Mesoamerican Pantheonrelic
Pakal's Sarcophagus Lid
- World Tree Vision
- Royal Afterlife
- Cosmic Axis
The carved lid of K'inich Janaab' Pakal's tomb at Palenque, a world-tree vision of descent and rebirth between underworld and sky.
About Pakal's Sarcophagus Lid
Palenque, Temple of the Inscriptions
The carved lid of K'inich Janaab Pakal's sarcophagus (the king died in 683 CE) was found inside the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque (Lakamha'). It shows the ruler at the world-tree and sky-serpent axis, Classic Maya royal art of death and rebirth, not an astronaut and not a portable magic item. Mythic overlay (maize, the sun, the road of the dead) is how Maya courts pictured royal afterlife. The object is a tomb lid in a dated pyramid. Read it with the temple's inscriptions. It is historical Maya sculpture, not a weapon and not a grail.
Origin
Maya royal funerary art encoding the king's passage along the axis mundi.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Temple of the Inscriptions, Palenque (sarcophagus of K'inich Janaab Pakal)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
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