Soeng Temple

Also recorded as Prasat Sing. Engulfed by the waters of its own basin, on our visit in Aug 2024, a local suggested to come back in the dry season. Nearby is small community hall which retains a sandstone pedestal from the site.

Historical Notes

Translated from French. From Inventaire descriptif Monuments du Cambodge, E. Lajonquiere, 1901-

Prasat Sing (The Lion Sanctuary). About 2 kilometers to the north a little west of Phum Kuk Mon; abandoned.

It was a group of three sanctuaries, made of bricks, regularly arranged and oriented on the same limonite base whose long axis is north-south. All that remains is a common pile of bricks from which emerge the three sandstone door frames decorated with their moldings. The decorative lintels are spilled on the debris. A low wall, made of limonite, with a coping, delimits a courtyard around this group which measures 38 meters in the east-west direction and for 25 meters in a north-south direction. It was interrupted, on its four sides, by now ruined brick buildings which were to the north., to the west. and to the south. probably false gopuras, and to the east, a gopura; this one, also made of bricks, had a single passage, but seems to have been asymmetrically extended to the north by a side room lit by a barred-baluster window opening to the outside; a postern was provided in the south part of this same face.

A ditch basin, around thirty meters wide, surrounds the enclosure. It is interrupted to the east by a causeway which leads to a new completely ruined brick gopura, which corresponds to a second exterior enclosure of which no trace remains.

This avenue was marked by two rows of sandstone pillars, erected on two parallel limonite cords. There are about ten left which are quite interesting. The swollen part of their upper end, below the pyramidion with its curved edges, is, in fact, decorated with various scenes or characters: combat scenes, archers, brahmans in prayer; a woman gives her right hand to a man who, turned towards her, holds her by the waist and seems to want to kiss her; two men threaten each other with their bows over a wild boar; an archer shoots a quadruped, a sort of hydra with multiple serpent heads; a man aims his bow at the top of a tree to which a woman ties him by the foot; a man drags a woman behind him; kidnapping of a woman and a child on a horse; scenes of struggles, etc.

To the east from this monument, a sort of small baray crossed by the Kuk Mon river is today completely dry.

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