Temple of the Foliated Cross

17.4828°N, 92.0431°W.

The Temple of the Foliated Cross at Palenque, immediately east of the Temple of the Sun within the Cross Group, commissioned by K'inich Kan B'alam II between 690 and 692 CE. Original base 20 metres per side; original height 17 metres on five terraces with a temple at the summit. The summit temple preserves a hieroglyphic panel showing Kan B'alam standing before a foliated cross — a maize plant with leaves emerging from each arm and a personified maize-god head at its summit — paired with the cross-shaped world tree of the Temple of the Cross. The iconographic pair contrasts the celestial axis (the world tree of the Cross) with the agricultural axis (the maize plant of the Foliated Cross), the two visualisations together expressing the relationship between cosmology and cultivation in Maya thought.

The third pyramid of a three-pyramid commemoration sequence whose three carved panels constitute one of the most complete cosmological texts ever recovered from a Maya site — three temples, three gods, one king's accession, and three of the most-photographed inscribed stones in the Americas.