The victorious warriors of Tikal swarmed up the front of the acropolis at Waka’ and into the hastily abandoned palace gallery. Inside, they looted precious bundles of cloth and jewels, and smashed brightly painted stucco figures of gods, queens, and kings, throwing the shattered fragments down to companions. Some cut away the exquisite carved steps at the base of the stairway leading up to the palace and flung the blocks onto the plaza. Such desecration was aimed at killing the living building and driving out the spirit of rulership that had brought it into being half a century earlier.
Within the gallery, the rampaging warriors found a royal tomb that perhaps held King K’inich Bahlam
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