16.3950°N, 90.2043°W.
Aguateca is a Late Classic Maya city in the Petexbatun region of the Peten lowlands, Guatemala, occupied principally between roughly 600 and 830 CE. The city sat on a high limestone escarpment overlooking the Rio Petexbatun, with a deep natural fissure dividing the elite epicenter from the surrounding settlement and providing a ready-made defensive line. Aguateca was a satellite capital of the Petexbatun kingdom whose primary capital, Dos Pilas, lay 12 kilometres to the northwest. The city met a sudden end around 810 CE: the elite residential compounds were burned with their contents intact in place, including grinding stones, ceramics, manuscripts, and personal ornaments. Excavations directed by Takeshi Inomata since the early 1990s recovered one of the most complete Classic Maya household inventories ever documented because the rapid abandonment preserved daily life as a single freeze-frame. The defensive walls along the central fissure still stand.
The carved stelae in the principal plaza name King Tan Te' K'inich.