An inscribed Sanskrit stele at Siem Reap
About this photograph
- Creator
- Margery H. Freeman
- Date created
- May 1997
- Location
- Siem Reap, Cambodia
- License
- This photograph copyright ©1997. Terms of use
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- Search LEARN NC for ancient history, Angkor, Cambodia, history, Khmer, monuments, orthography, Sanskrit, Siem Reap, and writing.
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This inscribed Sanskrit stele is on display in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Most Southeast Asian scripts that predated the arrival of Europeans were based on Sanskrit, generally recognizable from its curling characters.
Such stone monuments in both Sanskrit and Old Khmer (written with a Sanskritic script) have been major sources of information about the classical Khmer kingdom of Angkor and about daily life within the royal city walls. Inscribed stone monuments describing the Angkor empire have been discovered as far away as Laos.
