Pakal died on 9.12.11.5.18 (August 683), at the age of 80, having ruled Palenque for 68 years and 33 days. After his death, Pakal was
deified as one of the patron gods of Palenque. He was survived at least by his two sons Kan Bahlam and Kʼan Joy Chitam—each of whom subsequently also became Palenque's
kʼuhul ajaw in his own right—and two grandsons,
Ahkal Moʼ Nahb (successor of
Kʼinich Kʼan Joy Chitam II as
kʼuhul ajaw of Palenque) and
Janaab Ajaw, a royal official inaugurated under the reign of Kʼinich Kʼan Joy Chitam II. Although Janaab Pakal died at the end of the seventh century, their peers seem to have believed that he lived on after his celestial apotheosis. After triumphing over the forces of the underworld, now he are seen installed at an otherworldly place, identified perhaps with the celestial paradise of the solar gods (. Decades after his tomb had been sealed, Pakal was still taking artistic decisions, for the sculptor who carved the Tablet of the 96 Glyphs (K6-K7) claims to have conceived the work just as it had been commissioned by the revered ancestor (
ukob’ow ukabjiiy Hoˀ Winikhaab Ajaw), K'ihnich Janaab’ Pakal. The ethereal graphemes now grasp his royal corporeity as a visible medium-body, while the hieroglyphic nominal clauses of Pakal and his descendants turn into substitute bodies. On the Temple XXI panel, the folds of Pakal’s skin and the hardened lines of his face represent an aged ruler, who in the year AD 736, half a century after his biological death, still hands ritual instruments over to his grandson. In these ancient Maya bodyscapes, Pakal appears to transits freely through space-time. His souls merges with those of the mythical ruler Ch'a , who supposedly ruled around 967 BC, and equally joins with Ukokan Chan, a legendary lord who in 251 BC initiated the veneration of Palenque’s ancestral gods (). . Pakal was buried in a colossal sarcophagus within the largest of Palenque's
stepped pyramid structures, the building called
Bʼolon Yej Teʼ Naah "House of the Nine Sharpened Spears" in Classic Maya and now known as the
Temple of the Inscriptions. Though Palenque had been examined by archaeologists before, the secret to opening his tomb—closed off by a stone slab with stone plugs in the holes, which had until then escaped the attention of archaeologists—was discovered by Mexican archaeologist
Alberto Ruz Lhuillier in 1948. It took four years to clear the rubble from the stairway leading down to Pakal's tomb, but it was finally uncovered in 1952. His skeletal remains were still lying in his sarcophagus, wearing a jade mask and bead necklaces, surrounded by sculptures and stucco reliefs depicting the ruler's transition to divinity and figures from
Maya mythology. Traces of pigment show that these were once colorfully painted (), common of much Maya sculpture at the time. . Initially, there was intense debate over whether the bones in the tomb truly belonged to Pakal. The skeleton's relatively minor degree of dental wear suggested that its owner was approximately 40 years younger than the age recorded for Pakal in the inscriptional texts (). This discrepancy led some, including the tomb's discoverer, Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, to argue that the texts must have referred to two individuals with the same name or employed a non-standard method of recording time.
Epigraphers, on the other hand, insisted that allowing for such possibilities would go against everything else that is known about the
Maya calendar and
Maya written history, and asserted that the texts clearly state that it is indeed Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal entombed within, and that he did in fact die at the advanced age of 80, after reigning for 68 years. More recent morphometric analysis of the rest of the skeleton demonstrates that the entombed individual could not have lived less than fifty years and most likely died in their eighth or ninth decade of life, consistent with the textual evidence rather than the younger age estimates of early researchers (). The disparity between the dental wear and the skeletal morphology is likely due to Pakal's aristocratic status, which would have allowed him access to a softer, less abrasive diet than the average Maya person so that his teeth naturally acquired less wear . Unusually large accumulations of
dental calculus on his teeth are also consistent with such an interpretation. Further archaeological explorations have continued to shed light on Pakal's burial site. In 2016 an underground water tunnel was discovered under the Temple of Inscriptions; a stucco mask depicting an elderly Pakal was subsequently found in August 2018. == Pakal's sarcophagus ==