North Platform

Wide stone steps lead up roughly ten meters above the Main Plaza, to the part of Monte Albán where the rulers' quarters and enclosed places of worship stood. Beyond the climb lie the Sunken Patio and another courtyard surrounded by four temples. Of the structures themselves, the staircase and stone foundations remain: the adobe walls and roofs disappeared long ago.

On the upper landing of the southern staircase of Building L, an older woman passes a small object to a young man marked by a jaguar sign. Zapotec carvers carved this scene on a large stone slab around the eighth century. Three more women stand nearby. There are five figures in all—four female and one male.

Their real names can no longer be pronounced. A calendar sign and a personal name are carved beside each person, but Zapotec writing has been only partially deciphered. Archaeologists established the participants' roles from the action itself: the older woman occupies the position of ruler, the man is seeking the right to inherit her office, and the other women, probably relatives, confirm his descent.

This is a cautious reconstruction, not a document read word for word. The object being passed has not yet been identified with confidence. Images from this period, however, show that noble Zapotec spouses ruled jointly, and that after a man's death, a woman could remain the community's sole leader. On the slab of the North Platform, several women are represented either as rulers in their own right or as those without whose consent the office could not be passed to the next person.

The stakes were thoroughly material. A ruling family received tribute and directed the labor that maintained its court, temples, and ceremonies. It was not enough for the young successor to call himself an heir: he had to show from which family he had received this right. The older woman passed him the object, the relatives attested the kinship, and the carvers turned the ceremony into a public genealogy. As a result, the man was presented as a lawful successor, and the women as participants in the decision, not nameless figures beside him. The inscription does not say what happened to each of them later.

The North Platform was chosen for such a ceremony because it contained the rulers' residence and Monte Albán's main enclosed sanctuaries. The broad staircase led up roughly ten meters above the Main Plaza; beyond it lay the Sunken Patio and another courtyard surrounded by four temples. The slab was placed on the staircase of a south-facing temple: a person admitted to the top passed the image of the family that determined the successor.

The adobe walls and roof of this temple have disappeared. What remain are the stone staircase, the foundations of the buildings, and the slab on which one woman passes an office to a man in the presence of three other women.