by David Stuart (The University of Texas at Austin)
In 1979 Linda Schele and Peter Mathews published their important catalog, The Bodega at Palenque, Chiapas Mexico, presenting various sculpture fragments and artifacts recovered over the course of many years of excavation from the 1930s to the 1960s. Of significant interest to epigraphers, among many pieces, was a badly damaged stone censer stand that had been found on the slope of the Temple of the Cross in 1945 (Schele and Mathews 1979:281).
The sculpture is representative of a particular type that is distinct to Palenque – an upright stone with a near life-size face on its front, two prominent side flanges showing ear ornaments, and other iconography, often with inscriptions on its side edges and back. These stones were inspired by the famous large ceramic censer stands that adorned many of the temples of Palenque (Cuevas 2008). As with their ceramic counterparts, small shallow bowls with copal were placed on the stands, visually atop the elaborate headdresses.
Other examples of such stones, far better preserved, include the stand representing the nobleman Aj Sul, a contemporary of K’inich Janab Pakal, now in the Museo Regional de Palenque. Another is a larger piece in the Museo Amparo in Puebla with a portrait of an Aj K’uhuun from the same period, carved during the reign of K’inich Janab Pakal. The inscriptions on all of these, including the Cross example, are biographical, recounting events in the lives of the figures portrayed. Their narratives close with records of death and burial. Clearly, these served as funerary small funerary altars, bearing the images of deceased ancestors. I have tentatively identified the name of this type as k’ohob’tuun, “image/mask stones” (Stuart 2019). In function and design, these bear a remarkable similarity to some funerary altars from the Roman world.
Unfortunately, the portrait on the front of Cross censer stand is broken and almost completely gone. A long incised inscription on its rear is also badly damaged (see drawing). Its first publication by Schele and Mathews was accompanied by Schele’s drawing and their tentative chronological analysis. The dates of the text were later revised and corrected in an outstanding study made by Ringle (1996), who also recognized strong overlaps between the texts and the contents of the Temple XVIII stucco inscription. In the late 1980s, I determined that a small stone fragment recovered in the western stairs of the Palace, now on display at the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, was likely to be part of the same stone, bearing the opening Long Count date (see left side in drawing). The discovery of these pieces at a great distance from one another offers a fascinating instance of a monument’s intentional destruction and removal, probably after Palerque’s fall.
The fit of the side fragment prompted the drawing presented here, which will also be discussed as part of the upcoming workshop on the stucco glyphs from Temple XVIII, at Boundary End Archaeology Research Center (April 2024).
I agree with most Ringle’s revised chronology, differing only in a couple of dates from the middle of the text, given here only tentatively. The Gregorian dates are given using the Martin-Skidmore (584286) correlation.
9.10.15.6.8 4 Lamat 16 Pop / Mar 15, 648 / Birth of Tiwohl Chan Mat
9.11.5.0.0 5 Ahau 3 Zac / Sep 16, 657 / Period Ending (PE)
9.11.6.16.17 13 Caban 10 Ch’en / Aug 14, 659 / Arrival of Nuun Ujol Chahk
9.11.7.0.0 10 Ahau 13 Yax / Sep 6, 659 / PE
9.11.9.14.19 2 Cauac 17 Xul / Jul 11, 662 / Youth ritual?
9.11.10.0.0 11 Ahau 18 Ch’en / Aug 21, 662 / PE
9.11.13.0.0 12 Ahau 3 Ch’en / Aug 5, 665 / PE
9.11.15.10.7 3 Manik 0 Uayeb??? / Feb 18, 668 / Triad event
9.12.0.0.0 10 Ahau 8 Yaxkin / Jun 29, 672 / PE
9.12.0.6.18 5 Etz’nab 6 Kankin / Nov 14, 672 / Death of Lady Tzakbu Ajaw
9.12.8.9.18 7 Etz’nab 6 Muan / Dec 2, 680 / Death of Tiwohl Chan Mat
9.12.8.10.0 9 Ahau 8 Muan / Dec 4, 680 / Burial
9.12.10.0.0 9 Ahau 18 Zotz’ / May 8, 682 / Dedication of stone
We see that the thirteen dates on the stone (an intentional number?) cover a thirty-five-year period, corresponding roughly to the life of the stone’s protagonist, Tiwol Chan Mat. As we find in other funerary texts on small stones, the inscription is biographical, recounting the major events of his life. The censer stand was dedicated at the half-k’atun on May 5, 682, 162 days after Tiwohl Chan Mat’s death. There is a poignance to the mention of Pakal overseeing the burial of his youngest son, only eight years after his wife passed away. In fact, The similarity in the death dates of the mother and the son – 5 Etznab 6 Kankin and 7 Etznab 6 Muan – may have given extra meaning to the narrative, linking the mother and her adult son. Pakal’s own death would come soon after.
The prominence of the 659 arrival of Nuun Ujol Chahk, probably the exiled ruler of the Mutul dynasty, is interesting. This was a transformative event for Palenque’s court, featured prominently in Pakal’s own story as told in the Temple of the Inscriptions. The visit probably helped to advance Pakal’s own political and military power in the western region, and his conflicts against the great Kanul court and its allies. Tiwol Chan Maat was only eleven years old at the time of this royal visit, and it must have left quite a mark on the boy.
Lastly, the dedication of this funerary stone pre-dates the Temple of the Cross, where it was eventually found. This suggests that it was brought to the Cross a decade or more after it was carved. There it would have accompanied the many other ceramic censer stands found on the temple’s slope. The ancestral themes of the tablet in the Temple of the Cross may signal why it was brought there, adding Tiwohl Chan Mat’s story to his older brother’s greater dynastic narrative.
Sources Cited
Cuevas Garcia, Martha. 2008. Los incensarios efigie de Palenque: Diedades y rituales mayas. UNAM, Mexico.
Ringle, William M. 1996. Birds of a Feather: The Fallen Stucco Inscription of Temple XVIII, Palenque, Chiapas. In Eighth Palenque Round Table, 1993, edited by M.G. Robertson, M. J. Macri, and J. McHargue, pp. 45-61. Pre-Columbian art Research Institute, San Francisco.
Schele, Linda, and Peter Mathews. 1979. The Bodega of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.
Stuart, David. 2019. A Possible Logogram for K’OJ or K’OJOB, “Mask, Image.” Unpublished talk (slides only) on academia.edu.
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