Palenque: Ritual Architecture Of Ancient Mayans

In 652 AD, Pacal the Great began a massive construction program at a Mayan city near the modern-day city Palenque in Mexico. Topography and solar alignments were important for rituals in this city center’s temples.

Rituals and natural cycles guided these people’s lives and leave behind clues in stone. A thriving population of 6,200 once relied on these temples to connect them to the heavens and their ancestors. a

Early explorers noted stunning similarities in the design of these stone structures and their apparent use. The plan of Palenque follows a pin-wheel arrangement, as well as a gridded system.

Founded: 226 BC
Architect: Various
Patron: K’inich Janaab’ Pakal (603-683 AD)
Style: Late Classic Mayan
Location: Chiapas, Mexico

Values In Design

 
 
Validation Of Kingship

Palenque’s rival Calakmul had invaded the city in 611 and left the proud Mayan state in ruins. The royalty had been killed off. The following days were dark and chaotic. “Lost is the divine lady,” an inscription laments, “Lost is the lord.” b

Pacal rose to power against all odds. His grandfather Janaab Pakal had become leader two years earlier but was never officially crowned. He couldn’t demonstrate that he was a direct descendant of Akhal Mo’ Naab, the great king from 90 years earlier. But political brokering by Pacal’s mother made Pacal king at the young age of 12.

From the ashes rose a glorious civilization, as Pacal embarked on a building campaign in 652 that would briefly make the city greater than anyone could imagine. An alliance with nearby Tikal would lead to the defeat of six enemy kings.

How did Pacal unite his people? He launched a building campaign brought the people together. It invigorated religious fervor and made Pacal leader for their salvation. People fall behind a leader who constructs their spiritual dominance on earth.

The temples and tower were lifted up on platforms so they could be seen throughout the land, visual landmarks for way-finding. Public plazas and circulation paths were established that brought clarity to people’s daily routine. They were wrought in stone, permanent, everlasting. Great tablets were inscribed on Pacal’s burial temple with reminders for everybody that his lineage is in fact royal.

Unite City Composition

The architects laid out the Palace as the political center of the state. This 310 ft by 260 ft complex sits on a terraced pyramid 40 ft high. With entrances on the north and west end, it sits prominently in the main circulation path of the city.

The Palace is the center of everything. As one approaches the town from the north, the Palace rises like a monolith, with the Temple of Inscriptions terminating the path behind it. Many coats of paint were found on its walls c, suggesting that it acted like a sort of billboard, a massive advertisement space for the kings.

Groups of buildings in the city were arranged according to the Palace. Buildings C, B, and E of the Palace were the first constructions at the site d, from 652-667 AD. The Temple of Inscriptions was built in 682 catercorner to Building E. The Cross Group was built in 692 AD across the stream from Building B. The North Group was built in 700 AD near Building C, completing the compositional pivot toward an east-west axis.

Building C, B, and E were formally arranged like spokes in a wheel. They radiate according to outlying topography. Clumps of buildings were then built in this topography and effaced the Palace buildings. The Palace is thus the urban core of the entire city.

The radiating spokes were contained atop a rectangular pyramid. A rectangular frame of buildings were then built to emphasize this rectangular form in a circular arrangement. Why?

The utopian circular city plan is as old as time. From ancient Mesopotamia e to modern Garden Cities, the circular city has always been recognized as a superior method of arranging the city with a dominant center.

Yet while city planning and topography are easier to design with the circle, building structures themselves are much easier to deal with if rectangular. The Pantheon in Rome achieves a rectangular grid arrangement outside a formal circle in much the same way as the Palenque Palace.
 
 

 
 
Funerary Procession To The Heavens

Pacal The Great was buried in the Temple of Inscriptions. The fact that he was buried with a jade cube and sphere in his hands f suggests that the reconciliation of circle and rectangle was much more important than just as a city-planning device.

The buildings at Palenque are similar to each other. Pyramid steps lead up to a wall of broad columns and entrances. Corbel arches hold up mansard roofs and roofcombs, all very typical to Mayan architecture. One proceeds through two spaces of corbel arches, and then a sacred inner space is in the second arch.

