The Controversial Mayan Queen: Sak K'uk of Palenque (The Mists of Palenque) (31 page)

September 5, 1994

It’s three months after the discovery, and today Arturo Romano Pacheco visited the tomb in Temple XIII. It was an emotional experience for him, reviving the intense feelings evoked when he first viewed the bones of Pakal forty-two years earlier. Although he is an older man, he is still agile and athletic and climbed the stairs of the temple easily. Entering the chamber he felt the same astonishment as when he entered Pakal’s tomb, gazing across centuries into the sarcophagus of a royal ancient Maya.

Arnoldo Gonzales Cruz, director of our project, stood close by Romano. I was fortunate enough to accompany the small group from our team who entered the chamber this day. Eager to document every detail, Arnoldo clicked on his recorder to catch each word uttered by the famous professor. I hoped I could hear clearly over the pounding of my heart.

Romano stood in silence, eyes traveling up and down the skeleton. His gaze came to rest on the pelvic bones, where he studied the pelvic outlet and shape of the iliac bones.

“Hmmm, it is a small pelvis with a very ample sub-pubic angle, at least ninety degrees. . the bones are delicate, fine, graceful . . hmmm. .”

Sweat dripped from my nose and I tried discretely to wipe it away. The temperature inside the chamber was extreme and the humidity nearly intolerable. Romano looked cool and unperturbed, though everyone else present was coated with sweat. We remained still as statues, breath bated, hanging in suspense.

With certainty born of profound expertise and his uncanny ability to dialogue with bones, Romano stated his conclusion without touching anything.

“It is a woman.”

I took a quick inbreath and wished Fanny could be here. She was at the site museum preparing the bones of the companions found beside the sarcophagus for later examination by Romano. Everyone stayed hushed and motionless, awaiting his further words.

“Although it is difficult to determine precisely without touching the bones, the general configuration of the skeleton is feminine. Look at the skull, the ascending wings of the mandible, the superior border of the orbits, the vertebral bodies and lumbar vertebra, the sacrum that has come apart over time. The forearms are fine, as is true of all the bones . . . this person was undoubtedly of the feminine sex.”

He further observed that the skeleton had remained untouched since it was placed in the sarcophagus, and it appeared to be a primary interment rather than a secondary burial. The bones were impregnated with cinnabar and were completely red in color, including the skull and teeth. The ankles were close together, showing that the body was shrouded before being deposited, evidence that great care was taken in preparing it for burial. Although the cranium had fallen into pieces, probably from the weight of the jade mask and diadem, he commented that the cranial deformation was the tabular oblique type, characteristic of high ranked persons in the Classic Period.

Next he examined offerings inside the sarcophagus, noting that diadems were not exclusive to women but were worn by all high ranked nobles. Looking around, he made further observations about the lack of glyphs.

“This person might have died much earlier than expected, and her tomb quickly prepared. To avoid decomposition, they moved rapidly to the interment and possibly did not have time to carve inscriptions . . . Without carved dates the exact time of burial is a mystery. We cannot know if this woman preceded or came after Pakal. We will have to wait for results of DNA testing, ceramic analysis and carbon dating of organic remnants within the crypt.”

Romano made one surprising observation while examining the lower extremities. In the lower third of the left tibia was the cocoon of a wasp, with a larva that never developed into an adult.

To his experienced eyes, the skeleton was that of a woman about 1.58 meters in height, who had attained between 38 and 40 years of age before she died.

A few hours later, Romano went to the Site Museum and informed Fanny that the sarcophagus held the bones of a woman. Fanny told me later that her skin crawled and her heart leapt. She always believed it was a woman and now the most respected physical anthropologist in Mexico had confirmed it. He examined the bones of the companions, concluding that they were sacrificed to accompany her, and neither was bundled in a shroud. The skeleton on the west side was a boy between 8 and 11 years calculated by his teeth, with tabular erect cranial deformation. He was placed with body extended in face up position. The skeleton on the east was a woman between 25 and 35 years of 1.55 meters height, her body placed extended with face down. She had a tabular oblique cranial deformation and insertions of jade and stones in her teeth.

Romano returned to Mexico City the following day to report his conclusions to INAH and the world. Arnoldo coined the nickname for the woman in the sarcophagus that we all immediately took to using.

