The Great Maya Tombstone

10th Jul 2023

Mexicolore contributor Georges Fery

We are very grateful to George Fery, a freelance writer-photographer of pre-Columbian history and archaeological sites of Mexico and the Americas, for writing and illustrating this article on the massive and uniquely important tombstone of King Pakal of Palenque.

The iconography of the Maya tombstone in the Temple of the Inscriptions has raised more questions than well-founded answers. A close look at the tombstone, its setting and history, may help understand the Maya timeless message about life and death. The Temple is the final resting place of K’inich Janahb’ Pakal Ahaw, Lord of the B’aakal kingdom at Lakamha’, near today’s Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, where he was born on March 13, 603. From the end of the fifth to the late ninth century, Lakamha’ was an important metropolis and a major regional player in politics, trade, and architecture. Pakal ruled the kingdom from 615 to 682, making him one of the longest-reigning monarchs in history.

As holy lord of the B’aakal kingdom, Pakal was supreme in secular and religious matters, superseding the high priest and priestess, for the prefix K’inich means Lord, while Ahaw connotes Holy. The Maya called their kings ch’ul ahaw or “lords of the life force,” for the universal power vested in them by the gods. He, and he alone, was anointed by the gods of the unifying forces of light of the Otherworld and those of darkness of the Underworld. In the Maya cosmology, these “worlds” were understood as “complementary opposites” for, paradoxically, both were in turn friendly and hostile over humans and nature. For these reasons, they needed to be pacified through rituals at dedicated times such as, among others, planting and harvesting and important communal milestones.

In the last decade of his life, Pakal and his architects worked on his funerary monument, the Temple of the Inscriptions facing the ancient city’s central plaza.
The temple is the most remarkable sanctuary ever built in Mesoamerica. The eight-level funerary pyramid, and the temple at its summit making up its ninth level, was designed by Pakal and his architects who started its construction around 675, when Pakal was seventy-two years old. The structure was completed about five years before his death on August 8, 683. The temple at its top was dedicated on December 23, 688, by his son and heir, K’inich K’an B’ahlam (635-702), in time for his father’s funeral. The stepped pyramid’s foundations reach over ten feet below the central plaza’s grounds. The structure was originally covered with plaster that may have been painted red, for remains of pigment were found; of note is the absence of carvings on its stones. The name Temple of the Inscriptions comes from three large limestone panels found on the walls of the temple’s front corridor. In the past, the stepped pyramid was known as “Temple of the Laws” because on those panels are 617 glyphs that narrate Pakal’s achievements and proclaim his place in eternity.

The six piers atop the pyramid are adorned with stucco scenes. As noted by scholars, “we may never know what Pakal intended to display on the piers, for K’an B’ahlam, who completed the temple after his father’s death, took this public location to show the rituals in which he became heir to the throne and proved his divine nature.” In ancient Maya cosmology “the pyramid replicates the First-True-Mountain of the World Rising out of the Primordial Waters of Creation” (Schele, Matthews, 1993, 1998). The crypt, located in the deepest recess of the pyramid, is associated with caves perceived as portals to the water world, for water is integral to the belief in the beginning of life in Maya cosmology where the “Otherworld” points to a mythic world “above” the human plane, abode of the sun, beneficent gods, and life. Its opposite, the “Underworld” or world “below” is associated with sunset, the moon, malevolent gods, and death. The world of the living, between these two man-made worlds, is the “Middle World.” As Bassie-Sweet point out, “One of the most important structuring principles in Maya worldview was complementary or contrasting opposites, such as male/female, right/left, east/west, day/night, up/down or north/south” (2008).

To build the pyramid, not only did architects, master stonemasons and carvers answer Pakal’s architectural requirements, they also followed a sacred allegorical pattern that was beyond their professional expertise, helped in their tasks by calendar priests, knowledge keepers and wizards. For the burial ceremony, Pakal and his chu’lel – his “divine life force” or “blessed substance of the living universe” – were first brought from the palace up the pyramid’s front stairs. The stairs of the pyramid follow, as does the pyramid’s architecture, the four sacred directions of the Maya equilateral cross, the wacah chan or “world tree.” Each arm of the cross is associated with colors, deities, and functions. The pyramid faces northward onto Palenque’s main plaza. Climbing the stairway up to the temple, Pakal and his retinue faced South-yellow-Nohol (K’an Xib’Chac, germ of life, origin of the winds). After prayers, rituals, and invocations in the temple, Pakal’s body and his chu’lel’ were carried down the three sets of the intramural stairways leading down to the crypt. The first flight of stairs followed the path of the Sun, so Pakal and his retinue walked down heading East-red-Lakin (Chac Xib’Chac, sunrise, dawn). At mid-level, the second set of stairs sharply turns West-black-Ek (Ek Xib’Chac, sunset, dusk). Pakal’s last short five steps stairway into the crypt led him North-white-Xaman (Zac Xib’Chac, the resting place of the winds).

