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Mythos Atlas

Mesoamerican PantheonCity

Palenque

Illustration of Palenque, a city of the Mesoamerican Pantheon
Illustrative imageIllustration of Palenque. Generated with an AI image model; not a historical artifact. About our images

Maya city of Pakal's dynasty, temples of the sun, cross, and inscriptions that map royal myth onto stone.

About Palenque

Lakamha, Pakal's inscribed mountain

Palenque (Lakamha) is a Classic Maya city in Chiapas whose Temple of the Inscriptions and Cross Group write K'inich Janaab Pakal's dynasty into stone: descent, maize, the world tree, sun and rain gods. This is not the K'iche' Popol Vuh, though the imagery rhymes with later highland myth. The texts are hieroglyphic and royal. The site is a specific court's cosmic autobiography.

On the map

Palenque among other places of the Mesoamerican Pantheon.

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.

  • Palenque Temple of the Inscriptions and Cross Group texts

    Catalog date: c. 7th c. CE

About this entry

By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. . Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.

Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.

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