“
The Red Queen.”

The question now reverberating in everyone’s mind is:

“Who is this woman?”

Speculation runs rampant around camp. Because of the age determined by Romano, many think it must be Pakal’s wife, Tz’aakb’u Ahau. But we cannot rule out his mother Sak K’uk or grandmother Yohl Ik’nal, although they probably had longer lives. As the two documented woman rulers of Palenque, there are glyphs stating their dates of accession and death, but not their birth dates. The final possibility, to me a distant fourth, is Pakal’s daughter-in-law K’inuuw Mat.

Ringing across the plazas of Palenque, soaring over the mountains, coursing down the rivers, spreading onto the wide plains of Tabasco and eventually wrapping around the world is the question.

“Who is this woman?”

Who lies in the second richest burial ever found in the Maya world? Which woman was so honored that she was interred in a temple adjoining the mortuary pyramid of Pakal? Our archeological team keeps tossing possibilities around.

“She’s his wife.” “She’s his mother.” “She’s his grandmother.”

Or maybe she’s someone else, an unknown royal woman we have yet to discover in the glyphic texts. On one thing we all agree, however.

In the sarcophagus in the unknown substructure of Temple XIII, a woman was interred with highest respect. A woman who was a Queen of Palenque.

The lack of inscriptions on the queen’s sarcophagus is the main obstacle to learning her identity. If only we had some name glyphs! Then we would know now, and not have to wait for DNA testing. This put me to thinking about the long saga of deciphering the Maya glyphs. Since the earliest explorers, Mayanists have speculated about what these enigmatic carvings say. The history of Mayan language decipherment is fraught with dissention, quite a story in itself. Much to our shame it took over one hundred years, compared with only two years for Champollion to crack Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, and two decades for an international team to decipher Hieroglyphic Hittite, the Bronze Age script of Anatolia (modern Turkey). Of course, Champollion had the Rosetta Stone, but we had our own key in Diego de Landa’s
Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán
, discovered in dusty recesses of a Madrid library by Brasseur de Bourbourg in 1862. Its importance was not recognized for about a century, however.

The Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917 and World War I created decades of turbulence, but scientific exploration at Palenque moved ahead. Justo Sierra Mendez, Mexican minister of public instruction and fine arts, visited Palenque in 1909. He was familiar with the Maya, since his father (statesman-poet Justo Sierra O’Reilly) had produced a Spanish edition of Stephens’ travels. Two months after his visit to the ruins, he established the first school of archeology and anthropology in Mexico City.

Eduard Seler of Germany was the first director. Seler’s specialty was Mesoamerican iconography, and he immediately attempted to interpret the complex inscriptions at Palenque. He brought together a huge amount of iconographic evidence, mostly from the central highlands, and did detailed comparisons with Palenque. In 1920 this school closed and its functions passed to UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico). Mexican archeology came of age by 1920, with an enlarging cadre of scholars and new outlets for rapid publications.

Important research in Europe set the stage for initial decipherment of Maya glyphs. Ernst Forstemann, Head of the Dresden Royal Saxon Library, found among its collections a curious fan-folded document filled with figures, dots and bars. An earlier librarian had purchased it in a Vienna flea market in 1739. Forstemann photographed the document, compared it to photographs and drawings of Palenque and Yaxchilan by Maudslay and Maler, and to publications by Harvard University showing monuments of Copan. By 1900, he figured out the bars (fives) and dots (ones) in the Dresden Codex were a numbering system for the ancient Maya calendar. His analyses confirmed what others had already suggested: that Maya glyphs should be read in order from left to right and down, two columns at a time.

In 1905, American journalist Joseph T. Goodman was able to correlate the ancient Maya Long Count Calendar with modern calendars. This was no small accomplishment, since the Mayas stopped using the Long Count in the late 10
^th
century. In Guatemala and Yucatan, Mayan descendents continued using the Tzolk’in – Haab “Short Count” of 52-year cycles. Goodman studied the work of Diego de Landa, who first made connections in the 1560s between katun-end records of local villagers and current Julian dates. From these he worked out possible calendar correlations. With a few modifications added by later archeologists Juan Martinez and J. Eric Thompson, this GMT (Goodman-Martinez-Thompson) correlation is still used.

