Discoveries: Angkor (Discoveries (Harry Abrams)) [Paperback]

Bruno Dagens (Author)

Book Description

Series: Discoveries (Harry Abrams) | Publication Date: February 1, 1995

Documenting the rediscovery of the capital of the great Khmer Empire in what is now Cambodia, an illustrated volume reveals a city abandoned in the fifteenth century and uncovered four hundred years later by European explorers. Original.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Product Details

• Paperback: 191 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (February 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810928019
• ISBN-13: 978-0810928015
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,878,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Book About Scholarship About Angkor, March 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Discoveries: Angkor (Discoveries (Harry Abrams)) (Paperback)

This is an interesting book on the history of research, scholarship, and popular views of Angkor. Unfortunately, there is not much information about the city or culture of Angkor. Thus the book is mistitled. Are the French and other explorers and scholars of Angkor really more important than the ancient Khmer peoples and their accomplishments?

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Discovering ancient ruins, January 18, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Discoveries: Angkor (Discoveries (Harry Abrams)) (Paperback)

Angkor is an ancient Cambodia city, which is mostly known for its temples with giant smiling faces carved on them, and banyan trees growing all over them. This book has a few Chinese accounts of Angkor when it was still inhabited, but deals mostly with its discovery by western archeologists, and subsequent tourism and restoration efforts. The book also has brief discussions of military campaigns from the colonial period through the Khmer Rouge, and their impact on the ruins. There are some nice cross section illustrations of the temples at Angkor Wat, and many photographs of banyan trees growing on buildings.

4.0 out of 5 stars A gorgeously illustrated introduction to Angkor Wat and the Khmer Kingdom, June 22, 2009

By 

Donald M. Bishop (Virginia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Discoveries: Angkor (Discoveries (Harry Abrams)) (Paperback)

If you're going to visit Cambodia, or if you want to know more about the ancient city of Angkor Wat, you won't go wrong if you first read this small but lavishly illustrated, even gorgeous, book.

It's not, however, a guidebook. Rather it's a readable history of the "discovery" and exploration of the ruins, mostly by 19th and 20th century French explorers, adventurers, scholars, and governors. It presents in full color the best of the impressive drawings, paintings, surveys, maps, lithographs, and photos that they commissioned.

You can piece together the history of the Khmer kingdom and the building of the many temples from the book, but it's by reading what the explorers found and the scholars concluded. The section on Khmer cosmography ("churning of the ocean of milk"), for instance, is brief.

This view of Angkor Wat through foreign eyes (rather than understanding the city and the kingdom on its own terms) is a conceptual shortcoming, yes. There's something of an Indiana Jones feeling to the volume. But since Western visitors encounter a radically different culture and worldview in the ruins, it may be that the author's approach through the eyes of the foreign discoverers -- and early tourists -- works for the traveler who is unlikely to be a specialist.

The final pages of the book provide extensive excerpts from the accounts of the foreign travelers, including the report by Chinese visitor Zhou Daguan ("Chou Ta-kuan") and early Portuguese visitors.

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