5 Nuevos Pesos Lápida Tumba de Palenque - 1 oz Silver Bullion

This piece belongs to Mexico's Precolumbian Monuments series, which the Casa de Moneda launched in 1992 to coincide with the quincentenary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas — a politically charged moment that prompted Mexico to reframe its pre-Columbian heritage as a source of national identity rather than colonial aftermath. The series ran through the mid-1990s and drew on archaeological sites then receiving renewed academic attention.

The Palenque sarcophagus lid depicted here is the burial cover of K'inich Janaab' Pakal, the seventh-century Maya ruler whose tomb Alberto Ruz Lhuillier discovered beneath the Temple of the Inscriptions in 1952 — the first royal Maya burial found intact within a pyramid structure.