Tiny jar identifies mighty Maya queen [Guatemala]
Alan Boyle – NBC News – Tuesday, 09 October 2012 (originally published 03 Oct)
A carved alabaster jar found in the burial chamber of a high-ranking Maya woman led archaeologists to conclude the tomb was that of Lady K’abel, who was one of the great queens of the Classic Maya civilization. These pictures show the two sides of the jar. On the left, the head of a woman rises from the conch-shell carving. On the right, Maya glyphs identify the jar’s owner. Image: El Peru-Waka Regional Archaeological Project
Glyphs carved into a tiny alabaster jar have led archaeologists to conclude that the tomb in Guatemala where the jar was found belonged to one of the greatest queens of the Classic Maya civilization, known as Lady K’abel.
“She was not only a queen, but a supreme warlord, and that made her the most powerful person in the kingdom during her lifetime,” David Freidel, an archaeologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a report released today. That description would put Lady K’abel in the same class as other ruling women of the ancient world, ranging from the biblical Queen of Sheba to Egypt’s Hatshepsut and Cleopatra.
Like Cleopatra, Lady K’abel held her own in the midst of powerful men — including her husband, K’inich Bahlam II, with whom she ruled the Wak kingdom for at least 20 years in the late 7th century (672 to 692). Because K’abel held the additional title of military governor, she was considered more powerful than the king. This wasn’t strictly a love match: K’abel was a princess from the Kan dynasty, the imperial family who ruled from the great city of Calakmul. Her marriage was in line with a political alliance between the king in Waka and the emperor in Calakmul — against the region’s other superpower, the city-state of Tikal . . .
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