·     A.k.a. House-E, the main “palace building” of Palenque.

·     EB.p136.pdfp141.#7: nuk n. cover, skin, pelt » nu-ku > nuk “cover, skin, pelt” (no references given).

·     K&L.p100 has a more modern reading, where nu-ku is considered an underspelling with an -l omitted: nu-ku è nuhkul.

·     The reasoning behind  nu-ku è nuhkul is given in  Lacadena&Wichmann-OtRotGSiMW.p151-152: nu-ku, nu[h]ku[l] ‘skin’ [PAL 96 Glyphs, Hellmuth Panel]. The new interpretation nu-ku, nuk ‘skin?’ of nu-ku formerly seen as a word meaning ‘great’ in the name SAK nu-ku NAH, referring to Palenque’s House E (a structure actually coated with a white paint) is due to Martin and Grube (2000: 163). Marc Zender (personal communication, April 2001) has suggested the improved transliteration nu[h]ku[l], based on the evidence of Tzeltalan forms such as nuhkul ‘cuero’ (Slocum and Gerdel 1965: 167) and Tzotzil nukul ‘pelt, skin (of animal)’ (Laughlin 1975). To this might be added Q’anjob’al nuqul ‘corteza de ciprés’ (Diego Antonio et al. 1996), which secures a reconstruction at the proto-Western Mayan level and thus renders the appearance in a Ch’olan context of nukul ‘hide’ more expected. On the Hellmuth Panel the item enters into the sentence na[h]waj unu[h]ku[l] uko[’]haw “Ruler 4”, ‘the hide and helmet of Ruler 4 were adorned’, a perfect semantic context for the ‘hide’ interpretation—again an observation due to Zender. [Sim: another reason to change from “great” to “skin” is because of “adjectival order”. In most languages, the order of adjectives (size before shape, texture before colour, etc) is quite strict. In Maya, size cannot come after colour, so the nu-ku cannot be “great”, “big”. This was explained by Roland in a Washington reading group meeting (get date).]

·     “White Skin House” – because it was painted white instead of the usual red.

·     The Palenque Oval Tablet (showing Pakal the Great receiving his headdress from his mother) was located in the throne room of this building.

·     More information:

o Barbieri-MMaPWH

o Unk-SSSaSPotAM

o Tokovinine-WC.p295.c2.l+1: The walls of House E at Palenque, “white-skin house” (sak nuhkul naah) according to the inscription on the Tablet of 96 Glyphs, are decorated with flowers on the white background (Robertson 1985:fig. 33). The choice of white background may be related to the notion of fragrance as something sak.

o AT-E1168-lecture19.t0:26:19-29:44 (summary):

§ Many rooms within a long rectangular building.

§ Many doorways to the various rooms.

§ Doorways never had doors, but had (in the doorframe) “cordholders” – these cordholders had holes which rope could be passed through, to hold cloth, which hung in the doorway.

§ There was a lot of flexibility in these doorways, so that rooms could be shut off or opened out (like the meeting rooms of a conference centre), according to the needs of the moment.

§ There is an escape route – a doorway close to the throne room which leads to an underground passage with its own rooms, perhaps for storage and sleeping.

o In AT-E1168-lecture19.t0:26:19-29:44 (details): Tokovinine provides many details about this building (given the designation “House E” and sometimes described as a “palace”): And this is what the main throne-room looks like – it's actually white. It is white, it is painted with flowers, it was called "White Skin House" Sak Nukul Naah. So this is the image that Palenque court projected in terms of the source, the heart of kingship. You pass the threat of violence [just outside]. Now you meet the king, and you meet the king as the sacred centre of the kingdom. The king is not your usual person, the place where the king resides is not your usual place – it's a place of flowers, a place of fragrance; a place of power, [of] magical power. // So this is a reconstruction of all that beautiful painting. And the walls are decorated with signs for wind (smell) – once again, it's a place of air, a place of specialness. // Images of sky, and the king sits here on a throne, which literally places him in the middle of the sky – surrounded by images of stars and celestial bodies – a large inscription that details the foundation of the dynasty was once painted on the ceiling and the walls. It's mostly gone by now, but you can still see parts of it. // This building is fascinating in that it is an incredibly complicated internal space. Now, Mayas don't have doors: they use what we call cords – so basically frames with textiles, sort of like Japanese rooms and palaces. And so, in the walls you can still see the points of attachment – what we call "cord-holders", where you could attach those frames and those doors with a rope to the walls. This building has a tremendous amount of those. They are marked [on the drawing]. Some of these spaces can be closed from one side, some of these spaces can be closed from both sides – so potentially from the inside and the outside. So this is the main throne – you can see how the space is subdivided so that people can talk to each other – people can do things without being seen, and perhaps even without being heard. So this is the body politics of [the] Classic Maya court. It's all about control and flow of information: who can see whom, who can talk to whom. So this is the space which, being the principal court or throne room of Palenque, has the highest level of these internal subdivisions, allowing [you] to re-organize this space, depending on the nature of the event – separating the people who want to be together or who have to be together from people who do not want to be together or [who] must not be together at any point in time. // It also has an escape route. So there is a stairway, relatively close to the throne, that goes into the underground passage. And there is a bunch of really nice chambers which were used just for sleeping or storing things as well, especially during the hot dry-season days – it's kind of nice to have a second, underground floor with underbenches there and a couple of old thrones, so you can think of it perhaps as a kind of attic-like space where things just get eventually moved to and end up there forever. // But it was also an escape route, so you could get in, let your bodyguards [unclear] defend the narrow passageway, and then [you] escape through the other side of the palace. So once again, it's all about politics. You never build your throne room without an escape route.

·     AT-YT2021-lecture17.t0:21:50-23:55: The Palenque Palace is one of the most studied Maya palaces. It’s also relatively compact. It’s built out of really good limestone with really good mortar. One of the only Maya palaces you visit where you feel you could actually live there: it actually has latrines – a big thing for palaces – a lot of palaces didn’t have latrines. [... speculation about chamber-pots ...] 22:44 [So] this is the palace, and the term for the palace was “Five Platform House”. This term that shows the stepped platforms remains undeciphered. We know it’s an architectural term, and palaces were usually described as “houses”, but with a certain number of platforms. It can be “Three”, “Five”, [or] “Nine”. And very much like [in] present-day Mayan languages, the term “house” naah actually refers to something more than a single building. Like archaeologists... we usually call it [a] “patio-group” – so it’s a group of houses sharing a courtyard. In [the] present-day Chorti-speaking area, a house will also include the courtyard in front it – so it would actually be the “edge of the house”: ti’ naah for the “mouth of the house”. […] So the palace at Sufricaya (where I work) is called “Three Platform House”, basically there are three platforms around the courtyard. The palace at Palenque – initially at least – was called the “Five Platform House” – presumably the enclosed space with some central buildings in the middle.