by Georges Fery

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, K’atun endings or the B’ak’tun four-hundred-years cycle among other timelines. The Maya, 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 ceremonial jade belt 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 the 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 underline, “Late Classic-period Maya sarcophagus 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 household. 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.

Beliefs and rituals followed the principle of a perceived binary world, inseparable of ancient daily lives, where gods and deities foreordained the pace of time and the alternance of seasons. Furthermore, the omnipresence of ancestors in people’s lives perpetuated, as McAnany notes “a triangulation that links the past and the future through the living, as an acknowledgement to the fleeting existence of life” (2010). At the heart of the eternal return are actual and allegorical ancestors. The first is attached to individuals while the second answers to the spiritual needs and identity of a community. The very existence of each one of us is evidence of our link in the chain of life, a perception that may be predicated on secular or spiritual grounds. There are, however, as many individual and collective perceptions of this reality as there are cultures and languages. This relentless spiritual search beyond ourselves, however, may perhaps reveal, as underlined by  Teilhard de Chardin that “…we are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience” (1964).

A pertinent reflection about life portrayed on Pakal’s tombstone whose legacy lives in the consciousness of present-day Maya communities.

Photo credits:

1. Pakal Death Mask @georgefery.com
2. The Tombstone @georgefery.com
3. Tombstone Drawing @Merle Green Robertson
4. The Ancestors @georgefery.com
5. The Nine Companions @georgefery.com
6. He Still Lives @georgefery.com

This is the second of a two-part series. Read part one here.

References – Further Reading:
Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, 2013 – El Templo de las Inscripciones: Palenque
Vera Tiesler, Andrea Cucina, 2006 – Janaab’ Pakal of Palenque
Freidel, L. Schele, J. Parker, 1993 – Maya Cosmo, Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path
Barbara Tedlock, 1982 – Time and the Highland Maya
Méndez Martinez, E. Valey Sis – Asociación Maya Uk’Ux B’e, 2008 – Cosmocimientos y Practicas Mayas Antiguas
Teilhard de Chardin, 1964 – La Grande Illusion
Patricia A. McAnany, 1995 – Living with the Ancestors
Jacques Cauvin, 1994 – Naissance des Divinités, Naissance de l’Agriculture
de la Garza, G. Bernal Romero, M. Cuevas Garcia, 2012 – Palenque-Lakamha’: Una Presencia Inmortal del Pasado Indígena
Fernando Nuñez, 2012 – Las Sepulturas de Palenque
Denis Fustel de Coulanges, 1864 – La Cité Antique
Linda Schele, Peter Mathews, 1998 – The Code of Kings

About the author:
Creative non-fiction writer, researcher and photographer, Georges Fery (georgefery.com) addresses topics, from history, culture, and beliefs to daily living of ancient and today’s communities of Mesoamerica and South America. His articles are published online at travelthruhistory.com, ancient-origins.net and popular-archaeology.com, in the quarterly magazine Ancient American (ancientamerican.com), as well as in the U.K. at mexicolore.co.uk. The author is a fellow of the Institute of Maya Studies instituteofmayastudies.org Miami, FL and The Royal Geographical Society, London, U.K. rgs.org. As well as member in good standing of the Maya Exploration Center, Austin, TX mayaexploration.org, the Archaeological Institute of America, Boston, MA archaeological.org, the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC. americanindian.si.edu, and the NFAA – Non-Fiction Authors Association nonfictionauthrosassociation.com.

Contact: Georges Fery – 5200 Keller Springs Road, Apt. 1511, Dallas, Texas 75248
(786) 501 9692 –gfery.43@gmail.com and www.georgefery.com