One of the most renowned iconographic monuments in the Maya World was found within the Termple of the Inscriptions: the sarcophagus lid depicting Pakal at the moment of his death, falling into the Underworld, symbolized by a monster's jaw. Above the dead King rises the Wakah Kan, the World Tree and the Center of the Universe- with Itzam Ye, the Celestial bird perched on top representing the heavens. In order for the deified king buried here not to be cut off from the world of the living, a psychoduct -or a hollow tube in the form of a snake- runs off the side of the staircase, from the tomb to the temple.

The tomb was -in the words of epigraphers Nicolai Grube & Simon Martin- a wonder of ancient America. About Palenque they say that one of its peculiarities was the near absence of monolithic stelae so popular elsewhere in the Maya World. Instead comparable efforts were put into architectural sculpture, whether carved in its fine grained limestone or modeled in stucco platter. The blanched stonework seen today was once covered in extravagant figural and floral motifs, vibrantly painted in red, producing an almost baroque magnificence. The city was as strife ton as any of its contemporaries and indeed the greatest artworks and the longest texts emerged as reactions to the defeat and the breakdown of its royal line, as new dynasties strove to legitimize and consolidate their power.

Visitors could see the burial chamber until just a few years ago. Permits are now very limitted, and the reason for this is the protection of the tunnel and its valuable content. In reality -whether experiments and conservation efforts are being conducted or not- nobody is allowed to see Pakal's tomb anymore, so if you are in Mexico City make sure to see it at the National Museum of Anthropology. The smaller objects -the skeleton and the jade death mask- are all there and only the massive and intricately carved stone sarcophagus is the original still laying down here in Palenque, where the museum will soon have a replica we are all waiting for!!!

You must know that it was never an easy adventure, though.... One reached the tomb through a narrow and uncomfortably dank and eerie vaulted stairway, that was well worth the steep, slippery descent, but nobody was allowed to linger long at the bottom, and the whole descent and ascent had to be completed in just 20 minutes. This was a hard feat for most visitors -even if they were in good shape- because standing in a line of hot and claustrophobic visitors, who waited impatiently to take a picture of the sarcophagus lid, is not the most comfortable of situations... If you ever got a chance to see this in the past consider yourself lucky. If you never got a chance to see it, you should know Palenque is like an open air museum and there are so many more things to see here that your visit will be memorable in spite of not being able to get down the tunnel anymore.

The temple rises 66 feet or 26 meters from the floor in the paza. The building was begun approximately 9.12.0.0.0 (672 A.D.) and it was ready 9.12.10.0.0 (682 A.D.) . The roof once had a roofcomb. 5 Doors goes in the building. The four pilas in the mittle have the remaindings from Stuck figures. You can see Adults which carry a child. This child has six toes. One of his leg looks like a snake. From this reason we know this child have attributes from God Kawiil.

