Maya queen's tomb sheds light on ancient world

• Archaeologists have discovered the tomb of the Maya queen, Lady K'abel
• An alabaster 'white soul flower' jar in the tomb bears the queen's name
• The find underlines the powerful role that women played in the Maya world

Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth and other powerful royal women played pivotal roles in history. Now they have some New World company among the ancient Maya, Lady K'abel, the "Holy Snake Lady" of a vanished empire.

Archaeologists reported the discovery last week of the royal tomb of Lady K'abel, the queen of the abandoned Maya city called El Perú-Waka', located in northern Guatemala. A warrior queen, she played a pivotal role in the supreme clash between cities of the ancient Maya world, which stretched across Central America until the famed collapse of its rulers before 900 A.D.

Until now, scholars had known only of Lady K'abel as the "Kaloomte,' " a Maya high king or queen (as in this case), her name inscribed on standing stones or stelae, most famously one now displayed at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

"She was a powerful person of consequence," says archaeologist Olivia Farr-Navarro, with the College of Wooster (Ohio), a leader on the team that excavated the royal burial site. The burial site emerged from June digging into a stairway platform located at the foot of the main Maya pyramid temple in the ruins of El Perú-Waka', capital of the Centipede Kingdom that she ruled at least from 672 to 692 A.D., the height of its power.

The city was only a subject state, however, a vassal to the even-more powerful city of Calakmul, the Snake Kingdom city to the northeast. Calakmul and Tikal, the other chief kingdom of the Maya world, vied for power for centuries, with El Perú-Waka' holding up the Western flank of the Snake Kingdom's frontiers. Lady K'abel was the daughter of the ruler of Calakmul, married off to serve as governor of El Perú-Waka' on her father's behalf. Tikal regained its strength in the fight with Calakmul in 695 A.D., only a few years after Lady K'abel's death and her city lost its battle with Tikal around 734 A.D.

"As a scholar, I find it overwhelming and incredible to connect this historical figure to what is very likely her tomb," Farr-Navarro says. "It was quite a surprise."

Investigation of the platform had started before 2006, when she was a student of archaeologist David Freidel of Washington University in St. Louis, who is co-director of the site with Guatemala's Juan Carlos Pérez. The platform had puzzled the scholars because it showed signs of being a center of ritualistic activity and sacrifices, long into the post-collapse era of the Maya when the kings no longer ruled. (More than 6 million Maya people live in Central America today, descendants of those who mostly shed their royal rulers long ago.) "It was the central focus point of the plaza in the front of the largest temple at the site," Farr-Navarro says.

So, they started digging in and around the platform. And at the foot of the staircase covered by the platform they found the entombed bones of a woman, surrounded by jade, fine pottery and other signs of royalty. Most remarkable was a small alabaster jar carved to resemble a conch with a woman's face emerging from the shell as a stopper. The hieroglyphs for Lady K'abel's name were on the bottom.

Most likely, the vessel was the "white soul flower" jar of Lady K'abel, Farr-Navarro says. The jar painted with cinnabar essentially contained the soul of Lady K'abel in ancient Maya mythology. "Items can often be moved around as a sign of veneration in burials, but her white soul flour jar was an inalienable item that couldn't be divorced from her person."

"I'm completely convinced this was her tomb," says University of Miami (Fla.) archaeologist Traci Ardren, author of Ancient Maya Women, who was not part of the excavation. "The alabaster jar is really strong evidence."

It's important to note that other scholars have thought they found the burial site of Lady K'abel before, most notably in 2004, when a woman was found under a courtyard at the same site, buried with a jade-encrusted warrior's helmet. The alabaster soul jar inscribed with Lady K'abel's name found with this latest burial, though, seems like a more convincing answer.

The find underlines the powerful role that women played in the Maya world, with at least eight women attaining the Kaloomte' title held by Lady K'abel, Ardren says. Queens ruled at various times across the Maya world, with standardized symbols for their titles, she says, making them uncommon but not rare. Veneration of such a powerful woman's tomb centuries after death would not be so unusual either.

"She was kind of married off for the greater good of an alliance; she left everyone and everything she had known to travel to this city at a time of warfare," Ardren adds.

A plate found on the left arm of Lady K'abel's skeleton resembles a shield, a bit of military iconography befitting a warrior queen, Farr-Navarro says. Although it was unlikely that Lady K'abel fought in the rain forest fights that marked her reign, the archaeologist adds: "She certainly was not a shrinking violet."