Researchers in Mexico say they have decoded the hieroglyphic name on the Palenque tomb of ancient Mayan King Pakal, revealing it to read "The House of the Nine Sharpened Spears", more than sixty years after the crypt was discovered.
Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier discovered the burial crypt in 1948 and new research into the jaguar, a sacred animal for the Maya civilization, led Guillermo Bernal, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), to make a link with other hieroglyphics of the same form.
"This is a name linked with war and an aspect which was not previously known . . .
