Tomb of the Red Queen

The Tomb of the Red Queen is a burial chamber containing remains, perhaps of Lady Ix Tz'akbu Ajaw, located inside Temple XIII in the ruins of the ancient Maya city of Palenque, now the Palenque National Park, in the Chiapas state in southern Mexico. It has been dated to between 600 and 700 AD. The tomb was discovered in 1994 by the Mexican archeologist Fanny Lopez Jimenez after being commissioned to perform routine stabilization work on a set of temple stairs by the local Archaeologist Arnoldo Gonzalez Cruz. It takes its popular name from the fact that the remains of the noblewoman and the objects in the sarcophagus were covered with bright red cinnabar powder when the tomb was discovered. ()