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Kaifeng, China Population 800,000, 1126 CE
Gaegyeong, Goryo Population 100,000, 1232 CE
Angkor Thom, Khmer Population 700,000, 1117 CE
EBS Special Angkor Wat
In the northeastern part of Cambodia,
are the remains of an illustrious empire over a vast prairie,
including a gigantic manmade water reservoir,
moats of various widths connected to it,
and over 1,200 beautiful stone buildings.
All the temples are built with finely crafted stones,
and decorated with diverse symbols of faith.
The masons even erected monumental figurines around towers
that are over 40 meters in height,
thus displaying a unique aesthetic
and superior craft unseen elsewhere in the world.
The great empire that blossomed over this glorious civilization
suddenly disappeared,
and lay hidden under the roots of hundred-year-old trees deep in a jungle forest.
That is, until the discovery by French naturalist Henri Mouhot in January 1960.
In awe of what he has discovered,
Mouhot likened them to the Temple of Solomon
and concluded they must have been designed
by a master artist of Michelangelo’s talent.
Erected over an area of land, surrounded by moats,
and 46 times as great as the Vatican,
are the remains of Angkor Wat, attesting to the six centuries of prosperity
the Khmer empire had boasted since the ninth century.
Only gods could have dreamed of all these.
The remains of an ancient empire here
boast of artistic and technical achievements
unsurpassed even by the best of today’s artists.
This must have looked quite different from what it does now
when it was first erected.
The ceiling must have had rows of lotus flowers that are in full bloom.
The saga of gods who created the world
must have come alive to anyone who saw this.
The sum of these four walls add up to 800 meters in length.
This was, indeed, a temple of God.