B'olon Yej Te' Naah

B'olon Yej Te' Naah, the House of the Nine Sharpened Spears, is the largest pyramid at Palenque, a Maya city-state in the Chiapas lowlands. It was raised as the funerary monument of K'inich Janaab' Pakal, who ruled Palenque from 615 to 683; his son K'inich Kan Bahlam II finished it shortly after 683.

Three tablets carry 617 glyphs chronicling Pakal's reign. A hidden stairway descends to the burial chamber, where the king lay in a carved sarcophagus whose lid shows him sinking into the jaws of the underworld beneath the cosmic tree, wearing a jade mosaic death mask. Five sacrificed attendants were placed at the crypt's entrance.

Palenque's last dated monuments fall around 799. Within a generation the city collapsed and the jungle closed over the temple, its hidden burial chamber left undisturbed beneath the roots.