Qualla: Temple of the Inscriptions

Temple of the Inscriptions: Introduction

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit tato grasso, CC BY-SA 2.5. For more than a thousand years, the secret was a stone slab in the floor. Explorers, artists, and archaeologists had visited the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque for over two centuries without realizing that the largest stepped pyramid at the site was not merely a temple but a tomb. In 1952, Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier noticed something odd about a floor slab in the temple's back room: it had holes that could accommodate lifting ropes. He pried it up and found a rubble-filled stairway descending into the heart of the pyramid. Two years of excavation later, he became the first person in over a millennium to gaze upon the burial of Kinich Janaab Pakal, the seventh-century king who had ruled Palenque for nearly seventy years. The Maya called this building Bolon Yej Te Naah -- the House of the Nine Sharpened Spears.

Image: tato grasso | CC BY-SA 2.5

Temple of the Inscriptions: A Monument Built to Last

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Armesto, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pakal himself initiated construction of the temple in the last decade of his life, probably around 675, and his son Kinich Kan Bahlam II completed the structure and its decoration after Pakal's death in 683. The pyramid rises in eight steps to a total of nine levels, with a templ...

Image: Daniel Armesto | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple of the Inscriptions: Figures on the Threshold

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit El Comandante, CC BY-SA 3.0. The six piers that frame the temple's entrance were once brilliantly colored in red, yellow, and blue, with the stucco still wet when pigment was applied so the color bonded to the building. Piers B through E each depict a standing figure holding an infant-like form of God K, a M...

Image: El Comandante | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple of the Inscriptions: The Descent

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lousanroj, CC BY-SA 3.0. The stairway that Ruz Lhuillier uncovered descends from the temple floor deep into the pyramid's core. At the entrance to the burial crypt, five skeletons were found -- sacrificial victims, both male and female, intended to accompany Pakal into the underworld. The tomb chamber it...

Image: Lousanroj | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple of the Inscriptions: A Face of Jade

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pakal's death mask is made entirely of jade, its eyes fashioned from shell, mother of pearl, and obsidian. Smaller jade heads were packed into the sarcophagus alongside him, and a stucco portrait of the king was found beneath the base. The psychoduct -- that hollow stone channel ...

Image: Wolfgang Sauber | CC BY-SA 3.0