Temple of the Hieroglyphic Stairway

16.4833°N, 90.3000°W.

The Temple of the Hieroglyphic Stairway at Dos Pilas in the Petexbatun region of Guatemala carries one of the most important narrative inscriptions in the Maya world — a stairway whose risers record the eighth-century dynastic conflict between the Petexbatun lords and Tikal. The pyramid was built between approximately 700 and 760 CE under the ruler Itzamnaaj K'awiil, of cut limestone with the inscribed stairway facing the main plaza. The inscriptions, deciphered by Federico Fahsen and Stephen Houston, document the unusual founding of the Dos Pilas dynasty by a junior branch of the Tikal royal house and the violent fragmentation of that lineage during the eighth-century wars. Dos Pilas was excavated by Arthur Demarest and Vanderbilt University from 1989 onward as part of the Petexbatun Regional Archaeological Project.

The Temple of the Hieroglyphic Stairway is a building whose steps are the surviving record of a civil war fought a thousand three hundred years ago.