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THE APOTHEOSIS OF JANAAB' PAKAL
SCIENCE, HISTORY, AND RELIGION AT CLASSIC MAYA PALENQUE
By GERARDO ALDANA
UNIVERSITY PRESS of COLORADO
Copyright © 2007 University Press of Colorado
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60732-071-5
Chapter One
NEW LIFE AT B'AAKAL
Janaab' Pakal was born into the noble class amidst political turmoil. In the Classic Maya calendar, he "touched the earth" on 9.8.9.13.0 8 Ajaw 13 Pop, just over a year after the accession of the ninth ruler of Palenque, Aj Ne' Ohl Mat (see Table 1.1). Aj Ne' Ohl Mat took the throne after Ix Yohl Ik'nal, the first attested ruling woman of a Classic Maya city, who ruled for over twenty years. Her rule must have been impressive, for it withstood attacks from two Usumacinta-region neighbors, Pia and Bonampak, allowing her to remain in power for longer than her contemporaries in the region (Grube 1996; Martin and Grube 2000:159; Schele and Freidel 1990:221–223). Her successor, however, was not so fortunate. Aj Ne' Ohl Mat held the throne in peace for only the next six years (see Table 1.2). Then, on 9.8.17.15.14 4 Ix 7 Wo, while Janaab' Pakal was still a boy, the city came upon difficult times, suffering severe military defeat at the hand of the ruler of faraway Kalak'mul.
This last war in particular must have made an impression on eight-year-old Janaab' Pakal. Since Janaab' Pakal's parents were both of noble lineages, the event and aftermath undoubtedly impacted his everyday physical and social environments. In the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Palenque's royal temples, the war was recorded as chak'aj Lakam Ja' (the "chopping down of the city center"). Yet the Palenque under siege at this time was not the architecturally impressive city that modern visitors now see in ruin. The most recognizable constructs today—the Palace Tower and the Temple of Inscriptions—were not yet even in the planning stages during Janaab' Pakal's youth. We must be cautious, therefore, when interpreting the meaning of the phrase chak'aj Lakam Ja'. This chapter examines the physical, social, and political environments that framed this critical military loss and that set the historical context for Janaab' Pakal's reign.
HUMBLE ORIGINS
At the time of Janaab' Pakal's birth, Palenque was still a provincial town. Art historian Merle Greene Robertson and archaeologist Robert Rands suggest that at the time no more than a handful of permanent stone and mortar buildings occupied Lakam Ja', the city center (Rands 1974; Robertson 1985a:3). All other structures were organized in clusters around common areas and constructed of wooden walls and thatched roofs, which were open enough to allow for sufficient ventilation in the heat and humidity of the foothills bordering the Gulf Coast plains (Robertson 1985a:3). Preliminary surveys suggest that the bulk of such residences were located in the western part of the polity framed by the Picota and Michol rivers (Schele 1981:93) (see Figure 0.1).
East of this area, next to the Otolum River, we find the stone and mortar buildings, which most likely composed the residence of the ruling elite. Such an architectural inference is warranted since these structures possessed the same overall characteristics as the palace structures that would follow them, even though there were important differences. The engineering behind each phase, for instance, reveals two distinct traditions. In the earlier structures, the walls are significantly thicker, betraying a less elegant and less confident plan. Likewise, the vaulted roofs were constructed at a lower sloping angle than those of subsequent structures (Robertson 1985a:4).
The second tradition noted here consisted of a new elite residence constructed around the time of Janaab' Pakal's early reign. In preparation for the new construction, the earlier structures and the area in between were filled to form a large platform. Upon the center of this platform, Palenque citizens built the structure today known as House E of the Palace Complex (Robertson 1985a:4) (see Figure 1.1). Interestingly, House E did not become a new standard for subsequent additions to the palace. Rather, this building was maintained as an anomaly within the greater complex that engulfed it. For one thing, the roof was set at a much steeper angle than any subsequent building at Palenque. As telling, House E is the only structure that did not possess a roof comb (Robertson 1985a:7).