Tablets on the building exterior advertise the significance of the site, while tablets in the inner spaces indicate the sacredness of the building’s meaning.

The Temple of Inscriptions changes this in a dramatic way. Only two rows of space are to be found inside. A hidden passageway in the second space leads down sets of stairs to Pacal’s burial chamber, which is just below ground level. Pacal’s body during his funeral proceeds up stairs, through sacred layers of space, and then down stairs into a sacred telestial space.

Each of the 69 steps up the pyramid symbolize a year in Pacal’s reign in life. The 9 levels of steps represent the 9 levels of hell he must traverse in the afterlife.

The 13ft by 8 ft stucco tablets on the temple’s exterior reinforce Pacal’s legitimacy to the throne and divine guidance as king. Tablets inside the temple prophesy of Palenque’s role in the history of the world. Finally, the tablet buried with Pacal portrays his entering the paradise of the afterlife using the terestrial Tree of Life.

A psychoduct passage from the tomb back out to the exterior tablets suggest an umbilical cord g between Pacal and his divine ancestors. This “umbilical cord” performs the same function as the Tree of Life, which is to connect the king with his ancestors, his subterranean tomb with the heights of heaven. h The pyramid is thus at the same time a cave to the underworld and ladder to the sky, a cyclical process.

And it thus ties together Pacal’s entrance to the afterlife with the fate of Palenque.


(archer10 (Dennis)– flickr/creative commons license)
 

Ritual Procession For The Living

The Temple of Inscriptions is a ritual center for the dead. The Palace is a ritual center for the living, and the two buildings are intrinsically intertwined.

The pinwheel composition of the Palace is only a slight variation from the cross-form of the Tree of Life that is so prominent around Palenque. The Tree of Life forms the Palace in plan view, and the Tower soars up into the sky at the center.

One proceeds through the Palace in much the same way as the Temple of Inscriptions. A public plaza leads to an arduous climb up pyramid stairs. The complex is fenced off from the public with its exterior of buildings. Semi-public spaces proceed to private spaces as one moves up more flights of stairs. The size of spaces scales down, corridors narrow, as one moves up and inward.

Three small openings in the floor lead through narrow passages down to three underground chambers, which mirror the three sacred chambers of the temples. This underground space is a “cosmological underworld” with terestrial symbols of the world between heaven and hell. i Illustrations show initiates passing through the earth and through the sky, with representations of Venus and other gods along the way.

The architecture provides a setting for the ritualistic activities Mayans performed. “Maya architecture does function as backdrop, with public iconography framing repeated public ritual. We can also go a step further, for the architecture confirms ritual and makes it present and living even when it is not being performed.” j

The benches in these underground rooms suggest the rituals involved sitting or lying down, perhaps to represent the dead body. After all rituals were completed, the initiate emerged at the south end of the Palace, facing the bright summer solstice sun directly above the Temple of Inscriptions. This was a final reminder that Pacal’s passage in the afterlife was the progenitor for all others.

Each building of the Palace performed an important part in this procession. House E was like the temple atop the Temple of Inscriptions, higher than the other buildings. It was the throne room for Pacal and initiated a royal connection with his ancestors, as their thrones showed up later in the subterranean passageways. House E had the name White Skin House.
 
 

Timeline

 

431 AD K’uk Balam is first ruler “ajaw” of Palenque
599 Calakmul invades Palenque
615 Pakal takes throne following period of no king
683 K’inich Kan B’alam takes throne after Paka’s death, continues constructions
711 Tonina invades Palenque, captures king K’inich K’an Joy Chitan II
800 Site eventually abandoned
1567 Discovered by Missionary Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada who names the site Palenque
1773 Exploration & surveys made of Palenque
1948 Alberto Ruz Luhuiller discovers Pakal’s tomb

 
 

Site: Solar Alignments

 

(contraption– flickr/creative commons license
 
The tower of the Palace anchors the pinwheel arrangement and signifies ascension into the heavens. It likely was used as a podium for leaders to address crowds on the plaza. The most important function of the tower, however, was as an observation deck to view the winter solstice sun setting behind the Temple of Inscriptions.k

The solstices were important dates in this agricultural society. They defined work schedules and livelihoods. The birth, death, and succession of the king similarly was a cyclical process that defined their lives. When one king died the next naturally took his place, just as the next Spring season of corn replaces the old. The king was deified as the “sun” that made all this organization happen.

