PAKAL'S TOMB

By Francisco Cámara Riess

To access the sarcophagus' lapidary stone and interact with it click here.

One of the most important structures in Palenque is the Tomb of Pakal, discovered in 1952 by Alberto Ruz Lhuillier inside the Temple of the Inscriptions. Pakal died on August 31, 638 at eighty years of age. He had assumed the throne in A.D. 615 at the age of twelve, and ruled for 68 years. During his long reign—near the end of the Classic Period (AD 250-900)—Pakal transformed Palenque into a great city. Around AD 675, as an old man nearing death, he undertook the construction of his burial temple.

    As the crypt is larger than the entrance to the chamber, it is thought that it was built before the pyramid. Pakal's body was placed in the limestone, body-shaped sarcophagus and then it was sealed with a 3.8 by 2.2 meter stone cover. Once the burial rites were completed and the chamber sealed with a layer of stucco, five or six sacrificial victims were laid in the small antechamber. The stairway inside the temple was filled with rubble, jade, pottery and shell offerings. A stone airshaft, called a "psychoduct," was built starting at a notch in the funeral chamber door and rising to the upper floor of the temple. According the late Linda Schele, a renowned researcher, the Maya believed that the shaft allowed a mythological serpent to rise from Pakal's tomb to the place occupied by his descendants.

    The scene depicted on the sarcophagus' lapidary stone represents the instant of Pakal's death and his fall to the Underworld. A strip of heaven (skyband) frames the entire scene with kin (day or the sun) in the upper right or northeast corner and akbaal (night or darkness) on the far left or northwest corner. The movement of the sun from east to west represents Pakal's journey from life into death. Symbols fill the background of this scene—shells, jade beads, signs of plenty, and others—carried on spirals of blood. The open mouth of the Xibalba, the Underworld, is carved on the bottom of the stone. Two dragon skeletons, united at the lower jaw, make up a U-shaped container that represents the entrance. The dragons' lips are curved inward, as though closing over Pakal's falling body. There, inside the Underworld at the center of the Universe, stands the Tree of the World with a Celestial Bird—symbol of the kingdom of heaven—poised on its highest branch.

    The Tree of the World is specially marked as a sacred object: the symbols for te or "tree" confirm it is a cottonwood. The symbols for nen or "mirror" indicate that the tree is a shining and powerful being. The enormous figure of God C—symbol of blood and that which is holy—is inserted in the base of the trunk and is linked with Pakal's body. The tips of the tree's branches are shaped like the bowls used to catch sacrificial blood. Jade beads and tubes surround the square-nostriled dragons that are born from these vessels, indicating that they are especially sacred. These jewel-covered monsters are depicted in deliberate contrast to the skeletal dragons below them. Te first represent the heavens, the most sacred of the three levels of the Maya cosmos; the second illustrate the world of death into which Pakal falls.

    A two-headed serpent bar—the Maya symbol of royalty—is wrapped around branches of the Tree of the World. The body is made of jade segments, again conferring special value on the serpent. The heads on each end of the bar correspond, piece by piece, to the skeletal dragons at the opening to the Underworld. Whereas the Underworld is like a skeleton, Earth, represented by the serpent, has flesh.

    During his fall from the Tree of the World, Pakal is seated upon the Monster of the Sun. The monster is aptly represented in its state of transition between life and death: a skeleton from the mouth down, with eyes that have the dilated pupils of living beings. The sun enters into this state of transition at dawn and at dusk. Here, however, the emblem of the Monster of the Sun contains the cimi or sign of death, emphasizing imagery representing the "death of the sun" or sunset, with the sun located on the horizon, ready to sink into the Underworld . . . and take the dead king with it.

    Pakal appears to be tumbling at an angle on the head of the Monster of the Sun, also a symbol of his transition from life into death. His loincloth and his heavy jade collar (both the front and back are depicted on the stone) seem to be floating away from his body. His knees are flexed, his hands relaxed. His face is calm because he expects to defeat death. A bone piercing Pakal's nose symbolizes that even death carries in it the seed of rebirth. In the Maya dialects, "bone" and "large seed" are synonymous. Thus, the bone is the seed of Pakal's resurrection.

    In the end, Pakal falls as a deity with the smoking knife of God K embedded in his forehead. He was a god in life, and a god when falling into death.