Ancient Angkor [antikvár]

IntroductionWe have both published large illustrated books on Angkor, separately and together, the latest being our joint effort Angkor: Cities and Temples. As a result of this collaboration, we decided to work together on a smaller book, one which would work as a guide, light enough to carry and organised in a way useful to the visitor, but also beautifully produced and illustrated as a book in its own right.Angkor is visitable today largely because of the efforts of the archaeologists from the Ecole Française d'Extrerae Orient. From 1908 there have been an illustrious line of conservateurs, beginning with Jean CommaiUe, and it was he who wrote the first guide to Angkor in 1912. This became something of a tradition, and guidebooks by successive conservateurs Henri Marchai, Henri Parmentier and Maurice Glaize followed.These were all classics in their day, but the last edition of the last of these by Maurice Glaize was published nearly four decades ago. Two strong arguments convinced us that the time is right for a modern guide. After a hiatus of two decades caused by the dreadful events of the Vietnam War and its aftermath, significant research has been carried out, with important new information as a result. The excavations around the royal enclosure at the heart of Angkor Thom are just one example.Furthermore, modem printing technology has made it possible and affordable to use colour photographs throughout the text, something that in the past was out of the question. Quite apart from its size, Angkor contains sites of unusual complexity, some of them further confused by the tropical forest setting. Simply locating, let alone interpreting, certain bas-relief panels takes some effort, and if any of the world's major monuments calls for visual assistance, it is here.What we have tried to do, then, is to incorporate the latest knowledge and research, to present the material step by step through the temple complexes, and to give as many visual references as necessary to help in the description of these rich and sometimes labyrinthine sites. There will inevitably be revisions, for while Angkor appears so monumental to the visitor, the archaeological work surrounding it is on-going, and as excavation and historical research reveals new information, we wiU incorporate this in future editions.Michael Freeman and Claude Jacques, 1999