West Mebon

West Mebon (ប្រាសាទមេបុណ្យខាងលិច) is an 11th-century temple on a man-made island in the West Baray (បារាយណ៍ខាងលិច), the largest reservoir at Angkor. It was built for the Hindu god Vishnu (ព្រះវិស្ណុ) in the reign of King Udayadityavarman II (ឧទ័យាទិត្យាវរ្ម័នទី២), in the middle of the 11th century. A large bronze Vishnu was found in one of its wells, and the temple has been under restoration since 2012.

Part of the east wall of the West Mebon, 2006. Photo: Writer128, CC BY-SA 3.0

Heritage site details
Khmer name	ប្រាសាទមេបុណ្យខាងលិច
Site type	Temple
Location	West Baray, Siem Reap province
Country	Cambodia
Period	11th century
Subjects	Religion & Spiritual Life; History & Remembrance

The temple

The island sits at the center of a reservoir about 8 kilometers (5 miles) long and 2.1 kilometers (1.3 miles) wide. On it, a rectangular platform runs east to west. Its western half holds a square basin lined with sandstone terraces and closed by an outer wall, with three gateway towers on each side. In the middle of the basin stands a small sandstone shrine with two wells side by side. A raised path of earth faced with small laterite blocks joins the shrine to the east side.

The temple is dated to the reign of Udayadityavarman II, given as 1050 to 1066. The archaeoastronomer Giulio Magli notes that an east-west line joins the West Mebon to the temple of Pre Rup, 9.6 kilometers (6 miles) away. Because the temple marks the center of the reservoir, he argues that the reservoir itself was laid out around such lines.

The bronze Vishnu

The bronze Vishnu from the West Mebon in the National Museum of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, 2018. Photo: AKS.9955, CC BY-SA 4.0

In 1936 Maurice Glaize of the École française d'Extrême-Orient found the remains of a bronze Vishnu in the round western well. It shows the god lying on the cosmic ocean. The Radio Free Asia series describes it as a huge reclining Vishnu and says it is kept at the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

Restoration

Over the centuries silt covered the east side and about three quarters of the structure collapsed. Glaize restored it from December 1942 to December 1944. He cleared the terraces and the round well, rebuilt the outer wall and the eastern towers, and found the second well, which is square.

A new program began in 2012 under Pascal Royère of the École française d'Extrême-Orient, with French government funding and the APSARA National Authority as partner. Hang Peou of the authority ran the project with him. In spring 2012, while the reservoir was dry, archaeologists dug test trenches around the temple. A protective dike then drained a strip about 30 meters (100 feet) wide so the work could go on. The architect Marie-Catherine Beaufeïst has led the program since 2014. The team takes the temple apart and rebuilds it stone by stone, and its digs have shown that the temple's history is more complicated than once thought.

In November 2022 the authority said that nine towers had risen again after three years of work supported by the French Embassy. Its spokesman, Long Kosal, said the temple had been close to total collapse and that more work remained.

Stone carvers

Replacement stones are carved to match the originals. From 2023 to 2026 the ALIPH Foundation gave US$270,000 to Artisans d'Angkor to train stone carvers for the work, which faced a shortage of skilled carvers. In 2025 the authority dated its present project with the French Embassy to 2018 and wrote that many of the team were Angkor residents. Chheung Chey, a master carver, had worked on Angkor's temples since 1995 and learned to carve replacement stones in 2000, using the temple's surviving carvings as his model. The authority expected the restoration to be finished by the end of 2026.

References