
Fall of Angkor
1431
Angkor was besieged and occupied twice by the Ayutthaya kingdom before a final seven-month siege in 1430 forced the Khmer court to abandon it in 1431 for the site of modern Phnom Penh. Historians attribute the fall to some combination of military pressure, drought revealed only by modern tree-ring analysis, ecological strain from the city's own irrigation system, and a religious shift away from the older cult of divine kingship. Many temples remained in use long after the court's departure, and Sanskrit gave way gradually to Middle Khmer rather than the culture vanishing all at once.








