In the Tomb of the Zapotec Kings
If we ever found the tomb, what might be there? I doubt that there is any gold. The Spanish were diligent looters. They felt that they had taken great risks against long odds and won, and that it was only fair that they reap their winnings, and did so with small notice, lest the King and the Church get their hands in. Almost all tombs were looted in the early colonial period and scant record kept.
What remains, though, would be a treasure chamber for archæologists, a royal mortuary sealed soon after the fact, when it was still revered and respected by those who lived around it. If the chambers were cool and moist as Burgoa’s account says they were, this would not be good for preservation, but who knows what accidental survivals might remain in an untouched tomb. The written record of the Indian era depends so much on what a few friars wrote of what the Indians told them, and the archæological record is limited to those things hard enough to survive, but here there could be fabric or feathered capes and intact bones and, since the Zapotec had a writing system, perhaps documents written on paper or linen, perhaps wooden objects, and certainly a profusion of pottery still in place. There would have been the action of mold and bacteria and probably insects, but likely no animals to disturb these funerary arrays. Everything that survives will be in perfect context. A time capsule of a world five hundred years removed. I am sometimes skeptical of the archæologists’ claim that they own the past, but I would give them this one.
Unlike their earlier, more robust predecessors, today’s archæologists are loath to hint that there might be any gold, lest the site be destroyed by looters in their absence. I don’t think that will be a problem here, both because there still seems a respect for the site among the Indians, as well as having a thick, heavy 18th-Century church sitting on top of its likely entrance. Some years back, excavations at the Zapotec site at Zaachila ended abruptly when angry Indians chased off the archæologists: for some reason, stories like that appeal to me.
And the speculation that the entry to the royal tomb was covered over by the church is not a new idea in Mitla. Like the underground passageway and the great opening that was filled when the church was built, it is a story that people there have grown up with and give as much credence as they do any old story about things that don’t affect them or treasures that are hidden out of reach.
In researching something like this, you can’t help but notice things that haven’t been tried, and think how you would do it. But as for myself, I am just as happy that it hasn’t been found, not just yet. It’s not going anywhere and our ability to extract information from sites gets better all the time, so there’s no hurry. And I enjoy imagining the Zapotec kings and priests and the great lords who died in battle all sitting together holding court in their dark domain, unconcerned if we ever find them.
[The seven posts of this series are collected in a more convenient form as a single document, which can be accessed by clicking on "the Tomb of the Zapotec Kings at Mitla" in the upper righthand corner of this page.]
Showing posts with label Tomb of the Zapotec Kings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tomb of the Zapotec Kings. Show all posts
Monday, August 22, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Mitla, 6.
Are there other entrances?
If there is an 18th-Century church sitting on top of the entrance to the Tomb of the Zapotec Kings, effective closing it to us, is there another entrance?
What of that first story I heard, that there was an underground passageway from Monte Alban to Mitla? No one knows where it is, of course, but ought that discourage us? Unfortunately, there seems to be a pervasive tradition of underground passageways connecting sacred Indian sites. In the Yucatán I was told the same thing about their sacred sites and also that, unfortunately, no such passageway had ever been found. Of course that was a few years ago, and since then extensive natural underground passageways have been found in the limestone bedrock of the Yucatán. It is true that they do not actually connect any sacred sites, but they are down there and are far from fully explored.
In the libraries at the Welte and the Grafica, trudging through the long march of later primary and secondary sources -- which were interesting without being that helpful -- I discovered Mexico South, a book about the Isthmus of Tehuantepec by the artist Miguel Covarrubias, which delighted me because I remembered him from my childhood as the illustrator whose distinctive work -- unlike anything I had ever seen before -- appeared in some of the high-tone magazines my father had around the house. His book was a momento of that more gracious time when anthropology was not the exclusive reserve of the professoriat, but something that any well-educated and motivated person could respectably try his hand at. One of many stories that Corvarrubias told was that of the Mixtec hero Condoy, cornered not far from here by his enemies, who fled into a cave and escaped through its vast tunnels to a distant place. The Indians thought these tunnels went somewhere, though we have no clear evidence that they ever actually followed them very far. And besides, for the Indians such things were not about geology but about something much more important: about their relationship to the domain of the gods from which their ancient ancestors had emerged and to which they return them in death.