The foundations were laid for scientific archeology and epigraphic research. For the first time since Palenque was abandoned, we could read the dates carved by residents of the mysterious city. But for many more years, the other glyphs carved on monuments and written on ceramics or codices went undeciphered.

September 15, 1994

This is my last day in the archeological camp at Palenque. The INAH Special Project is ending and future discoveries must be made by some other team. The last couple of weeks here have been bittersweet. We are justly proud of the momentous work done by our team, for the Red Queen’s tomb is opening an entirely new chapter in Maya studies. Though we’ve learned a lot, so much more remains unanswered. As Arnoldo said when the tomb was first opened, we need one hundred years of research to fully comprehend the messages contained in the burial chamber.

After Arturo Romano’s visit, Fanny was charged with preparing the bones for transport to Mexico City. Sonia and I were assigned to assist, since we are restoration specialists. We undertook removal of the Red Queen’s bones as a sacred responsibility. A special swing was built so we could hang over the sarcophagus without stepping into the interior. Wearing protective gloves, we leaned over while suspended and picked up the fragile bones, one by one. Our hands were soft as velvet when we lifted first the skull bones, then arms, vertebra, ribs, hands and fingers, pelvis, legs and feet. These bones were placed carefully in labeled bags and put inside airtight containers for their trip to the main INAH laboratories.

Fanny often spoke to the Queen, as though the red bones could hear and understand.

“It’s in your best interests, to preserve you, so you can exist for a much longer time. This discovery is a way of assuring that you always continue living, and that people will always talk about you. If you wanted to be present for a very long time, you have attained this goal.”

Sometimes I found myself whispering to the Queen, too. She has entered into our imaginations and taken her place there on her throne. Never will our lives be the same again. We all feel compelled to find out exactly who she is, to learn all we can about her, to understand women rulers in Palenque and the ancient Maya world.

After the Queen’s bones left Palenque, we all felt a vacuum. Many times I revisited the sarcophagus inside Temple XIII, where I could still feel her presence. At dinner we talked about returning to Palenque on another project. None of us want to release our ties here, for we have lost our hearts to this magnificent city in the Chiapas jungles.

Lingering over packing, my hands rested on my reference book that chronicles the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs. I sat and flipped through the pages, even though I should continue getting ready to leave. It’s an ever fascinating subject to me.

In 1952, even as Ruz was getting ready to excavate the stairway leading to the chamber beneath the Temple of the Inscriptions, important developments occurred across the Atlantic Ocean. Yuri Knorosov, a young Russian epigrapher, published his work interpreting the Maya hieroglyphic system. Knorosov was an Egyptologist with keen interest in writing systems of ancient China and India, and was versed in Japanese and Arabic literature. In one of the great coincidences of life, he was a Soviet soldier in World War II whose unit entered Berlin in May 1945, where he found the National Library on fire. He managed to snatch one book from the thousands being consumed by flames. It was a combined edition that reproduced the three Mayan codices that survived Diego de Landa’s infamous book burning. Just consider that improbability!

With this trophy in hand, Knorosov returned to university studies and pondered the ancient writing. His professor challenged him to crack the code. The brilliant scholar learned Spanish and translated de Landa’s
Relación
as his doctoral dissertation. Using this key, the earliest attempt to translate Mayan language, Knorosov set the foundation for decipherment. He said the glyphs were a mixed system consisting of ideograms or logograms that have both conceptual and phonetic value, purely phonetic signs, and classificatory signs with only conceptual value. Maya scribes wrote using principles shared by other hieroglyphic systems, and those rules gave multiple functions to various glyphic components. In Mayan writing, word sequence generally went verb – object – subject. It was a complex system, and Knorosov didn’t get everything right, but his basic conclusion that Mayan writing was essentially phonetic proved to be correct.

This did not go over well with the established epigraphic expert of the time, J. Eric Thompson. The British “grand old man” of Maya archeology, Thompson was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his work. By sheer force of intellect and personality, he dominated modern Maya studies until his death in 1975. Thompson believed Mayan society was led by priests and calendar keepers, and the impressive stone cities in the jungles were primarily places for ceremony and astronomy. His books were full of literary and mythological references, and he felt deep affinity for the wise Maya priests and astronomers. The main lasting contributions he made were to calendar studies and the influence of ancient gods over Mayan life.

