Sambor Prei Kuk (N19)

Known as Tower N19 it sits just north of Prasat Sambor and north of N16. It is a square brick temple, and one of the rare sites in SPK that opens to the west, mostly standing. Inside, featuring a water spout (somasutra) exiting through its wall along with what looks to be the internal eave of a relatively low ceiling.

Tour 2022

Historical Notes

This small building, which is unfortunately not dated […] The interior room shows, at the height of its door lintel, and consequently very low, a strip by groove and a strip which could receive a ceiling. The vault, ordinary, starts above, at such a height that the inner wall rises in equal parts. The floor is paved with stone; to the north, a few centimeters above the pavement and leaving a thin gap between it and it, is the basin of a somasutra whose channel is not aligned and whose outer spout is unfortunately hidden by the heaps of rubble. The door has no interior pilasters.

Outside, the building is decorated with thin pilasters and has the new peculiarity of having, like certain buildings in Java, an intermediate band. Basement, base and cornice are simple. On the large face of the cornice, in the axis of the pilasters, are kūdu with heads. It is not certain, and it even seems unlikely, that the door, without projection, had a decorative lintel. Nothing remains of the floors which appear to have retreated slowly. The presence of niches on the upper band of the facing suggests a cove, starting from floors similar to those of the small building of Mahà Rosei.

L’Art Khmer Primitif, Henri Parmentier, 1927

Rodney Charles LHuillier

Living in Asia for over a decade and now residing in beautiful Siem Reap. Rodney Charles L'Huillier has spent over seven years in Cambodia and is the author of Ancient Cambodia (2024) and Essential Siem Reap (2017, 2019). Contact via [email protected] - more..