There is not far away a site whose Indian name, Zetobaa means “the other sepulcre”, an entrance to the Underworld where were buried important persons not imminent enough to be interred at Mitla with the kings, priests and heroes who died in battle. While this entrance is alledgedly connected to the Underworld, it was not suggested that it also went to Mitla. There was another ancient site, visiteded by a friar in 1630, who described a large entrance into a mountain with painted walls, wide enough for two horsemen to enter abreast, which the Indians told him communicated by underground passageway to Mitla. I find no reference to any archæological work having been done there, and it is in an area where I was told that marijuana is grown and visitors are unwelcome.
In the limestone mountains of the Zapotec Sierra there are caves everywhere. Most are undoubtedly shallow and go nowhere; but most are also unexplored. That we know of, at least. But the main north-south highway goes right up the Valley and I have no doubt that narcotraficantes, who cultivate cannabis in the rugged hills, have investigated some of these caves, and may well feel proprietary about them.
But if the Tomb of the Zapotec Kings is there, underneath the thick stone foundations of the Church of San Pablo, just tantalizingly beyond our reach, what would we find if we ever reached it?
(the story will conclude . . .)
If there is an 18th-Century church sitting on top of the entrance to the Tomb of the Zapotec Kings, effective closing it to us, is there another entrance?
What of that first story I heard, that there was an underground passageway from Monte Alban to Mitla? No one knows where it is, of course, but ought that discourage us? Unfortunately, there seems to be a pervasive tradition of underground passageways connecting sacred Indian sites. In the Yucatán I was told the same thing about their sacred sites and also that, unfortunately, no such passageway had ever been found. Of course that was a few years ago, and since then extensive natural underground passageways have been found in the limestone bedrock of the Yucatán. It is true that they do not actually connect any sacred sites, but they are down there and are far from fully explored.
In the libraries at the Welte and the Grafica, trudging through the long march of later primary and secondary sources -- which were interesting without being that helpful -- I discovered Mexico South, a book about the Isthmus of Tehuantepec by the artist Miguel Covarrubias, which delighted me because I remembered him from my childhood as the illustrator whose distinctive work -- unlike anything I had ever seen before -- appeared in some of the high-tone magazines my father had around the house. His book was a momento of that more gracious time when anthropology was not the exclusive reserve of the professoriat, but something that any well-educated and motivated person could respectably try his hand at. One of many stories that Corvarrubias told was that of the Mixtec hero Condoy, cornered not far from here by his enemies, who fled into a cave and escaped through its vast tunnels to a distant place. The Indians thought these tunnels went somewhere, though we have no clear evidence that they ever actually followed them very far. And besides, for the Indians such things were not about geology but about something much more important: about their relationship to the domain of the gods from which their ancient ancestors had emerged and to which they return them in death.
There is not far away a site whose Indian name, Zetobaa means “the other sepulcre”, an entrance to the Underworld where were buried important persons not imminent enough to be interred at Mitla with the kings, priests and heroes who died in battle. While this entrance is alledgedly connected to the Underworld, it was not suggested that it also went to Mitla. There was another ancient site, visiteded by a friar in 1630, who described a large entrance into a mountain with painted walls, wide enough for two horsemen to enter abreast, which the Indians told him communicated by underground passageway to Mitla. I find no reference to any archæological work having been done there, and it is in an area where I was told that marijuana is grown and visitors are unwelcome.
In the limestone mountains of the Zapotec Sierra there are caves everywhere. Most are undoubtedly shallow and go nowhere; but most are also unexplored. That we know of, at least. But the main north-south highway goes right up the Valley and I have no doubt that narcotraficantes, who cultivate cannabis in the rugged hills, have investigated some of these caves, and may well feel proprietary about them.
But if the Tomb of the Zapotec Kings is there, underneath the thick stone foundations of the Church of San Pablo, just tantalizingly beyond our reach, what would we find if we ever reached it?
(the story will conclude . . .)
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