The 3 tablets to which the buidling owes its name are fantastically rich in glyphic inscriptions dated back to 692 (?? ) AD . The historical Text of this inscription dated back to 501. This part give us dates and names of the precessors of Pacal. Other dates take us with on a time traveling. One of the goes from the accession of Pacal 1.246.826 Years and 270 days deep in the past. The other picks us up for a journey in the future: in the year 4772. A 3. part give us more details from the life of Pacal. It contains some 617 hieroglyphs sculpted on the walls to the right and left of the main entrance to the rear chamber on top. These inscriptions on the superior temples' walls are the second longest glyphic text in Maya, after the inscriptions of the Hieroglyphic Stairway in Copan . These texts narrate important historical events and mentions the divine origin and the royal rights of its ascendend rulers. The pyramid is 21 meters tall and was built on a hill, therefore not The temple was built during Kinich Hanab Pakal's reign. This charismatic ruler led Palenque for 68 years, between 615 AD and 683 AD. He started ruling over Palenque when he was only 12 years old. No wonder he is the "face" of Palenque . His tomb is perhaps the most famous in the Maya area. Not only was it found undisturbed... it consists of a monolithic sarcophagus, where the mortal remains of Pakal II lay in silence for hundreds of years. Elegantly covered by a richly decorated and extraordinarilly sculpted sarcophagus lid, 12 by 7 feet , this tomb had no less than 900 pieces of jade... conch, pearls, obsidians, Gods in Pakal's funerary chamber include : K'inich Ahaw Pakal (or God III or G III or Jaguar Sun of the Underworld )??? a sceptre with the Imagen of the K'awill God (GII) is also found in the 9 characters ( this 9 a little bit later. They are stuck figures on the wall ). The lid weighs about 5 tons. His face was covered with a mask, elaborated with finely polished jadeite plaques with inlaidshells and obsidian. Jade represented the vital fluids in a human's body, and thus life, and blood and water and represented the regenaration of the Natural World of the Maya. The lid shows Pakal II richly dressed and presonifying the K'awil God (G II) at the moment of descent into the Underworld, to the inferior world, through the magic or cosmic trunk of the Ceiba tree, crowned by a celestial bird. His body is received by the open maw of a defleshed serpentnamed SAk Bak Way , or "Transformation of the White Bones", representing the entrance of the Underworld. Pakal's ancestors are beautifully carved on the sides of the lid, there are 8 of them represented. ( there are 10 Figures which represented 7 individuals ) They seem to emerge from the Earth from differente trees that may observed at their backs. When the dimensions of the secret passageway are compared wiht those of the beautifully carved solid stone lid it becomes apparent that the burial vault was built first and that the pyramid palace constructed over it came later. There are no steallae at Copan ( do you mean Palenque ? ), its history is carved on panels built into the walls of the main buildings... These written records proved the key to much of the historical knowledge gained in the past 20 years as researchers have deciphered the hieroglyphic wiriting and iconography.

Among the offerings left in Pakal's honor... he was wearing a large number of jade jewerly, rings in all o his fingers, a diadem with rounded beads, necklaces . The ring he was wearing on his right hand's thumb had a human figurine sculpted on it. Yum Kax, the God of Corn, his head modelled in stucco was found in Pakal's tomb. It was found under the Sarcophagus on the crypt's floor... perhaps Pakal himself is personifying the Corn God.

On the wall of the tomb are 9 stuck modeled figures. May be this are the 9 Lords of the Underworld. Merle Robertson preferred the neutral name 9 Lords of the tomb. Some of them stand and the other sits. They have bars or scepters with God K or Kawiil.

The tomb was discvoered by mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuiller, who worked on this building between 1949 and 1958. He reported the building had 3 constructive phases, the first being a stepped pyramid made of 8 different bodies with a narrow stairway in the middle. The second phase was related to the additioni of three high stepped bodies, each covering 3 bodies of the previous building, accounting for the tucked-in corner effect. A larger and narrow stairway was added during the third construction phase. He found a hidden stairway, a secret passageway, that took him more than 2 years to clear of all the rubble, limestone and stone fill that filled it. The pasasgeway started in the superior temple and descended into a funerary crypt. It led him down to a strange conduit that goes from the crypt up the stairway and leads into the top recinct, which had never before been used. Alberto Ruz certainly made one of pre Columbian archaeology's greatest finds, while he served to facilitate the link between Pakal and our understanding of what the Maya felt were their obligations to their living descendants, who felt their presence ... According to the tablets found in the Cross Group Pakal II attended his son's enthronement ceremony & was back to assist Kan Balam II, and support his efforts to lead the city of Palenque . Pakal II, and the rest of Palenque's dynastic rulers which occurred between 514 Ad and 684 AD with the era ending with Pakal II, enthronements and katun endings (?? What do you mean?? ). In the West table Pakal's life is told, starting with his birth on 603 AD. This tablet contains an inscription that is about the cript where Pakal is burried. It tells us that that crypt was called the House of Nine Images, no doubt related to the 9 characters represented on the walls of that funerary recinct.

