Pakal the Great’s tomb was discovered at the Maya city of Palenque, Chiapas, inside the Temple of the Inscriptions by Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier. Beginning work in the late 1940s, Ruz found a hidden stairway sealed beneath a stone slab and spent years clearing rubble from the passage. In 1952 the staircase finally opened into a vaulted burial chamber containing Pakal’s massive stone sarcophagus and rich offerings, including his famous jade mask, making it one of the most importa