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564 N o t e s o f M i d d l e A m e r i c a n A r c h a e o l o g y a n d E t h n o l o g y Carnegie Institution of Washington Division of Historical Research No. 130 April 1957 A New Inscription from the Temple of the Foliated Cross at Palenque Heinrich Berlin I do not remember having seen any of these seven fragments during the field seasons from 1940 to 1942, when I was at Palenque, I imagine that they were found between 1943 and 1945 by the late Miguel Angel Fernandez. The whole tablet measures 173 by 33 by 5 cm. On the narrow edge at the right there is carved a frame (Fig. 130.1); the corresponding left edge is plain. Examination showed the front walls of the sanctuary to be 25.5 cm thick. The new tablet exactly fits the door jamb in height, and the excess width of 7.5 cm corresponds to the thickness of the human figure tablet on the façade. For checking the projection of the façade tablet, we possess at present only fragments of the left (northern) one, which is about 5 cm thick. This tablet further shows a frame decoration 15 cm wide on the left side and 6 cm wide on the right side. Assuming that there were two jamb tablets, then the frames on the narrow edges were carved in order to complete the frames of the human figure tablets. I conclude, therefore, that the tablet under discussion must originally have been set against the right (southern) jamb. It is strange that not one of the earlier writers on Palenque, who may have seen these jamb tablets in situ, mentions them. It is, of course, possible that they had been ripped off in pre-Spanish times. The writer regrets that he did not ascertain the exact location in the debris of the fragments published in Note 24. Incidentally, these were found in 1941 and not in 1942 as stated in that note. The situation at the Temple of the Sun is similar. The thickness of the sanctuary wall of the temple is In Note 120 of this series J.E.S. Thompson stated that a fragmentary text from the Temple of the Sun at Palenque, published by the writer in Note 24 of this same series, fitted another fragment seen by Thompson in the Palenque storeroom. This statement is incorrect. Although the fragment published by Thompson fits the hieroglyphic text published in Note 24, it does not fit the actual fragments of the stone. His reading, however, remains valid. When I was at Palenque in 1956 I had time to inspect the storeroom. Among the pieces there I noticed many carved stone fragments marked “Temple of the Foliated Cross.” On being assembled they turned out to form a complete tablet, a drawing of which is published here (Fig. 130.1) with the kind permission of Sr. Alberto Ruz. The tablet is composed of fourteen fragments (one small one is not shown separately on the drawing ). Six were extracted during the 1953 excavations by Cesar Saenz from a pit inside the sanctuary, where he also found fragments of the large human figure tablets which existed on the façade of the sanctuary on either side of the doorway, together with splinters of glass. Hence it is evident that we are dealing with one or more rather modern excavations later refilled with whatever material was at hand. Another fragment was found, also by Saenz, in 1954 on the lower temple terraces. Seven fragments, according to the catalogue, were in the storeroom before 1951. Three of them are catalogued as from the Temple of the Foliated Cross; no provenience is given for the remaining four. As A New Inscription from the Temple of the Foliated Cross at Palenque 565 32 cm, and the width of the fragment published in Note 24 is about 41 cm. Blom and LaFarge (1926– 1927:1, Fig. 158) have published another fragment, Blom’s Tablet No. 1. This is 39 cm wide and was found behind the Temple of the Sun. Here, then, we appear to have good evidence for the existence of inscribed tablets for both door jambs. It is curious that both of them show the 5 Eb 5 Kayab date. On the other hand, the sanctuary walls of the Temple of the Cross...

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