603–683
Maya king of Palenque, builder of its great temple-tomb.
K’inich Janaab’ Pakal — Pacal the Great — was the divine lord of Palenque, a Maya city in the forests of what is now Chiapas, Mexico. Born in 603, he came to the throne at the age of twelve and ruled for sixty-eight years, one of the longest reigns any monarch has ever held.
Under him Palenque rose to the height of its power and its art. He raised the sprawling Palace with its singular tower, and the Temple of the Inscriptions, whose carved panels record his dynasty in some of the finest sculpture the Maya ever made.
Beneath that temple, in 1952, archaeologists found his tomb — a great carved sarcophagus deep within the pyramid, its lid showing the king between death and rebirth, one of the treasures of the ancient Americas.
He died in 683, and his sons ruled after him. Honored among the Great Ones of every civilization; kept here so the memory is never lost.
Kept with honor.
References
Biography drawn from the public historical record, verifiable against the sources above.
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