Front face of a stela: A 1,300-year-old carving of a powerful Maya ‘Lady Supreme Warlord’ that weighs over 2 tons

This massive limestone carving depicts a Maya queen known as Lady K’abel (meaning Water Lily Hand) and Na Kan Ajaw (meaning Divine Woman of the Snake Polity). The stela, or carved stone slab, was likely erected in A.D. 692 to mark the end of a k’atun, a 20-year period in the Maya calendar.

The stela is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). It has been reconstructed from more than 40 fragments of carved limestone but is only the front part of the original freestanding monument. The enormous carving is roughly 9 feet (2.74 meters) tall and weighs about 2,500 pounds (1,134 kilograms). It was found in a provincial Maya town called El Perú-Waka’ in the Petén region of northern Guatemala.