandstone that flakes away. Glaize judged Phnom Krom the most threatened of the three hill temples, worn by storm winds blowing in from the Tonle Sap, and wrote that the poor state of the stone made any repair or restoration impossible.[1]

Hard pink crusts form on the sandstone of one of the temple's buildings. A study published in 2016 found that their high level of phosphorus can be traced to salt efflorescence from bat guano, but that other processes seem needed to explain the crusts. Microorganisms that grow where the phosphorus gathers seem able to explain their color, though the authors wrote that further analysis would be needed to identify the bacteria.[9]

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 The Angkor Guide, Maurice Glaize, Phnom Krom, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Radio Free Asia Khmer, Chun Chanboth, Kings of the Angkor period, part 10 of a history series (April 2, 2014; in Khmer)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Phnom Kulen: Archeological Site/Ancient Site of Mahendraparvata (undated)
  4. ↑ Hello Angkor, Rodney Charles L'Huillier, Phnom Bakheng: The Mountain Top Pyramid, History and Highlights (updated January 1, 2026)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Hello Angkor, Rodney Charles L'Huillier, Phnom Bok: Highlights and History (updated January 1, 2026)
  6. ↑ The Angkor Guide, Maurice Glaize, Phnom Bakheng, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Giulio Magli, Archaeoastronomy in the Khmer Heartland (arXiv, 2016)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Angkor Database, Maurice Glaize, The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation of the fourth French edition)
  9. ↑ Roma Tre University, M. Tescari, F. Bartoli, A. Casanova Municchia, T. Boun Suy and G. Caneva, Pink patinas and incrustations in tropical environment: Phnom Krom temple case (Angkor, Cambodia) (2016)
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This page was last edited on 11 October 2026, at 13:37.