Pakal's Coffin Lid

Perched up against the wall inside the lobby of Hotel Xibalba in Chiapas, Mexico is a replica of the coffin lid of K’nich Janaab’ Pakal, Ahou or king of Palenque in the Late Classic Period. When old enough Pakal took over the rulership from his mother, Lady Sak K’uk, which means White Queztal, who was Ahou before him, rather than his father.

Within the city of Palenque stands the Temple of Inscriptions, and still buried underneath is Pakal’s coffin complete with his remains. The coffin itself has the dimensions 15ft long, 12-14ft high, and about 7ft wide. For this piece we’ll be focusing on the lid, the story of Pakal being resurrected into Xibalba, the spirit world.

Working our way in, the lids carving has a frame like any work of art, but filled with symbols and glyphs. The top and bottom are mirror images of each other with three faces looking through sideways. These faces are peering through quatrefoils, which fully look like four leaf clovers and each is called a Hol, a portal between our world and the underworld. Next to each face there are glyphs naming the faces as Sabal, secondary lords. And since people never change archaeologists think that these are signatures, the main architect, artist, and scribe who worked on the pyramid and the burial area, including the coffin.

In the middles of each side’s frame border is the sun in the east (the right side), where it rises, and the moon in the west (left), where the sun sets, which is often the direction to the spirit realm or underworld. The moon is depicted as a rabbit coming out of a cave, the doorway to Xibalba. Around the rest of the frame and in the negative space within the inner art are astrological symbols: shells, stars, and jade bones signifying that the entire scene is being framed by the cosmos.

Looking inward the eye is first draw to the center, where Pakal, who passes away in 683 at a ripe old age, is shown as a young man sitting in a fetal position as if he were being born from the world tree as it rises from the bony jaws of the earth monster’s mouth. The 4-part monster on which Pakal is resting has the base of the bone jaw with a beard underneath eyes, ear florets, and a ceramic plate holding up three objects of great significance to the Maya people. Moving from left to right, the first is a seashell signifying the watery underworld. Second is a rounder version stingray spine, in the ancient Maya tradition kings and queens would sacrifice a piece of themselves to the gods. In this case it would be through blood letting, for men it involved piercing the foreskin of the penis with the stingray spine and for women it was a rope of thrones being flossed through their tongues. And the symbol on the right, the circle with the glyph that looks like the “%” sign means ‘death’ with a piece of corn/maize growing out sideways from the circle. All together this means that Pakal is an offering of blood from the underworld to become the maize god.

Pakal himself is depicted a certain way to show how he should be considered a deity, in fact he is, in particular, the Young Maize God or as a combination of the Hero Twins. Pakal is dressing in a skirt, bracelets, and anklets all made from Jade beads none of which are typically masculine wear. The purpose of this clothing is to represent the feminine aspects, as one incarnation of the hero twin mythos is one male and one female, and the main god must embody characteristics from both genetic human sexes. Pakal is also wearing a cracked turtle shell, harkening back to the creation myth when the world tree grew from the shell, and an elongated headdress. The headdress, a common piece in Mesoamerica is not a sign of godliness in itself, but is a sign of sacrifice and god worship. It contains the symbol of K’awill, the smoking axe, representing kingship since it is the god of same.

Following Pakal’s eyeline we look upward towards the cross behind him, Wak Kak Chan, the World Tree, that has held up the heavens since the hero twins won the ball game in the beginning of creation. Draped over the branches is a two-headed snake. Each head is a symbol of kingship, with K’awill on the left and Sa Bu Nall, the Jester God, on the right. The tree itself is personified, showing eyes and a nose, while also being covered in heavenly symbols. One of these symbols is Yash, meaning the green of the green, spikey, and cross-like form of the Ceiba tree. The tree is also growing three heads out of each of the branches complete with the fuzzy maize tassels as headdresses as a means of connecting to the story of the world tree to the birth and death of maize, another way that Pakal is performing deity imitation.

The last piece of symbolism is the otherworldly bird sitting upon the top branch. The bird itself is a symbol of the creation god/creator-sorcerer it serves, Itzam Ye, who is forever watching over our creation.

Basically, this art shows the dead king Pakal as an offering resurrected from the underworld. He is showing himself as the young maize god, the most important character in the creation and story of maize, the hero of humankind as he is the gift emboldened by the world tree behind him holding him as well as other symbols of the heavens and kingship with representation and approval of a god of creation. This scene is therefore not only one of death, but one of resurrection; the divine nature of the king, as the young maize god the constant cycle that follows the natural world.

This work of art can be seen in dozens of places, hundreds if you include the Internet, including Hotel Xibalba, Palenque’s local site museum, and the National Museum in Mexico City. These are all copies though, and the only place to visit the original is still with the temple of inscriptions in the rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico, where the opening of the cave waits for the rabbit of the moon.

Photos were taken by me on the summer archaeological trip to Mexico and Guatemala in 2013. And Information came from my professor Dr. Geoffery Braswell at UCSD.