When Pakal was placed in his coffin his head pointing north, he transitioned from a divine king to a celestial ancestor. As the last rituals and invocations were completed, the crypt’s massive triangular stone door was closed. In his coffin, however, Pakal was never far from the living and, for this purpose, had a narrow conduit called the Tz’at Na Kan, or “Serpent of the Wise Ones,” built to fit the stairwells. It was called a psychoduct by the renowned Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier (1906-1979), who discovered the stairwells in 1950 and the crypt in 1952. The serpent’s head is made of a mix of limestone plaster and was attached to the bottom of the sarcophagus which connected with the “psychoduct,” a rectangular limestone molding outside the door, matching each stair with a hollow round tubelike center that ended below the floor of the temple. It was the Tzat Na Kan, through which Pakal and the priests established soul-to-soul contact, not soul-to-mind, at dedicated times. This feature is found in other structures at Palenque such as in Temples XIII and XVIII, albeit not so elaborate. They each have a tube-like conduit that runs vertically from the crypt to below the temple floor, and a small hole on the sarcophagus lid was drilled at the level of the face to let the ch’ulel’ pass. These funnels bolstered the belief that the individual in the grave was still socially alive after death, with prerogatives attached to his spiritual powers, for ch’ulel’ never dies. It was then accepted, as it is today in most beliefs and religions, that a person has a body, and a soul. It was, however, the deified chu’lel’ that was the object of veneration. Upon death, while the body’s soft tissues decayed, its chu’lel remained within the skeletal bones for the duration of the person’s past life and was then reunited with the ancestors to be assigned to another life.

Upon discovering the stairwell and after removing the stones and debris from the intramural stairways, Alberto Ruz’s team reached the level of the sanctuary.
A massive triangular limestone door – seven and a half feet high, five feet wide at the base and eight inches thick – sealed the entrance to the crypt. There is no similar triangular door in Palenque or elsewhere in Mesoamerica. Facing the triangular limestone door, on the right side of the landing of the second flight of stairs, Ruz found the remains of five persons who had been sacrificed. They were dismembered to fit in a narrow stone box and were covered with cinnabar, a red mercury sulfide powder. Pakal’s so-called “companions” were sacrificed to serve their lord’s chu’lel’ in the afterlife with their own. Three of them were identified as “two males and one female in their late teens or early twenties; the other two could not be sexed due to the deterioration of the remains” (Tiesler, Cucina, 2006).

Opening the door became a laborious task to avoid damaging it. Ruz and his team eventually entered the twenty-by-thirteen-foot sanctuary and were stunned by the magnificence of the shrine. The massive monolithic twelve-to-fifteen-ton sarcophagus is ten feet long, seven feet wide and three-and-a-half-feet high. It was carved from a nearby limestone hill and took most of the crypt’s space. Because of its size and that of the monolithic tombstone, they were set in place together before the pyramid was built over the sanctuary.

The sarcophagus rests on six carved square limestone blocks that raise it over a foot above the crypt’s floor made of large, quadrangular, finely leveled stones. The rectangular finely carved tombstone was smeared with cinnabar, a red mercury sulfide powder, associated with blood, the ultimate stream of life, also used to ward off malevolent forces. What struck all present was the exquisitely carved tombstone, unique in the Americas for its breathtaking iconography. The tombstone is twelve-and-a half-feet long, seven-and-a half-feet wide and ten inches thick and overlaps the sarcophagus by fifteen-and-half inches on the north and south sides; the overlap is only two inches on both its long sides (Alberto Ruz, 1973).