The iconographic and symbolic differences between House E and all other constructions at Palenque are even more relevant to the discussion at hand. Namely, the exterior walls followed no convention, having been painted white and then covered with floating, abstract symbols (see Figure 1.1; Robertson 1985a:figures 29–52). Robertson (1985a:21) suggests that iconographically these symbols shared similarities with mural paintings at the great central Mexican city known as Teotihuacan, notably the co-occurrence of "goggle eyes." Although the direction of influence is still being debated within the scholarly community, the visual connection is little disputed.
The second difference consists of the unique symbolic link between House E and the cosmological region known as the Maya Underworld. Physically, the two are connected via a series of underground tunnels (Robertson 1985a:32–35). Within these tunnels, cosmic imagery, such as what David Stuart (2003) has called the Starry Deer Caiman, is both sculpted in stone and modeled out of stucco. We will consider this iconography and its referent in detail in Chapters 3 and 7. For now it is sufficient to note that House E functioned not only as part of a royal residence but, with its connections to the Underworld, as the ritual center of the polity as well.
Its ritual use becomes important when we take Mesoamerican war metaphors into consideration. Postclassic Central Mexican documents use images of temples on fire to represent conquered polities (Boone 2000:34); likewise, Classic Maya inscriptions refer to burning events as a part of war, which we will discuss later in this chapter. If the conquest of Palenque during Janaab' Pakal's youth involved the destruction or desecration of its ritual center, the focus of the destruction would have been directed toward the early — now filled in — structures of this complex. As a noble, Janaab' Pakal probably frequented this complex and therefore would have been reminded throughout his youth of the city's grave military defeat.
DYNASTIC REPERCUSSIONS
As for the social environment — and perhaps more significantly — no person took over the formal rule of Palenque after the war with Kalak'mul. The tablet that bears the hieroglyphic passage recording the event notes that after military defeat, the religious charter of the city was "lost," and the gifts that were regularly given to the gods at the ends of calendric periods "could no longer be given." Instead, during the period after the war, the patron gods of Palenque were cared for by the primordial mother goddess, Ix Muwaan Mat.
In order to understand the meaning of this gift-giving and to recover Janaab' Pakal's response to the tough times into which he was born, we must digress into a consideration of dynastic genealogy. The genealogical interpretation of the hieroglyphic text presented here differs from the generally accepted interpretation proposed by Linda Schele and David Freidel in 1990. At the time of their proposal, the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script was in full bloom — a situation constituting a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the decipherment led to a new vision of the Maya world through the Maya's own words. On the other, a significant number of decipherments were insecure, and speculative interpretations were far more acceptable than they are now with a more subtle understanding of the script. Through an updated reading of the primary genealogical texts of Palenque, therefore, we can revise Schele and Freidel's interpretation to gain insight into Janaab' Pakal's tumultuous childhood.
In 1990, Linda Schele and David Freidel presented to the public the fruits of almost two decades of groundbreaking scholarship by a cadre of scholars gathered around the Mesa Redonda de Palenque (Coe 1992:193–217). Working from three primary sources — a set of tablets in the Temple of Inscriptions, texts carved into Janaab' Pakal's sarcophagus, and the tablets of the Triad Group — Floyd Lounsbury, Peter Mathews, Linda Schele, and David Kelley reconstructed the entire dynastic sequence of Palenque into the Late Classic period. Of these sources, the Temple of Inscriptions provided a coarse overview of some of the important ajawtahk of Palenque. The Triad Group gave a more detailed listing for the earlier ajawtahk. And the sarcophagus lid recorded specific information about Janaab' Pakal's parentage. From these sources, Schele and Freidel (1990:219) presented the dynasty shown in Table 1.1.
The trouble with this genealogy relative to the interpretation proposed in this book (and the main difference between the two numerical columns of Table 1.1) lies in the identification of Janaab' Pakal's mother as the tenth ruler of Palenque. In fact, nowhere is she explicitly recorded as having filled that role. Instead, her placement within the formal dynasty depends on an inferential link made by Schele and Freidel. The ambiguity necessitating some type of inference comes from their treatment of a hieroglyphic record in a carved tablet within the Temple of Inscriptions. Therein, right after a record of the abovementioned battle lost to the Kalak'mul ajaw, and before the record of Janaab' Pakal's accession, the author of the tablet included the accession of a figure named Ix Muwaan Mat.