In Palenque, the dead were placed in an extended fashion, with their feet pointing toward the south (and not in the fetal posture or within incense burners as was sometimes the case in other Maya areas, or in later times in the highlands during the Pre Classic period...) (extended fashion is usually for the Maya. Look after Tikal ) South is associated with the lowest level of the Underworld in Maya belief (I'm not sure). The type of burial, the funerary garnment and the quality of the offering depended on the individuals' social position within the Palenque society,. Royalty were given the burial of a supreme ruler, within vaulted rooms and were dressed in great pompous regalia. They didn't travel alone into the depths of the Underworld, as others came along with them, perhaps their servants, who were sacrificed for the ocassion. The death of an Ahaw or Divine Lord did not imply a break with their living descendants, as the rituals worshiping their ancestors allowed a link to be kept with the dearly departed. A firm belief that the deceased were alive and well in the Underworld, and putting in a word with the Gods for the well being of those living in our Creation, fed the Maya's spiritual belief system.

May be it is better to separate the Temple a little bit more from the grave and a little bit more about the temple. So that the outer pillars were made from Pacals son. That this pilars show adults who carry a child. This child is Chan Balum. He is shown as verkoerperung from the god Kawiil. One of his leg is a snake, that is the hint of this god. On the other foot the child has 6 toes. The most believe is that Chan Balum really had have 6 toes. There ae also other pictures in Palenque they show persons with 6 toes or 6 fingers. May be it was inherit in this familie.

•  TEMPLE OF THE INSCRIPTIONS & THE TOMB OF PAKAL- It is without any doubt one of the most notable tombs in the Classic Maya period, it was conceived as the central point of the civic-ceremonial center at Palenque . The name is derived from three panels with extense hieroglyphic texts found at the top of the temple. K'inich Hanaab' Pakal I's had the most elaborate Maya tomb discovered thus far in the Maya world, certainly one of the most monumental mausoleums in the region. Its greatest wealth, far mar valuable to scholars than its great trove of precious jade, is its pictorial imagery and glyphic texts, so rich and numerous they seem to crowd every available surface * horrora vacua * The sarcophagus' lid bears an exquisite and particularly complex scene depicting the King's rebirth as the Maize God, Hunal Ye (during the Classic) or Yum Kax, The body of the king- draped across the great lid, was the same kind of 3- masked jade belt shown on many royal portraits of Pakal… The lid was lifted to reveal a contoured cavity sealed by a tightly fitting plug. Within lay the body itself, bathed in bright red cinnabar (a toxic compound of mercury) and bedecked in copious amounts of jade jewelry. Apart from the multi-beaded collar and wristlets, there were jade rings on every finger, a jade cube clenched in one hand, a sphere in the other. His face was covered by a jade mosaique mask, his mouth framed by an ornament of red-painted pyrites. Beyond the sarcophagus lay a stone track, clearly designed as a slide to accommodate the lid and expose the coffin beneath. These would have allowed Hanaab' Pakal's burial to have taken place during or even after the Temple 's construction –but equally would have allowed its re-entry- a common practice among the Classic Maya. On such occasions defleshed bones were removed, re-arranged or as might have been the case here dusted with additional pigment. Similarly, while the descending stairway might have been designed to carry a funerary procession, the inclusion well-built tunnels leading to the West face of the pyramid –“air-conditioning” for the stifling pit of the stairway- suggest that it had been planned for extended use, as a means by which to visit and communicate with the Dead King. After the stairway was filled such contact was maintained by the addition of a limestone conduit, which was made to snake up the staircase, forming a “psychoduct” connecting the sealed chamber to the outside world. (la tumba se comunica con el templo superior por una escalinata interna, en sus muros se tallaron 9 Guerreros sacerdotes, posibles representaciones de los B'olon- tik'u (o 9 senores del inframundo).,. Pakal II murio y fue enterrado hace mas de 13 siglos en el ano 683 AD. El gobernante fue deificado antes de fallecer… por lo cual sus restos mortales tuvieron un tremendo significado religioso. Sus huesos eran la semilla del linaje sagrado de Palenque, portadores de una esencia fecundante que auguraria la continuidad de la dinastía. El cadáver se deposito dentro de un sarcófago de piedra, cubierta por una gran lapida esculpida en la que Pakal fue representado cayendo en el inframundo. El cuerpo fue ataviado con un magnifico juego de cuentas de jade, pirita y concha, materiales que se utilizaron para confeccionar collares, brazaletes, anillos, diademas y una mascara, entre otros adornos.

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