The archaeologists’ challenging task was to carefully slide the tombstone on an abutment originally built on the north side of the sarcophagus. The tombstone’s two northern corners were damaged probably during the transfer from the quarry to the sanctuary, before the pyramid was built; one of the corners was recovered below the sarcophagus. The coffin was carved into the sarcophagus in the shape of a fish, a reminder of the primordial sea from where all life forms came and was finely polished inside. It is six-and-a-half-feet long, one-and-three quarter-feet wide, and fourteen-and-a-half inches deep. A limestone cover, four inches thick, in the same shape as the opening fitted with stone plugs in its four corners, sealed the coffin. Upon lifting the cover, Ruz and his team came face-to-face with K’inich Janahb’ Pakal. The Lord of Lakamha’ was found lying on his back with arms extended on his sides and was fully dressed at the time of burial. The remains and the inside walls of the coffin were covered with cinnabar.

In Classic Maya imagery, the Maize God wore a net skirt and a profusion of jade ornaments like those found in the coffin. Pakal’s adornments were of fine green jade which were carefully recorded by the archaeologists. They included bracelets with semi-round beads akin to corn kernels, necklaces, rings on each of Pakal fingers, belts, ear flares, cylinder hair ornaments, a diadem made of forty-one jade disks, headbands and belts worn by Palenque’s ruling elite (Stuart and Stuart, 2008).
Small jade figurines of deities such as Sak’Hunal the “jester god” oldest symbol of kingship, and other objects made of semi-precious stones and nacre from spondylus shells (Spondylus americanus) were placed on Pakal’s sides. A small jade figurine was found over Pakal’s groin, which may represent the maize god Hun’Nal Ye from the myth of creation. Among Pakal’s outstanding ornaments is his death mask, made of a mosaic of thin jade plaques. Its unique characteristic, according to Ruz’s report, is that “the mask was modeled directly over Pakal’s face, for a layer of stucco was found adhering to the bones of the skull.” Does that suggest a secondary and not a primary burial? The mask was believed to overcome the body’s natural degradation and as noted by Ruz, “may have been to personify…and ensure the departed an eternal face in its grave” (1972). The eyes of the mask are made of nacre, the iris is of obsidian, while black paint was applied for the pupils. Around Pakal’s neck was a huge collar made of hundreds of jade cylinders and beads. The beads were cut to resemble squash, a plant grown together with maize and, according to legend, brought into the world by Hun’Nal Ye, the maize god.

Of note is a jade ornament consisting of the Maya logogram Ik, in the shape of the capital letter I, which signifies “spirit,” “life,” or “breath.” The ornament was placed in the slightly open mouth of the jade mask. The Ik symbol, in the shape of either a capital T or I, is found on walls, stelas, and painted on ceramics. The architectural design of ballcourts, where games of life and death took place, also answer to the shape of this logogram. Before the Ik symbol and the death mask were placed over Pakal’s face, it is probable that koyem, a cooked maize paste traditionally used and found in common graves, was put into his mouth to feed his ch’ulel’s long voyage to Xibalba, the “place of awe” the Underworld. Xibalba answers to the complementary fields and is associated to the beginning and end of life and the power of nature.
For in darkness seeds bid their time underground to sprout and meet the light of the sun. Human life is not foreign to this cycle, for life that begins in the darkness of the womb, past its time, returns to the grave. The tombstone above all, is “an essential statement of dynastic vitality and continuity that was necessary following the death of an exceptionally long-lived king” (Scherer, 2012).

Still not understood, however, is the significance of a three-and-half-inch jade cube placed in Pakal’s right hand and a jade sphere of the same size in his left. Shele and Mathews observe that “indeed they are the most provocative contents of the tomb” (1998). The cube and the sphere are symbolically related to oppositions, and allegorically perceived as the beginning and end of time periods such as the seasons, the 260-days Tzol’kin Sacred Calendar or the B’ak’tun four-hundred-years cycle among other timelines. The Mayas, however, left us no clues about the significance of the jade ball and cube, so we are left to wrestle with their meaning.
Once the last prayers and pleas were concluded in the crypt, the finely carved tombstone was slid back from its northern abutment to cover the sarcophagus, which was then sealed with mortar. Before leaving the sanctuary, however, Ah’kinob’ or high priests, placed one of Pakal’s ceremonial jade belts and small personal adornments on the north side of the tombstone. Below the sarcophagus were found fine ceramics and two finely carved stucco heads, one most likely portraying young Pakal and the other the mature Lord of Palenque.