Less than a year (10.2) after Ix Muwaan Mat K'ujul B'aakal Ajaw became seated as ajaw, it was the k'altun of 3 Ajaw 3 Zotz' (9.9.0.0.0); it was the ninth k'atun. Muwaan Mat K'ujul B'aakal Ajaw gives the bundle of her gods for 9 bak'tun 9 k'atun. (N11–P6)
The basis of Schele and Freidel's inference is stated explicitly in a footnote to their chapter on the dynasty of Palenque. They write:
[The] inference of the identity of the woman named in the Temple of Inscriptions as [Janaab' Pakal's] mother is based on the following pattern of data:
1. The woman who appears in the equivalent chronological position in the death list on the sarcophagus lid is his mother, [Ix Sak K'uk'].
2. On the Oval Palace Tablet, the woman named as [Janaab' Pakal's] mother hands him the crown that makes him king, but his father is neither named nor pictured. The parent critical to his legitimate claim to the throne is his mother rather than his father.
3. His father, [K'an Mo' Hix], never appears in an accession phrase in any of the inscriptions of Palenque. Furthermore, [Janaab' Pakal] depicts [K'an Mo' Hix] only on the sarcophagus where he appears as the king's father and not as a king in his own right.
4. The goddess is born on a date deliberately contrived to have the same temporal character ... as [Janaab' Pakal's] birth.
They continue, "All of these factors emphasize that [Janaab' Pakal's] right of inheritance descended through his mother rather than his father." Additionally, they appeal to a purported pun built into the hieroglyphic word k'uk', identified by Floyd Lounsbury (Schele and Freidel 1990:468).
The purported pun and the first and third points have been discredited by the ongoing decipherment, whereas the second and fourth will require more argument to refute. The pun recognized by Lounsbury was based on an identification of the acceding figure's name glyph as a heron with feathers in its mouth (Schele and Freidel 1990:468). Recently, the name glyph has been identified not as bak' ("heron") but as a muwaan ("hawk"), eliminating the viability of the pun (Macri and Looper 2003:96) (see Figure 1.2). Secondly, the first point — that Janaab' Pakal's mother and his ruling predecessor both precede him chronologically — does not necessarily imply anything provocative about their potential equivalence. It is a necessary condition but nothing more.
The third point actually contains an error of fact. Contrary to Schele and Freidel's assertion, Janaab' Pakal's father, K'an Mo' Hix, is named as an ajaw "in his own right" — three times in fact — and is named as such on Janaab' Pakal's sarcophagus and its lid. The inscription along the west edge of the lid explicitly names K'an Mo' Hix as K'ujul B'aakal Ajaw. Also, images on the sides of the sarcophagus depict K'an Mo' Hix twice as being reborn, and next to each of his portraits is his name followed by the ajaw title (see Figure 1.3). Moreover, on a public tablet on the façade of the Templo Olvidado, K'an Mo' Hix is listed as Janaab' Pakal's father (and Ix Sak K'uk is identified as his mother).
Now, it is true that K'an Mo' Hix does not appear in any accession phrase within the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Palenque that have been recovered thus far. But then neither does Ix Sak K'uk' unless we accept the inference that is under contention. The larger point that Schele and Freidel are attempting to make depends on the hypothesis that governs the interpretation they give. Namely, Schele and Freidel assume that the ajawlel must descend patrilineally and then apply this assumption to the early dynasty of Palenque, arguing that the reason for the extensive treatment of genealogy by Janaab' Pakal and his son (in the Temple of Inscriptions and in the Triad Group) is to legitimize their rule because it was not obtained patrilineally.
Although they admit in a footnote that there is no genealogical data supporting a specific relationship between Ix Sak K'uk' and Janaab' Pakal I (the namesake of her son), they fail to state that no data support a direct father-son relationship between any of Janaab' Pakal's predecessors (Schele and Freidel 1990:467; cf. Robertson 1985b:116). Their entire theory of Janaab' Pakal's and Kan B'ahlam's attempts at legitimation, therefore, rests on the assertions that for the Classic Maya as a whole, dynasties were ruled by fathers and sons and that any aberration required extensive justification. Schele and Freidel's (1990) readings, therefore, heavily reflected their own early concerns with the texts. With a nascent ability to read them, interpretations focused predominantly on dynastic successions and royal genealogies. This information was the most easily recovered and so became the focal point of scholarly attention — even if it may not have been the focus of the Maya who composed the inscriptions.