As to interpreting the Maya glyphs, Thompson was completely wrong. He said the glyphs were “anagogical” and expressed spiritual and mystical concepts. They were not to be taken literally or read as mundane daily language. Here’s a quote from Sir Eric.

“That such mystical meanings are imbedded in the glyphs is beyond doubt . . . our duty is to seek more of those mythological allusions.”

Thompson began attacking Knorosov in 1953 and continued the rest of his life. His arguments swayed an entire generation of Mayanists, including Alberto Ruz and most Mexicans. A new school of thought was emerging in North America, however, one that dissented with Thompson and pursued its own interpretations – mostly the epigraphers and linguists.

Another Russian, Tatania Proskouriakoff, working with the Carnegie Foundation, published a landmark paper in 1960 about her study of a pattern of dates at Piedras Negras, Guatemala. She showed that the texts on these stelae recorded history, naming the rulers of towns, both men and women, with birth and accession dates. Even though she could not translate their names, it was clear that the monuments showed real people and events in their lives.

In 1958, Heinrich Berlin published a paper that identified the Emblem Glyphs of several cities. He detected a particular pattern in which the third glyph varied according to the city to which it was linked. This had far-reaching effects, later enabling analysis of Maya political geography. Berlin studied Palenque texts and identified glyphs for the Palenque Triad Gods that are so important to the mythological history and spiritual practices of the city. With Emblem Glyphs identified, Proskouriakoff was able to work out dynastic history for an Usumacinta River city (Yaxchilan). She noted that the Emblem Glyph generally followed the names of rulers. The earliest pair of rulers she called “Shield Jaguar” and “Bird Jaguar” based on what the glyphs looked like.

Things began happening fast in the 1960s and 1970s. A corpus of Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions was being created, building on the photographs of Maudslay and Maler, augmented by discovery of more panels covered with glyphs in the Palenque Palace and Cross Group. The Peabody Museum at Harvard University sent Ian Graham to record all the glyphs carved on stone wherever they may be, using photographs and same-scale drawings. Done with uniform drafting standards, this guaranteed an impeccable source for epigraphic and iconographic analysis.

All this set the stage for the Mesas Redondas of Palenque.

On a hot August afternoon in 1973, a small group of North American “Palencophiles” gathered on the back porch of thatched roof house in Palenque town. The home of Merle Greene Robertson and her husband Bob had become a Mecca for foreign archeologists and Mayanists, and a few were always stopping by during the season. Merle was an artist who was enamored by Palenque. She gained permission from INAH to make impressions of the site’s sculptures and reliefs before these deteriorated more. Over 10 years, she made photographs, drawings and rubbings that surpassed Maudslay’s in detail and accuracy.

Chatting about Palenque in the shady pavilion were Gillett Griffin, Curator of Pre-Columbian Art at Princeton, Linda Schele and her husband David, and David Joralemon from Yale in addition to Merle and Bob Robertson. Griffin suggested a “round table” on Palenque bringing together interdisciplinary experts to examine the art, iconography and hieroglyphic inscriptions. All were in agreement, and soon invitations were sent out to the Primera (First) Mesa Redonda in December 1973.

The meetings were held at the motel and restaurant of Moises Morales, a northern Mexican fluent in four languages and connected with the Lacandon Mayas. Present were 23 North American and five Mexican scholars, plus eight students. For a week, this group focused on Palenque, moving back and forth between the motel and the ruins. When questions arose about details of sculptures or inscriptions, or to test ideas that came up in discussion, they could immediately visit the ruins and check things out. In addition, they had the art of Merle and a notebook recording all the published Palenque texts and their dates brought by Peter Mathews, a student of David Kelley. Kelley was invited but could not attend.

