Tierra Maya
The Oval Palace Tablet c. 615 A.D.
The Palace of the Governor, Palenque
This tablet depicts King Pacal’s mother, Lady Zac Kuk (“White or Resplendent Quetzal”), presenting the royal crown upon his accession to the throne. Like the majority of monuments in Palenque the Oval Palace Tablet chronicles the geneology of the royal family. King Pacal’s mother, Lady Zac-Kuk, is listed in the geneology records at Palenque as a “king” and in an extremely unorthodox and highly political move she asserted that even though her husband was not of royal lineage her son Pacal was, through his relationship to her. In this tablet, her royal lineage is connected all the way back to the First Mother of the Maya, “Lady Beastie”. Unlike the other accession rites shown at Palenque the father is not present in the ceremony, only the mother presenting what archaeologists call the “Drum Majorette” crown.
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