Tomb of Mayan Queen Found

Greetings, ATS!

While reading Discovery news, I found this incredibly interesting article:

Archaeologists in Guatemala say they have discovered the 7th-century tomb of Lady K'abel, one of the greatest queens of classic Maya civilization.

Unearthed during excavations of the royal Maya city of El Perú-Waka' in northwestern Petén, Guatemala, the grave contained the skeletal remains of a mature individual buried with rich offerings such as dozens of ceramic vessels, numerous carved jade, shell artifacts and a small, carved alabaster jar.

According to the archaeologists, the white vessel strongly suggest the tomb belonged to the warrior Queen Lady K'abel.

Carved as a conch shell, with a head and arm of an aged woman emerging from the opening, the alabaster jar portrayed a woman, mature with a lined face and a strand of hair in front of her ear, while on the other side it featured a brief glyphic text consisting of four hieroglyphs.

Lady K'abel ruled with her husband, and even had the title of "Supreme Warrior," which I find fascinating. Apparently she held some sort of position of power with regards to the military. Would this indicate that women in general held a place in the fighting forces, or was Lady K'abel a one of a kind?

That's awesome, and it would be a far fetched story to fling to say women never have fought alongside men in combat. It may not of been a widely common idea, but there are places in which it took root.

regardless this is a very interesting find, wonder what else is next to find.

Great thread! Thanks

According to this article (from 2005), her tomb was excavated in 2004....???...

The article also states that although she was titled as a warlord, Mayan women did not physically fight in battles.

lostworlds.org...

One of the most intriguing people who inhabited Waka’ was a woman of uncommon power and status. The discovery and excavation of her tomb in 2004 by team member Jose Ambrosio Diaz drew a lot of attention to the site. “We knew that we were dealing with a royal tomb right away because you could see greenstone everywhere,” says David Lee, a PhD candidate at SMU who is investigating the Waka’ palace complex. Greenstone is archaeologists’ term for the sacred jade the ancient Maya used to signify royalty. The team found hundreds of artifacts in the tomb, which dates to sometime between 650 and 750 AD.

There were several indicators that this woman was important and powerful. Her tomb lay underneath a building on the main courtyard of the city’s main palace. Her stone bed was surrounded by 23 offering vessels and hundreds of jade pieces, beads, and shell artifacts. Among the rubble, the researchers discovered a four- by two-inch jewel called a huunal that was worn only by kings and queens of the highest status. Typically a huunal was affixed to a wooden helmet called a ko’haw that was covered in jade plaques. Carved depictions suggest that only powerful war leaders wore these helmets. On the floor of the queen’s tomb near her head, researchers found 44 square and rectangular jade plaques they believe were glued onto the wooden part of the ko’haw. The presence of this helmet in her torab has led the researchers to the conclusion that this queen held a position of power not typically afforded women of the time. “She may have been more powerful than her husband, who was actually the king of E1 Peril,” Lee concludes.

Although the presence of the helmet identifies her as a warlord, archaeologists have found no evidence of Maya women physically fighting in battles. What they have discovered are images of women as guardians of the tools of war. “The curation of the war helmet is one of the roles of royal women,” says the excavation’s bone expert, Jennifer Piehl. She explains that Maya iconography describes how royal women safeguarded these helmets and then presented them to their kings when they prepared for war. David Freidel says that to the Maya, war was more than just a physical act; it was also an encounter between supernaturally charged beings. Women had an active role in battle by conjuring up war gods and instilling sacred magical power in battle gear.

Once her status as a queen was confirmed, the question became, which queen was she? A good candidate is a woman named Lady K’abel who lived during the Late Classic period and was the daughter of the King Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ak’ of Calakmul.

