Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Angkor Wat (...) is a temple complex in Cambodia and one of the largest religious monuments in the world . . . Originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire, it was gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century. It was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman . . ." [Wikipedia] "Between military campaigns, Suryavarman had supervised the building, in Angkor, of the temple Angkor Wat: the size of a small city in its own right, covering nearly a square mile, only a little smaller than the entire medieval city of London. Angkor Wat was intended to be his final resting place. Surrounded by its own moat and defensive wall, the temple rose up in a series of concentric squares and craggy towers. . . . Carved bas-reliefs showed thousands of scenes of war, court life, religious ritual; scenes from Hindu epics, depictions of the afterlife with the righteous in bliss, the rebellious crushed; a massive portrait of Suryavarman himself. . . . Khmer now boasted the most glorious temple complex in the world. But the country was drained by taxes, worn out by the demands of constant war and extravagant construction.;" [Bauer: Renaissance World, p. 30-1]