The journey of the sun on the summer solstice crosses each of the exterior panels of the rulers on the Temple of Inscriptions, and finally sets with an alignment of the temple and Pakal’s tomb below.o The window slits in the walls show the sun’s movement along this process.

Pakal’s son K’inich Kan B’alam II was coronated on the summer solstice of 641.l The inner sanctuary of the Temple of the Foliated Cross is dramatically illuminated on the summer solstice with a tablet that records this enthronement.m
Various other cosmological events are involved in Palenque’s design. B’alam’s dedication of the Cross Temple in 690 AD coincides with the alignment of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon.n

The Temple of the Sun has complex solar arrangements in its design and orientation to the Temple of Inscriptions.
 
 

Similar Buildings

 

The use of hierophany to commemorate and deify royal kingship is a noted quality of the Pantheon in Rome. Sunlight shines through an oculus in a special way on the solstices, the founding of Rome, and on the anniversary of Julius Cesaer’s coronation.

The similarities of the Pantheon in Stonehenge and the Pantheon in deriving proportions from the sun also demonstrate the same similarities to Mayan art. The famous Mayan calendar fits with the proportions of a circle divided into 16 parts.

The reconciliation of the circle and the rectangular grid that gives these proportions of concentric rings happen to align for the Pantheon, Stonehenge, and Palenque.
 

 
 
Early explorers of Palenque observed other remarkable similarities to Roman architecture. The cement used in Palenque’s masonry was found to be “hard as the best seen in the remains of Roman baths and cisterns.”p The sophisticated aqueducts at Palenque are the first examples of pressurized piping in the Americas. Palenque’s emphasis on water and bathing is similar to Rome’s. Also, the ritualistic game at the Mayan ball court is like the Roman gladiator blood sport.

Based on such observations, explorers theorized that Romans or Phœnicians were involved in the construction of Palenque. q

The Mayan use of the trefoil arch at Palenque is similar to the Christian foiled arch, which uses three leaves to symbolize the Trinity.

The cross motif was another example that naturally stood out to Christian explorers.

The cross at Palenque is the tree of life between the underworld and heavens. It is similar to many ancient theologies. Palenque’s cross has a serpent underneath, twisting branches on either side, a celestial bird capping the top, and gods flanked on either side.

The Buddhist Bodhi Tree has these same elements at the Prambanan Temple. Two cheribs flank the tree with twisting branches on either side, a cap atop, and celestial birds above.


(Bryn Pinzgauer– flickr/creative commons license)
 

The tower at the Palace of Palenque is a very typical tower design. The Pharos of Alexanderia is the first such tower that we know of. Archeologists portray the Pharos with the same elements as the Palenque tower. Three tiers get progressively smaller atop a wide pedestal base. A lantern and capped roof sit atop.


 
 
 
© Benjamin Blankenbehler 2014
 
 

See also: Architectural Survey of the Palace
Solar analysis of Temple of the Sun

 
 
Citations:

 

  • ^See “The Archaeology Coursebook: An Introduction to Themes, Sites, Methods and Skills” by Jim Grant, Sam Gorin, Neil Fleming Routledge, 2008, p. 136

 

 

  • ^See “Proceedings of the Tercera Mesa Redonda de Palenque, June 11-18, 1978, Palenque: a conference on the art, hieroglyphics, and historic approaches of the late classic Maya, Part 4” Pre-Columbian Art-Herald Printers, 1979, p. 174

 

(featured images by Ulises00 on Wikipedia/public domain)