Prasat Ta Muen Thom

Prasat Ta Muen Thom
Religion
Affiliation	Hinduism
Deity	Shiva
Location
Location	Surin, Thailand
Country	Thailand
Geographic coordinates	14°20′57″N 103°15′59″E / 14.34917°N 103.26639°E / 14.34917; 103.26639
Architecture
Type	Khmer
Creator	Udayadityavarman II
Completed	11th century[1]

Prasat Ta Muen Thom (Thai: ปราสาทตาเมือนธม, RTGS: Prasat Ta Muean Thom, pronounced [prāːsàːt tāː mɯ̄a̯n tʰōm]) or Prasat Ta Moan Thom (Khmer: ប្រាសាទតាមាន់ធំ, romanized: Prasat Ta Moan Thom) is a Khmer temple located on Cambodian-Thai border.

Its Khmer name translates literally to "Great Temple of Grandfather Chicken". It lies not far from two related temples in a densely forested area where access is difficult on one of the passes through the Dangrek Mountains. Prasat Ta Muen Toch ("Minor Temple of Grandfather Chicken"), the hospital chapel, lies two and half kilometers to the northwest and just 300 meters beyond that is the rest house chapel, Prasat Ta Muen ("Temple of Grandfather Chicken"). During the 1980s-90s, when the Khmer Rouge of Democratic Kampuchea controlled the area, the temples in the region were looted by the Khmer Rouge to finance their guerrilla campaign. Many architectural pieces and original sculptures were stolen, sometimes detached using dynamite, and smuggled out of Cambodia or sold on the black market.^[2] These three temples, all within a few hundred meters of each other, formed a complex which was an important stop on a major route of the Khmer Empire, the Ancient Khmer Highway from its capital at Angkor to its major administrative center in the northwest, Phimai (now in Thailand).^[3]