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Tagged “jade”

• HIGH WONDER

  The Temple of the Inscriptions, Palenque

  How do you build a pyramid around a tomb that has to be sealed forever — placing a multi-tonne carved lid inside a vaulted crypt before there is any pyramid to carry it — and then run a stone tube from the coffin to the temple floor above?

  begun in the last decade of Pakal's life and completed shortly after 683 CE by his son Kʼinich Kan Bahlam II · Palenque, Chiapas, MexicoAdded August 2026
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  Tikal Temple I

  How do you bury a king with a 3.9-kilogram jade necklace and a bundle of inscribed bones at the bottom of a hole, then raise fifty-five metres of limestone on top of him — and cut the doorway lintels from a wood that is still holding thirteen centuries later?

  c. 732 CE (Late Classic), raised after the death of Jasaw Chan Kʼawiil I in 734 and completed under his son · Tikal, Petén Department, GuatemalaAdded August 2026