Here, bas-reliefs of apsara dancers and pillars enlivened with Sanskrit inscriptions celebrating good deeds take on a rosy hue.

BBC: The perfect trip: Cambodia

Find your way, though the police would rather you did not, to remote Abydos and its exquisite bas-reliefs honouring the god Osiris.

ECONOMIST: For a tourist, Egypt can be either

One of the center squares contained a newly discovered pillar with the most intricate bas-reliefs to date: rows of sinuous-necked cranes and snakes packed efficiently together, like sardines in a can.

NEWYORKER: The Sanctuary

This archaeological site, the subject of The Sanctuary, by Elif Batuman in the New Yorker, consists of rings of monumental limestone pillars rivaling Stonehenge in size, carved with bas-reliefs of all sorts of threatening animals and dating from 9, 000 B.

FORBES: Connect

The site comprises more than sixty multi-ton T-shaped limestone pillars, most of them engraved with bas-reliefs of dangerous animals: not the docile, edible bison and deer featured in Paleolithic cave paintings but ominous configurations of lions, foxes, boars, vultures, scorpions, spiders, and snakes.

NEWYORKER: The Sanctuary