A detailed portrait of Lady K’abel comes from a stela dated to 692 AD that was looted from Waka’ in the late 1960s. According to Maya expert and project epigrapher Stanley Guenter, inscriptions on the front face of the stela–curated by the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio–clearly identify the woman as Ix Kaloomte’ (lady warlord) or Lady K’abel, princess of Calakmul. “Mosaic mask pectorals formed of greenstone, shell teeth and eye whites, and obsidian pupils found in the interment are consistent with the image of Lady K’abel on Stela 34,” Lee and Piehl posit in a recent paper. “These attributes clearly demonstrate the royal status of the woman and an identification with Lady K’abel.” Radiocarbon dating of the queen’s remains will confirm whether the woman in the tomb lived during the same time period as Lady K’abel.

reply to post by isyeye


Just in time for the return of their gods in december
Here's the looted portrait of our new friend and her boo.

reply to post by isyeye


Maybe they didn't physically join in with the fighting, but perhaps she was a tactical genius and was recognized as such? So that her role was more of a planning instead of fighting? Just a thought.

reply to post by smyleegrl


I believe that every myth and legend has some sort of basis in reality. I remember reading about how the Amazons were believed to be a myth until archaeologists found the graves of six foot tall women buried in northern Turkey dressed in full battle rattle. I'd have to dig to find the article but I don't think it far-fetched at all to say that she just might have been a badass. Theres a few armies in the world that still use women in their sniper corps because women are a bit more cold-hearted than men when it comes to killing.

reply to post by smyleegrl

Women had an active role in battle by conjuring up war gods and instilling sacred magical power in battle gear.

I believe that the role that women warriors played in battle was more of a spiritual one by summoning the powers of their gods and the use of their "magical weapons" such as the helmet described in my above post.

“The curation of the war helmet is one of the roles of royal women,”

Originally posted by Cancerwarrior
reply to post by smyleegrl

 

I believe that every myth and legend has some sort of basis in reality. I remember reading about how the Amazons were believed to be a myth until archaeologists found the graves of six foot tall women buried in northern Turkey dressed in full battle rattle. I'd have to dig to find the article but I don't think it far-fetched at all to say that she just might have been a badass. Theres a few armies in the world that still use women in their sniper corps because women are a bit more cold-hearted than men when it comes to killing.

Not Northern Turkey but evidence of warrior women comes from kurgans in southern Ukraine and Russia.About 20% of Scythian orSarmatian "warrior graves" on the steppes of Ukraine and Russia contained women dressed for battle similar to how men dress, a phenomenon that probably inspired the Greek tales about the Amazons.

Link to a general study of warrior women found in archaeology

reply to post by Hanslune


According to Herodotus, their descendants became the Sauromations.

The Amazons were willing to settle down with the men, but not as Scythian women. They wanted to keep up their old ways: "we haven't learnt women's work. We shoot arrows, wield javelins, ride horses - things which your women never have anything to do with." So the newly formed couples crossed the River Tanais and travelled east for three days and then north for another three, before settling down to begin the Sauromatian nation whose womenfolk always hung onto the custom of hunting on horseback and going to war. Herodotus ends: "one of their marriage customs is that no young woman may marry until she has killed a male enemy. Inability to fulfil this condition means that some of them do not marry until they are old."

Herodotus is not the only classical writer to point to the Sauromatian women as the direct descendants of the Amazons. In the late fifth century BC Pseudo-Hippocrates claimed that, "Amazon women dislocate the joints of their male children at birth…some at knees, some at hips ... to make them lame … so that the male race might not conspire against the female race." He repeats some of Herodotus's details and embellishes:

And in Europe there is a Scythian race, dwelling round Lake Maeotis, which differs from the other races. Their name is Sauromatae. Their women, so long as they are virgins, ride, shoot, throw the javelin while mounted, and fight with their enemies. They do not lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their enemies, and they do not marry before they have performed the traditional sacred rites. A woman who takes to herself a husband no longer rides, unless she is compelled to do so by a general expedition. They have no right breast; for while they are yet babies their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument constructed for this very purpose and apply it to the right breast and cauterise it, so that its growth is arrested, and all its strength and bulk are diverted to the right shoulder and right arm.

www.stoa.org...

Pretty good link about them.

Great read! Thanks man. Love hearing about stories about these types of people.