If instead we follow the work of Susan Gillespie, Patricia McAnany, and Ralph Roys, who note that father-son inheritance was preferred but not required and that the ajawlel could pass among a larger subset of the nobility (Gillespie 2001:470–473; Roys 1967), then the motivations behind the inscriptions considered here potentially change. Under this scenario, neither of Janaab' Pakal's parents would have to have been the reigning k'ujul ajaw for Janaab' Pakal to have acceded to the throne. All that would have been required was the fact that he was of an appropriate lineage. Whether his mother's or father's lineage was more important might then be debated without having to argue for either mother or father as the preceding ruler of Palenque.
Without Schele and Freidel's assumptions, we may posit alternative motivations for the hieroglyphic inscriptions being considered here. We also now must seek a new means (other than strict patrilineality) for the Classic Maya to have maintained power within a small ruling elite class. Both of these issues will be addressed throughout the remaining chapters of this book with the latter constituting the focus of Chapter 7.
If Ix Muwaan Mat, the ruler directly preceding Janaab' Pakal, was not an alternate name of someone in his immediate family, we are left to ask who she may have been. Before attempting to answer this question, we should take into account the rest of the passage that noted her accession in the texts of the Temple of Inscriptions. Specifically, right after her accession and celebration of the k'altun, the text notes explicit restrictions on her reign.
On the back of the ninth k'atun, god was lost; ajaw was lost. She could not adorn the ajawtahk of the first sky; she could not give offerings to the 9 Sky Yoch'ok'in, the 16 Ch'ok'in, or the 9 Tz'aak Ajaw. On the back of the 3 Ajaw k'atun, Ix Muwaan Mat could not give their offerings. Ix Muwaan Mat gives the bundle of her god. (O4–Q9)
Although she was able to perform some of the duties required of a K'ujul B'aakal Ajaw, others were left undone. To emphasize the point, the next hieroglyphic passage notes the accession of Janaab' Pakal and points out explicitly that he was able to interact with precisely those gods prohibited to Ix Muwaan Mat: the 9 Sky Yoch'ok'in, the 16 Ch'ok'in, and 9 Tz'aak Ajaw.
Seventeen years (17.13.12) after K'inich Janaab' Pakal K'ujul B'aakal Ajaw became seated as ajaw, it was the k'altun of 1 Ajaw 8 K'ayab (9.10.0.0.0). It was seated, the tenth k'atun. It was the half bak'tun of the ajawtahk Jun Ajaw, ... 9 Sky Yoch'ok'in, the 16 Ch'ok'in, 9 Tz'aak Ajaw. (R9–S7)
Not only were there restrictions on her reign, but Ix Muwaan Mat served as ajaw for only a very short time, less than four years (see Table 1.2). She then passed the throne to the now twelve-year-old Janaab' Pakal. Although she was named with the formal title of k'ujul ajaw in the Temple of Inscriptions, it appears that her position was only a temporary fix.
Rather than appeal to a mortal regent for the identity of Ix Muwaan Mat, as did Schele and Freidel, we may actually turn to other hieroglyphic inscriptions at Palenque that mention a woman of this name. In the largest structure of the Triad Group, which we will treat in detail in Chapter 6, an inscription records that Ix Muwaan Mat was born, acceded to the ajawlel of Palenque, and bore a son in primordial times. Likewise, other deeds by her were cited elsewhere by later rulers (e.g., on the Palenque Temple XIX altar). A more literal reading of the Temple of Inscription texts, therefore, reveals that a deity might have some agency during the historical period after the defeat of Aj Ne' Ohl Mat. A more faithful reading would have the primordial deity taking charge of the city's ceremonial needs while no suitable mortal ruler was available (see also Martin and Grube 2000:161). Rulers were often in communication with ancestors and deities, and some deities (as we will see later) owned buildings during Classic times (Houston 1996; Houston and Stuart 1996).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE APOTHEOSIS OF JANAAB' PAKAL by GERARDO ALDANA Copyright © 2007 by University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY PRESS of COLORADO. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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