Linda Schele was an artist from Tennessee with a brusque style and thick accent. She fell in love with Palenque on her first visit and became friends with Merle. Although she didn’t complete degrees in archeology until later in life, Linda became a leader in translating Maya glyphs. Her enthusiasm was infectious. Floyd Lounsbury was a linguist who mastered Amerindian languages, including impossibly complex Oneida. Also trained in mathematics and anthropology, he took up Maya glyphs as a hobby after reading the work of Knorosov. He was convinced the glyphs reproduced speech. He learned Yukatec and Chortí Mayan as well as ancient Cholan, the language used by Classic Maya scribes. Agreeing with Knorosov, he emphasized that Mayan script fit perfectly with other early scripts in the rest of the world.

George Stuart came as a neophyte; he became a major researcher of Palenque as his archeological career unfolded. He brought his family, including his eight-year-old son David Stuart who found Palenque “the place” for exciting archeology. David also focused his archeological research on Palenque and made important contributions to later Mesas Redondas. George was acquainted with Alberto Ruz and regretted his absence at that first meeting, but knew Ruz resented this group of foreign enthusiasts descending on the place to which he devoted his career.

The crowning achievement of the Primera Mesa Redonda was the decipherment of Palenque’s “king list.” Linda Schele wanted to work on identifying rulers at Palenque, and Peter Mathews and Floyd Lounsbury joined her in the library at Merle’s house. The three of them sparked an intellectual chemistry. Working on the kitchen table with Peter’s notebook and mathematical formulas Floyd had created to obtain Long Count dates from the Calendar Round used at Palenque, they examined copies of the inscriptions from Pakal’s sarcophagus. First they identified a royal prefix that they read “makina” or Great Sun (now translated as K’inich). This pointed them toward the ruler’s name glyph that followed. The next glyphs would be titles and include the Emblem Glyph. From Floyd’s knowledge of linguistics, they knew a verb would come next and after that, the subject of the sentence.

The three constructed a provisional list of rulers with dates. But what to call them? Looking at the logograph, they assigned names depending on how the glyph appeared. The first ruler they called “Shield,” the next “Snake Jaguar” and so on. It took three and a half hours to reconstruct the second half of the Palenque ruling dynasty.

That evening the three mesmerized other participants with their presentation, nothing less than the ruling history of Palenque from the Late Classic period in the early 7
^th
Century through the end of the lineage. The lives of six successive kings were laid out, from birth to accession to death. It was the most complete king list for any Maya site to date.

The king called “Shield” was the mighty ruler whose burial chamber lay deep inside the Temple of the Inscriptions. Ruz called him “8 Ahau.” Shortly after the Mesa Redonda ended, David Kelley and Michael Coe both came upon phonetic versions of his name glyph, which, following Knorosov’s system was pronounced pa-ca-l(a). The “a” is silent, so it was pronounced Pakal. From his birth and death dates, they determined that he lived for 80 years.

In spring 1974, a group met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. and persisted in completing the Palenque king list. Linda Schele, Peter Mathews, Floyd Lounsbury, Merle Robertson and David Kelley were almost “in a state of trance” as they deciphered some key glyphs related to lineage. Within three-and-a-half hours they identified the names and reconstructed the lives of the first half of the dynasty.

“Franci! What are you doing?”

Startled, I looked up and saw Sonia standing in the door, hands on hips.

“You don’t have time for reading, we have to get out of here by two o’clock.”

“What time is it?” I asked lamely, shutting my book.

“One-thirty so get going. Here, I’ll help with your things.”

We scurried around shoving clothes and toiletries into bags, and boxing up the last books. Hoisting as much as we could carry, we hurried to the parking area where vans were waiting to take us to our busses in town. A couple of trips completed the task. With hugs all around and teary eyes, the team mingled and bid each other farewell, or as we like to say
hasta luego
– until later.

It’s a long bus ride from Palenque town to Villahermosa where we catch flights that will disperse us all around Mexico. Sonia and I are on the same flight to Mexico City, returning to the same university, now as good friends. But the others I may never see again, though we all vowed to come back to Palenque.

Deciphering the glyphs. They say that we’ve cracked the Maya code and can read 80% of the symbols. I’m not so sure that we fully understand their meanings. The ancient Mayas led a multi-dimensional existence and viewed their world in a very different way than we do with our western minds. Maybe I need to plummet into the depths of Maya thinking. Wasn’t that something my father talked about? And might not my grandmother be saying the same thing, in her odd way?