grodog
Hero
Some additional info/context from Harold Johnson:
Allan,
I found some of my paper research materials, though nothing dealing with actual mythology. Still, these finds might have some interest for your readers.
The first is a reference to "Lubaantun", regarding a dig in British Honduras in the year 1924. This was the name of the collectors edition of C1. The term Labaantun translates to "the place of fallen stones".
The second article, which I have included an excerpt from, was my inspiration for the tomb of the Vampire discovered in a hidden room in the lowest level of this tomb. How could I not include it in the adventure?
Hope your readers enjoy this:
Written by Dr. Alberto Ruz, Director of Research at Palenque, in Yucatan, Mexico
I began excavating and on the next day – May 20, 1949 – there appeared that stone which, in Mayan buildings, is always used to close up a vault. … A few days later I found a step, and then more and more steps. What had been found was an interior staircase descending into the pyramid and which for a reason which we then did not know, had been made impracticable by a filling of large stones and clay.
Four spells of work – each two-and-a-half months long – were needed before we were able to clear the filling from this mysterious staircase. After a flight of 45 steps, we reached a landing with a U-turn. There followed another flight, of 21 steps, leading to a corridor, whose level is more or less the same as that on which the pyramid was built – i.e., some 22 meters under the temple flooring. In the vaulting of the landing two narrow galleries open out and allow air and a little light to enter from a near-by courtyard. …
And on July 13, 1952, after demolishing a solid obstruction some metres thick, made of stone and lime – this was very hard and the wet lime burnt the hands of the workmen – there appeared on one side of the corridor a triangular slab, 2 meters high, set vertically to block an entrance. At the foot of this slab, in a rudimentary stone cist, there lay, mixed together, the largely-destroyed skeletons of six young persons, of whom one at least was a female.
At noon on the 15th day of the same month we opened the entrance, displacing the stone enough for a man to pass through sideways. It was a moment of indescribable emotion for me when I slipped behind the stone and found myself in an enormous crypt which seemed to have been cut out of the rock – or rather, out of the ice, thanks to the curtain of stalactites and the calcite veiling deposited on the walls by the infiltration of rainwater during the centuries. This increased the marvelous quality of the spectacle and gave it a fairy-tale aspect. Great figures of priests modeled in stucco a little larger than life-sized formed an impressive procession round the walls. The high vaulting was reinforced by great stone transoms, of dark color with yellowish veins, giving an impression of polished wood.
Almost the whole crypt was occupied by a colossal monument, which we then supposed to be a ceremonial altar, composed of a stone of more than 8 square meters, resting on an enormous monolith of 6 cubic meters, supported in its turn by six great blocks of chiseled stone. All these elements carried beautiful reliefs.
Finest of all for its unsurpassable execution and perfect state of preservation was the great stone covering the whole and bearing on its four sides some hieroglyphic inscriptions with thirteen abbreviated dates corresponding to the beginning of the seventh century A.D., while its upper face shows a symbolic scene surrounded by astronomical signs. …
I then had the base bored horizontally at two of the corners; and it was not long before one of the drills reached a hollow space. I introduced a wire through the narrow aperture and, on withdrawing it, I saw that some particles of red paint adhering to it. … The particles of cinnabar adhering to the wire inserted into the center of the enormous stone block was unquestionable evidence of burial; and our supposed ceremonial altar must therefore be an extraordinary sepulcher. …
This was not the first time during my career as an archaeologist that a tomb had been discovered, but no occasion has been so impressive as this. In the vermillion-colored walls and base of the cavity which served as a coffin, the sight of the human remains – complete, although the bones were damaged – covered with jade jewels for the most part, was most impressive. It was possible to judge the form of the body which had been laid in this “tailored” sarcophagus; and the jewels added a certain amount of life, both from the sparkle of the jade and because they were so well “placed” and because their form suggested the volume and contour of the flesh which originally covered the skeleton. It was easy also to imagine the high rank of the personage who could aspire to a mausoleum of such impressive richness.
We were struck by his stature, greater than that of the average Mayan of today; and by the fact that his teeth were not filed or provided with incrustations of pyrites or jade, since that practice (like that of artificially deforming the cranium) was usual in individuals of the higher social ranks. The state of destruction of the skull did not allow us to establish precisely whether or not it had been deformed. In the end, we decided that the personage might have been of non-Mayan origin, though it is clear that he ended in being one of the kings of Palenque. …
As shown in some reliefs, he was wearing a diadem made from tiny discs of jade and his hair was divided into separate strands by means of small jade tubes of appropriate shape; and we discovered a small jade plate of extraordinary quality cut in the shape of the head of Zotz, the vampire god of the underworld …
Your faithful researcher,
Harold
