Chanal Balam was the only known king of

Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a populat ...

city-state

Tamarindito Tamarindito is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization located along an escarpment in the Petén department of Guatemala. The city was the capital of the Petexbatún region of the southwestern Petén during the Early Classic period but ...

Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by H ...

. The

sculptures Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

at Tamarindito indicate a long dynastic history with more than 25 rulers, although only a few can be named, and one of them is Chanal Balam. He ruled c.760–761. He was enthroned in 760 and on 26 January 761 Tamarindito defeated the city of

Dos Pilas Dos Pilas is a Pre-Columbian site of the Maya civilization located in what is now the department of Petén, Guatemala. It dates to the Late Classic Period, and was founded by an offshoot of the dynasty of the great city of Tikal in AD 62 ...

, and Chanal Balam either captured K'awiil Chan K'inich, the last king of Dos Pilas, or sent him into exile.Valdés & Fahsen 2005, pp.147, 160. O'Mansky & Dunning 2005, p.94. Schele & Mathews 1999, p.178. Valdés et al 1995, p. 421. This rebellion of Tamarindito and its allies against Dos Pilas left the defeated city all but abandoned and destabilised the entire Petexbatún region. The salvage excavation of a looters' tunnel in Structure 44, a poorly constructed 8th-century temple, revealed that the loose rubble infill of the temple had collapsed the tunnel before it reached a royal

tomb A tomb ( grc-gre, τύμβος ''tumbos'') is a :wikt:repository, repository for the remains of the dead. It is generally any structurally enclosed interment space or burial chamber, of varying sizes. Placing a corpse into a tomb can be ...

, which was left intact. The tomb was excavated by Juan Antonio Valdés and was discovered to be that of Chanal Balam. The funerary

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples ...

containing the tomb possesses inscriptions celebrating Chanal Balam's great victory over his former overlord.

References

{{reflist Maya rulers