Rituals accompanying Pakal’s burial may have spanned several weeks. Once prayers and ceremonies were concluded and dignitaries, from close and far had paid their last respects, the massive triangular limestone door to the crypt was closed. Over the years, however, the door was opened for ceremonies at dedicated times. Ominously, years of armed conflicts between polities brought destruction in the region. Pakal second son K’inich K’an Joy Chitam (644-721) attempted to subdue Palenque’s arch enemy, Toniná, eighty-two miles away in the Ocosingo valley, but failed and was captured on August 26, 711. He was held hostage but, surprisingly, was not sacrificed as was customary and a few years later, was released from captivity under unknown terms. Recurrent wars, however, became unavoidable between the two kingdoms and their respective proxies.
In 721 Pakal’s third son, K’inich Ahkal Mo’Nab’ (671-736), inherited the kingdom. In the following years, in fear of another invasion, he resolved to fill the intramural stairways in the Temple of the Inscriptions with rocks and rubble to protect the crypt. It remained undisturbed until 1952, when Ruz and his team found the limestone door to the stairs on the temple floor, and removed the tons of rubble and debris, and reached the door of the crypt.
To understand the tombstone complex iconography, it must be read according to the cardinal orientation of its imagery, that is from bottom (south) to top (north), for Pakal is shown emerging from the Underworld (below), struggling to reach the Otherworld (above).

As did Ruz, later archaeologists and scholars, we will focus on the central part of the tombstone’s iconography and examine its imagery, which details what happened to Pakal at the time of his death. As Shele points out, “his awkward position shows the moment of greatest transformation in his life.” His net skirt shows him dressed as the youthful Maize God, Hun’Nal Ye. Pakal is shown escaping on his Sak’Be or white road up the world tree, the wakah chan. The verb describing the event read och beh, meaning “he entered the road” that is, the Milky Way, the wakah chan celestial metaphor. The tree’s roots reach deep into the Underworld while Pakal is “moving away from the Sak B’aak Naah Chapat, the mythic “White Bone Snake” that connects the world of the living to the world of ancestors” (1993). It is shown as the portal through which Pakal passed in death. The snake’s upper mandible reaches to the back of Pakal’s neck while the lower one extends below his left knee as he escapes the snake’s maws. The mandibles were forced open by the gods, freeing him from the cycles of mortal life. Pakal is reaching toward eternal life to be reborn as Hun’Nal Ye the maize god, to secure bountiful maize harvests for Palenque’s future generations.
The rebirth scene on the tombstone is a powerful reminder of a major recurring event in the lives of the ancient Maya, the eclipse of K’inich Ahau, the Lord Sun. Eclipses were understood as the undeniable proof of the eternal return. During his reign, Pakal and his wife, Ix Tz’ak-b’u Ahau, led the ceremonies as spiritual lords of the sun and moon deities. Together with high priests and priestesses they monitored the eclipses, pleading for the release of the sun from the shadow of the moon. On the tombstone, the “White Bone Snake” (the Underworld, the past), and the “White Snake” (the Otherworld, the future) mythologically held the same functions as those of the sun and moon battling the shadows of the eclipse. Each snake sanctioned eternal life in their respective realm for they both answered to complementary opposites.

The double-headed “White Snake” facing Pakal is draped over the horizontal arms of the tree adorned with jade flowers. Since the words “sky” and “snake” are both kan in Maya, snakes were figuratively associated with the Milky Way that connected their lords to that realm. Kan is shown as a rope ending as sak-nik the “white flower” sign, while the double-headed serpent evokes the twisted form of an umbilical cord. Pakal shows that he controls this conduit, the source of power and ancestral wisdom.
From the wide-open mouths of the double-headed “White Snake” small deities emerge. Such as the Jester god embodiment of the sacred headband of kings, comes forth from the left mouth (east), while from the right (west) comes out K’awiil, the manikin scepter with one of its legs shaped as a serpent, symbol of supreme lordship. Grasping the serpent footed K’awiil is an emblematic figure depicted on lintels and other mediums in Classic Maya portraiture. We can surmise, as Schele point out “that a king holding K’awiil is grasping the path to the Otherworld and the means by which it is opened” (1993). The serpent, however, does not depict the zoological animal; it is a metaphor attached to the snake’s shedding of its skin (molting), perceived as its perpetual rebirth, and evidencing life’s eternal return. Pakal is shown ending his journey on the Sak’Be, the “white road” or “milky way” which started when his body left the palace. His posture, however, indicates that he is looking up at Itzam Yeh, the Great Celestial Bird, associated with the Milky Way, the celestial Cosmic River. He is facing his destiny in the “Otherworld” heading north, away from the accursed east-west cycles of the eternal return.

