A king under the temple

A stair full of rubble

Under the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque, the way down to the king had been sealed with rubble. A team led by the archaeologist Alberto Ruz L’huillier spent months clearing it.¹

Near the bottom they found clues that something important lay ahead: human remains covered in lime and red cinnabar. Then, on 15 June 1952, they freed a triangular stone slab that closed the way. Almost 20 metres below the temple’s entrance, Ruz stepped into a vaulted room that no one had entered since 28 August 683, the day the king’s body was laid there.¹

The room and the lid

The walls of the crypt carry nine reliefs modelled in stucco: the gods of the Maya underworld, who go with the king on his journey through it. In the middle stands the sarcophagus, closed by a single carved stone lid.¹

The lid is 3.8 metres long, 2.2 metres wide and 25 centimetres thick, carved on its top and its edges with glyphs.¹ It took until 27 November 1952 to lift it, in great heat and damp, using jacks from lorries and tree trunks set under the stone.¹

Who he was

The texts name the king: K’inich Janaab’ Pakal, ruler of Lakamha’, the city we call Palenque. They tell his life on earth and the lives of his ancestors. They also tell what came after: his rebirth, dressed as the Maize God, rising from the jaws of the creature the Maya called the Earth Monster.¹

Inside lay Pakal’s bones, his funeral mask and the things buried with him. Since 1952 they have been studied again and again, for what they tell about how the people of Lakamha’ lived, governed, worshipped and buried their dead.¹

Looking after a tomb

Opening a sealed room changes it. Today the crypt is studied and cared for by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, INAH. Sensors in it measure its humidity, its temperature and the carbon dioxide in its air. Visitors can see copies of the tomb in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and in the site museum at Palenque, which is named after Alberto Ruz.¹