Rescuing regal ruins: inspired by his archaeologist father, a passionate entrepreneur has restored a crumbling mansion in the Yucatan to its past glory.

• Author: Ortiz, Sergio

In the eyes of Jorge Ruz there is a glint of nostalgia tinged with a dash of resentment. He is in the main plaza of the vast complex of Maya ruins in Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, dwarfed by some of the most breathtaking buildings in Mesoamerica while standing only a few yards from his father's gravesite.

It's clear that visiting Palenque unleashes a flood of childhood memories in Ruz--back to the days when these superb remnants of an ancient people were engulfed by jungle, when he was the only child in a camp of tenacious archaeologists and workers who treated him like a pet, when these mosquito- and snake-infested ruins were his playground--and to the time when his father made one of the most significant finds pertaining to the Maya culture: the discovery of the burial chamber of a lord named Pakal (A.D.603-683), the unabashed self-promoter who ruled Palenque for most of his eighty years and built the majestic Temple of the Inscriptions as his tomb.

Pakal was a vain autocrat who wanted a long-lasting monument to himself. He succeeded far beyond any expectations. The Temple of the Inscriptions is a reflection of his huge ego--his masterpiece--and holds its own against any of antiquity's most glorious works of genius, like the Temple of the Star at Machu Picchu in Peru or Cambodia's Angkor Wat, both more contemporary in comparison.

The temple gets its name because it is dominated by three large panels inscribed with 620 hieroglyphs and dates, the latest corresponding to A.D. 692, lining the walls of its portico and central chamber. It is the focal point of the Palenque complex, which lies in the national archaeological reserve of the same name. The archaeological zone sprawls for about eighty square acres abutting the edge of the Lacandon Forest in Chiapas, more than an hour's drive from the city of Villahermosa, in the state of Tabasco.

For thirteen centuries this massive pyramid hid the fact that deep within it lay the bones of its builder. It grudgingly gave up that secret in the summer of 1952.

The temple rests atop a sixty-five-foot high stepped pyramid, its symmetry broken only by a splendid frontal stairway; its floor is made up of large stone slabs. After five years of work, a dashing, Parisian-born archaeologist named Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, Jorge's father, was mesmerized by a particular slab that differed from the others by a row of holes he suspected had been used to hoist the slab into its unlikely setting.

After raising it, Ruz Lhuillier hit upon a vaulted stairway leading into the pyramid's interior. The passageway had been intentionally choked with rubble, rocks, and dirt by the ancients. It took three years of backbreaking work in sauna-like conditions to clear the stairs, which switched directions half way down, and to finally reach a chamber lying at about the same level as the base of the pyramid. Debris also blocked that chamber. The skeletons of six young adults, probably sacrificial victims, lay at the foot of a triangular limestone slab forming a doorway.

With the help of Mexican archaeologists Guadalupe Pech Hernandez, Alberto Sanchez Lopez, Tomas Mendoza, Arturo Romano, and Cesar Saenz, Ruz Lhuillier drilled through the triangular doorway, aimed a flashlight through a peephole he had cut through the limestone and laid eyes on something unseen for more than a thousand years.

He later wrote:

"Out of the dim shadows emerged a vision from a fairy tale, a fantastic, ethereal sight from another world. It seemed [to be] a huge magic grotto carved out of ice, the walls sparkling and glistening like snow crystals. Delicate festoons of stalactites hung like the tassels from a curtain, and the stalagmites on the floor looked like the drippings from a great candle. The impression, in fact, was that of an abandoned chapel. Across the walls marched stucco figures in low relief. Then my eyes sought the floor. This was almost entirely filled with a great carved stone in perfect condition."

A sarcophagus was under that stone.

The funeral chamber stunned Ruz Lhuillier. There was jade everywhere: A mosaic jade death mask covered the skull, which was decked out with mother-of-pearl earrings; the corpse, adorned with jade necklaces and rings, held jade figures in each hand; another jade figurine was in its mouth; two jade idols and two stucco heads in perfect shape were on the floor.

Hieroglyphs indicated that the remains belonged...