Pyramid K-5

17.1714°N, 91.2611°W.

Pyramid K-5 stands within the West Group of Piedras Negras on the Usumacinta River in the Petén department of Guatemala, opposite the Mexican border. The pyramid was built between approximately 600 and 800 CE during the Late Classic under the rulers Ruler 4 and Ruler 7, of cut limestone faced with stucco, rising about 18 metres in stepped tiers. Piedras Negras is significant in Maya studies for the breakthrough work of Tatiana Proskouriakoff in 1960, who used the inscriptions on its stelae and lintels to establish that Maya hieroglyphic texts recorded historical events — births, accessions, deaths of named rulers — rather than purely ritual or astronomical content, opening the entire Maya hieroglyphic record to historical reading. The site was first mapped by the University Museum of Pennsylvania expedition in 1931.

Pyramid K-5 is a pyramid in the city where the realization that Maya inscriptions told human history first arrived in print.