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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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