And it came to pass that after two
days and two nights, they were about to take his body and lay it in a sepulcher,
which they had made for the purpose of burying their dead. (Alma 19:1)
Janaab
Pakal was a ruler at Palenque who died in AD 683 during his 68th
regnal year. In what follows is a discussion of his burial chamber:
Discovery of the
great tomb
In 1949, the great Mexican
archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier was restoring the inner sanctuary of the
Temple of Inscriptions when he noticed that one of the great slabs of its floor
had an arrangement of 12 stone-plugged holes. The plugs were moved and the
holes used (as they had been intended) to lift the slab, revealing a
rubble-packed shaft. This proved to be the mouth of a stairway leading deep
into the heart of the pyramid. After four seasons of effort digging out the
compacted fill, excavators had followed the steps 80 ft (25 m) down, negotiated
a change of direction, and come to a short corridor. At its end was a stone
box, containing the disarticulated skeletons of five or six individuals and, to
its left, a triangular stone door. The sealed doorway was first penetrated on
13 June 1952, when an intrusive flashlight revealed a sight that still has no
equal in the Maya world.
Within the
chamber
Behind lay a vaulted chamber 30 x 13
ft (9 x 4 m) dominated by a huge sarcophagus. Its elaborately worked lid is
today the most famous of all Maya carvings, a sublime representation of the
king's rebirth from the jaws of the Underworld . . . Growing from the offering
plate in which he lies is the 'world tree', the axis mundi of the Maya
cosmos and the pathway by which he would ultimately reach the heavens. This is
shown in the form of a 'sky band' framing the scene, studded with symbols
representing the sun, moon and stars. The shorter sides of this frame give way
to the names and portraits of the king's leading nobles: the sajal and aj
k'uhuun who had key roles in his administration and perhaps in the design,
organization of labour or even payment for the temple.
The coffin itself, hewn from a single
great block of limestone, was carved on all four sides, showing ten figures
emerging as trees sprouting from the earth. Each is identified by a caption:
each of the parents of K'inich Janaab Pakal appears twice, as does Lady Yohl
Ik'nal with single portraits of Janaab Pakal, Ahkal Mo' Nahb I, K'an Joy Chitam
I and Kan Bahlam I. A text runing around the lid records their death-dates
together with that of the king. The massive block sits on squat feet decorated
with additional portraits of his foremost nobles, this time fixed within
glyphic stars. Between the first pair, on the chamber floor, were placed two
stucco heads, one clearly a portrait of the king, the other most likely his
wife Lady Tz'akbu Ajaw. The walls of the tomb were adorned with nine life-size
figures modelled in stucco. Some can be identified by name glyphs in their
head-dresses and prove to be a procession of ancestors much like that of the
sarcophagus sides.
The body of the
king
Draped across the great lid was the
same kind of three-masked jade belt shown on many royal portraits. 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 mosaic 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. This would have allowed Janaab 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, rearranged 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
of two 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. (Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube, Chronicle of Maya Kings and Queens
[2d ed.; London: Thames and Hudson, 2008], 165-66, 168)
This
is important as it shows that sepulchers have been attested
in Mesoamerica, albeit for royalty. This demonstrates that the Book of Mormon’s
reference to a sepulcher for a king (Alma 19:1, quoted above) is consistent
with a proposed Mesoamerican setting and that the Mesoamerican details fit the
limited information in Alma 19:1.
