8/16/2023 0 Comments Angkor thom summer equinoxThe reason is that at the latitude of Angkor the trajectory of the sun is very steep, and therefore a small increase in azimuth leads to a strong increase in height the “horizon height” of the central tower of Angkor Wat from the western entrance is ~5° and the centre of the sun reaches such an altitude at an azimuth of 90° 40'." "Looking from the west gate towards the temple at dawn at the equinoxes, the sun is seen to rise just above the central tower, “crowning” it almost vertically. The azimuth of the temple is 270.5° so a person entering Angkor from the west gate walks at a 90.5° angle. 5° deviation in a perfect east-west alignment: However, in 1976 Professor Stencel published Astronomy and Cosmology at Angkor Wat in which he proposed a solution for this orientation, and for the. It is generally assumed Suryavarman II intended for the temple to house his tomb, or that worshipers were made to face east towards Vishnu, the solar deity. Unlike almost all other Khmer temple orientations the central tower at Angkor Wat faces west, a direction most often associated with death and the otherworld. He noted that " almost all the Angkorian temples are orientated between 89 and 90 degrees east of north, facing the rising equinox sun in March and September." He argued that the spring equinox is the beginning of the sun’s annual journey " which was significant to 12th-century Khmer people who depended on accurate lunar and solar calendars." Through clear example, Professor Magli establishes that Khmer temples were connected architecturally in that they were all oriented to the four cardinal points " a very clear pattern of cardinal orientation and alignment arises". Presenting Google Earth and GIS data he reconstructed the ancient Khmer sky with Stellarium " investigating the relationships of astronomy with orientation and topography in a systematic fashion, following the methods of modern Archaeoastronomy and strictly keeping at a bay vague and/or esoteric proposals put forward by many authors in the past." In 2016, Professor Giulio Magli of the School of Architecture, Urban Planning and Construction Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, published a concise paper entitled Archaeoastronomy in the Khmer Heartland. In the first two articles we learned how Khmer architects converted sacred/special numbers into building lengths. Within the measurements of the architecture of the central tower at Angkor Wat, geographical information pertaining to its location between the poles and the equator has was recorded.Įleanor Mannikka of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania is a scholar of Southeast Asian Studies and best-known for her 2002 work, Angkor Wat: Time, Space and Kingship. Mannikka observed that the north-south axis of the central tower’s chamber is 13.43 cubits long and Angkor Wat is located at 13.41 degrees north latitude. This, Mannikka believes, is not an accident and supporting her observation she noted “ In the central sanctuary, Vishnu is not only placed at the latitude of Angkor Wat, he is also placed along the axis of the earth.” But in as much as it incorporates in a single synthesis the unequal courses of the sun, the moon and the planets, it also symbolises all recurrent time sequences: the day, the month, the year and the wider cycles marked by the recurrence of a complete cycle of eclipses, when the sun and the moon are readjusted in their original positions, a new cycle of creation begins."Īmong the approved methods/disciplines of modern Archaeaostronomy (Ruggles 2015, Magli 2015) a particular form of sacred geography called geodesy has its basis in a branch of applied mathematics which studies the size and form of the Earth and the location of points upon its surface. According to art-historian Alice Boner, speaking of Khmer temples, “The temple must, in its space-directions, be established in relation to the motion of the heavenly bodies.
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