Chamreh Temple

Prasat Chamreh is a small brick temple built upon a laterite base featuring a square body with a sandstone doorframe on its single opening to the east with false doors around its other sides, all flanked by pilasters topped by arches formed in the brickwork, the main body then rising up with several false levels.

The door is flanked by ornately decorated door columns and is topped by a beautiful lintel featuring Indra on his elephant, Airvata. In this case, Airvata is sporting three heads and clasping the garland to each side, a row of deities/worshippers in arched niches are featured in a frieze across the top, and likewise embedded into the foliage decoration. Inside the temple, you can still see the sandstone hooks for a ceiling drape.

Historical Notes

At 300m. east of Bantay Pir Căn, that is to say 500 m. about the S.-E. du Rahàl, is a small brick sanctuary in fairly good condition, with a door to the east, Pr. Čamrèh.

The interior offers in the corners and the center of the faces of small stones pierced with a vertical hole which seems intended to let pass the suspension cord of a velum above the idol. The door has its trunnion lintel which does not go all the way to the wall. It is relieved by a corbelled arch in laterite rubble. The brick vault rises in almost continuous projections to an open vertical chimney at the top.

Externally, the tower has a square, stepped lower body, with plain doors and floors. The building has a common base for all the elements. The door shows an ordinary decorative composition, molded frame and assembled with miter, rather thick in depth, small columns with five elements with cut nudes, decorated with leaves, type III lintel in trefrises, with the motif of Indra on the three-headed elephant, brick pilasters with reigning cornice with the lintel and pediment in an inverted U, low, with a vertical tympanum.

L’Art khmèr classique , monuments du quadrant Nord-Est, Henri Parmentier, 1939

Photos 2021 tour of Koh Ker

Rodney Charles LHuillier

Living in Asia for over a decade and now residing in beautiful Siem Reap - Contact via [email protected] - more..