Eastern Mebon Temple

This guide to Eastern Mebon in Siem Reap opens with a puzzle: how an empire that raised thousands of temples remembered the name of exactly one architect, a Buddhist minister named Kavindrarimathana serving a devoutly Hindu king. It traces his unlikely role overseeing a Shiva sanctuary built to honor the king's dead parents, the temple's consecration on a Friday morning in January 953, and the stone elephants still guarding its corners. The guide also looks at Srah Srang, the reservoir he is said to have built, and his likely hand in the larger temple mountain raised nine years later.