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In the summer of 1995, looters from Guatemala circulated a 15-minute videotape on the international art market. It showed a limestone slab, about four feet by five feet, covered with Mayan hieroglyphics. Now known as the Cancuén Looted Panel, it was being offered for US$75,000. As a result of the adverse publicity arising from this brazen act, the panel was never sold abroad and remains in Guatemala to this day. It is now on display in a private museum in Coban. The great Mayanist Linda Schele was able to draw a quick sketch of the glyphs, which appears at the top of this page, courtesy of David Schele. It serves as an invaluable insight into Maya history, and it is unfortunate that Schele was not permitted to make the painstaking record that she and her fellow hieroglyphics experts would have preferred. back