This sculpture is a model of the Angkor Wat Temple in Cambodia. The temple complex consists of a series of concentric, rectangular enclosures, covered galleries (terraces), with open courts in between, tied together by cruciform galleries. Crossing a cruciform terrace, one ascends a staircase and passes through the outermost of three successively higher galleries or enclosures. Eventually, one rises by stone steps to the highest level – this is the heart of the complex, the great, conical towers laid out in quincunx, an earthly reflection of the five heavenly peaks of Mount Meru, the sacred five-peaked mountain of Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist cosmology. 

Ever since its “discovery” by the Western world, there have been a lively discussion over the meaning of Angkor Wat. Today it is a working Buddhist temple (wat), as it has been since the fifteenth century. It has been suggested that it was built in honor or Vishnu as it faces west, the direction of that god. However, that is also the direction of the setting sun and of death, so many have argued that it was a funeral temple or mausoleum, built to house the Hindu ruler Suryavarman’s ashes. It has also been proposed that it was built as a Hindu temple devoted to solar observatory. On the day of the spring equinox the sun rises exactly over the lotus crowning the central tower, and on the summer equinox the sun rises over Phom Bok, a temple-crowned hill 10.9 miles to the northeast.

Since 1992, Angkor Wat has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The model replica of the temple was made by SELA Group and given as a gift from the Kingdom of Cambodia to the United Nations in March of 2020.