Arguably as important as the tombstone imagery are Pakal’s eight ancestors, who are carved on the four sides of the sarcophagus and are, figuratively, holding the tombstone of their descendant. As Schele and Matthews note “…each figure is shown emerging from a crack in the earth along with a tree.” We know “who these eight ancestors are for they are named in the glyphs placed below each figure as well as in their headdresses, as is the name of a tree.” Furthermore, scholars showed the remarkable pattern of these ancestral portraits since Ahkal Mo’Nahb.I (465-524) appears at the northern end of the west side. Schele’s analysis stresses that “to view the subsequent generations one must, from inside the coffin, look alternatively back and forth from one side of the massive stone to the other to understand the succession in time of ancestors.” These are the Tza’qol B’itol, the “grandmothers-grandfathers” inheritors of ancestral knowledge, a concept likened to a forest of kings growing around Pakal’s coffin.
However, “the trees do not represent an untamed forest, for the ancestors are shown with known fruit trees the Maya cultivated and tended in orchards around their houses, bearing fruits season after season, witnesses to life’s eternal return” (1998). As Scherer underlines, “Late Classic-period Maya sarcophagi facilitated the ritual practice of ancestor veneration and were imbued with metaphors of rebirth and renewal” (2012).

Nine life-size warrior figures in full regalia are modeled in stucco on the walls of the crypt, also known as the B’olon Eht Naah or “House of the Nine Companions.” They are described as “the guardians of the sacred bones of their lord, the perceived custodians of the seeds of peace and abundance for Palenque’s future generations” (Freidel, Schele,1993). The “companions” wear ornate headdresses with quetzal-like bird feathers and capes, high-backed sandals, cross-leg ornate and pectorals. Each one holds a K’awil scepter; all wear a Bearded Jaguar God round shield on their wrists, as well as the rectangular mouthpiece of the maize god, perhaps to show that they are in the same state as their lord in the coffin they guard for eternity. The most telling information comes from the distribution of their skirts: eight wear short jaguar kilts and one wears a long knee-length net skirt. The figure with the long skirt has Ahaw No Ol inscribed in its headdress, which is probably part of the name of Ix Yohl Ik’nal, the only woman Ahau to rule Palenque in her own right from 583 to 604.
Furthermore, Schele and Parker suggest that “these rulers are the portraits of the full dynastic succession, in contrast to the sarcophagus’ figures which depict direct descent from father to son over seven generations” (1993). The cramped quarters of the crypt did not allow space for visitors, for there is only about a foot or so between the sarcophagus’ lid lengthwise and the sanctuary’s walls; the crypt was not made to receive visitors. No one could ever see the sarcophagus and read its full imagery, once the massive triangular door was sealed. The message was there for its own sake to exist in the afterlife, never to be read by the living.

The complex symbolism displayed on the tombstone illustrates a remarkable story about life, death, and rebirth. It took untold generations for the ancient societies to recognize ancestors as predecessors and descendants as successors in life’s eternal return. As noted by scholars “the world of humans is connected to the wakah chan, the Maya axis mundi, the world tree, which ran through the center of existence.
The wakah chan was not located in any earthly or cosmic place but could be materialized through rituals at any point in the natural and human-made landscape” (Schele, Freidel, 1990). In his sarcophagus Pakal was close to his wife Ix Tzaa’ak’bu Ahaw, entombed in Temple XIII which is contiguous to the Temple of the Inscriptions. Known in modern time as the Red Queen, she died eleven years before Pakal, on November 13, 672. Her life and those of women of Lakamha’ will be the theme of a forthcoming article.
Among the western Classic Maya, the deceased were frequently found buried following a two steps process, primary and secondary, a custom not exclusive to high segments of the societies. In Palenque, non-elite remains were found in several households. Burials took place below the grounds or floors of family compounds for males in the courtyard or patio, and for females underneath house floors within the complex. In several cases remains of koyem, a corn gruel was found, that was introduced into the mouth of the departed to sustain his/her chu’lel on its ultimate voyage. For high to mid segments of society, the grave and its venerated ancestors was preeminent in the collective memory of the close and extended family. For the wider community, a sarcophagus held individuals that were socially important and with whom society was not ready to part.