Identifying Individual Hands in the Monuments of K’inich Ahkal Mo’ Naab of Palenque

Temple XIX Limestone Panel

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The limestone panel which greeted those entering Temple XIX was even more ambitious than the Throne or Platform. Ten feet high and three wide, it had been deliberately torn off its supporting pier and its pieces scattered about the Temple just before the roof collapsed. The vandals dragged a large fragment carrying the torso of the central image of Ahkal Mo’ Nab over in front of the Platform, face up, and piled organic offerings upon it, apparently at the same time as they sacked the interior of the Platform. Presumably they burned these offerings, but the fire luckily did not damage the carved surface.

As you see, the carving is brilliant and almost perfectly preserved. The sensitive modeling of portraits and glyphs truly communicates the power and vitality of the characters, and the artists carried every square centimeter to utter completion. There are no unfinished or rushed areas of this panel, like we usually find, (for instance, as on the Palenque Panel in Dumbarton Oaks, carved in the reign of K’an Hoy Chitam, the immediate predecessor of Ahkal Mo’ Naab).

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Unfortunately, although the Proyecto archaeologists found most of the fragments of this Panel, the greatest part of the text, (which arched over the king’s backrack), is still missing. The spelling of Ahkal Mo’ Naab’s name on the main text is striking: a turtleshell (Ahk), a whole Parrot’s head (Mo’) instead of just a beak, draped with a lilypad (Naab). This spelling would be unique, except that it appears with precisely the same elements on the Platform. Comparing the two, notwithstanding the difference in carving technique, one sees that they appear to represent two different handwritings: look particularly at the form of the beak. I do think that in this case we are looking at two artists’ renderings of Ahkal’s name as copied from some venerable model; perhaps the codex from which they derived the historical information recorded on these two monuments, or perhaps a favorite spelling of the Temple architect.

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