The founding of an empire, the settling of frontier lands, a king's gifting of gold pitchers and black-eared stallions to a Brahmin priest. These  and other remarkable stories come down to us in the Sdok Kok Thom Inscription, one of the world's most important ancient testaments.

Recovered at a ruined temple in Thailand close to the Cambodian border, the 340-line inscription unlocks the early history of the Khmer Empire, the fabled Hindu civilization that built Angkor Wat and scores of other huge stone temples in Southeast Asia.

Yet the great text has remained little known outside of expert circles. In this full and highly readable book, former Washington Post  correspondent John Burgess traces the impact of the inscription, which was carved onto a sandstone monolith around the year 1052 AD, abandoned to the wild for centuries, then decoded by French colonialists. 

He carries the story forward to modern times, when the temple where the inscription was found emerged as a haven for Cambodian refugees and resistance fighters during the war in their homeland. Today the temple is again at peace, its mission of preserving history accomplished.

The book includes more than 60 photographs and a full English translation of the inscription by Dr. Chhany Sak-Humphry with assistance from Dr. Philip N. Jenner.

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"While reporting on Cambodians fleeing war and revolution in 1979, John Burgess came across an ancient Khmer temple hidden in the bush... Thirty years later he returned to that temple to decipher its history. The result is this lovely book that tells the story of the temple and the larger Angkor Empire levened with Burgess' own odyssey to recover that history."

--Elizabeth Becker, author of When the War was Over