It was the day of Anna’s birthday when she volunteered to go down. She was lowered slowly by her father and his helpers into the narrow gap between the stones:
‘I had two ropes tied around my body and a light strapped to my head and I was let down into the opening. As I descended into the dark, I became very nervous, because there could be snakes and scorpions down there. When I got down I could still see something shining, reflecting the light on my head back at me. So I picked it up and I wrapped it in my shirt so it wouldn’t be hurt and I told them to pull me up as fast as they could.’
As Anna emerged from the temple into the bright daylight she wiped the dirt from the surface of the object and stared at it in wonder. ‘It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.’ The object was truly remarkable. It was life-size and looked almost exactly the same as a real human skull, and yet it was almost completely transparent. It was a real crystal skull. She held it up to the light. It was carved from a magnificent piece of clear rock crystal and caught and reflected the light in devastatingly beautiful, captivating and complex ways. And, miraculously, it appeared to have survived completely unscathed.
There was a moment of stunned silence as the small crowd of excavators gazed at this strange object, mesmerized by the way in which it captured and reflected the sunlight, sending it forth in a dazzle of light. Anna’s father took the skull from her and held it high for all to see. Then all at once everyone went wild with joy. ‘All the Maya helpers on the dig started laughing and crying. They kissed the ground and started hugging each other,’ Anna said. It was a magical moment, she recalled, perhaps the greatest moment in her long life. It was ‘as if an ancient and powerful force had returned to the lives of those present’.
As evening fell and the first stars appeared in the skies, Frederick Mitchell-Hedges placed the skull with great ceremony upon a makeshift altar the Mayans had built. As he and Anna looked on, fires were lit all around the skull and in the light of the blaze they could see the Mayans blessing it. Then the sound of drumming began. Mayan dancers appeared from the shadows, decorated with the plumes of jungle birds and the skins of jaguars. They moved with agility and grace to the rhythm of the drum. There was chanting and singing. It was a night of celebration, as Anna recalls. ‘They performed ceremonies, rituals and dances in front of the skull in the firelight.’
From the depths of the jungle people appeared, as if something had called to them across the forest.
‘It was as though a message of joy had been sent out across the Mayan lands. A lot of Maya came that we never even knew, and they came so quickly and from so far afield that I don’t know how they could possibly have heard of the skull in such a short space of time. But they knew.’
The celebrations around the skull continued for several days and amongst those who came to see it was a very old Mayan from a neighbouring village. He looked at the skull and told Anna and her father that it was Very, very ancient’.
‘The Mayan priests say it is over 100,000 years old. The Mayans told us the skull was made after the head of a great high priest many, many thousands of years ago because this priest was loved very much and they wanted to preserve their truth and wisdom forever. The old man said that the skull could be made to talk, but how it was done he wouldn’t say.’
Both Anna and her father were puzzled by the discovery. What they didn’t know at the time was that the object would prove to be one of the most mysterious ever found, that it would come to change Anna’s life and the lives of many others who have since come into contact with it. For, as we had heard, many have claimed that the skull has magical and mysterious powers. Some maintain, as the legend had said, that it is encoded with sacred knowledge that can enable us to tap into the secrets of the distant past and possibly even the future. Many others simply believe that the skull can profoundly influence the way people think and feel.
Although Frederick Mitchell-Hedges had no idea of the incredible claims that would come to surround the skull, he seemed to have been deeply affected by the reverence the local people showed for it. He was also concerned that, since the discovery, the Mayan workers had been considerably less willing to spend their days toiling on the dig. He gave it much thought and discussed it with Dr Thomas Gann, the consultant anthropologist on the expedition. Anna said, ‘My father decided that the skull was obviously so sacred and so important to the Mayan people that we couldn’t possibly keep it. He said, “We cannot possibly take this skull away from these poor people.” ’
So, with characteristic flourish, he gave it to the Maya. ‘They were very, very glad,’ recalls Anna, who was not so pleased by her father’s generosity, after the danger she had gone through to retrieve the skull. ‘I was very angry because I had risked my life to go down there and get it.’
But, following the gift, excavations were resumed. The pyramid where Anna had found the skull was part of the further explorations and three months later, the separate lower jaw of the skull was found buried beneath an altar in the main chamber of the pyramid. Anna had originally found only the upper cranium. When the Maya added the lower jaw to the skull, the masterpiece was complete. After this, as Anna remembers, ‘They had it for nearly three years and they had fires burning all around it.’
By 1927 the excavations at Lubaantun were drawing to a close. The final items were catalogued and sent off to museums. Mitchell-Hedges and his team had unearthed hundreds of rare and beautiful artefacts, but none could match the beauty of the crystal skull.
As the party prepared to depart, it was a sad moment for Anna. She had lived with a Mayan family who had treated her ‘as well as their own daughter’ and she had ‘shared in their joys and sorrows over the years’. As Anna and her father bade farewell to their Mayan friends, the Mayan chieftain stepped forward and pressed a bundle into Frederick Mitchell-Hedges’ hands. As he unwrapped the bundle, Anna was delighted to find that it was the crystal skull:
‘The Maya presented my father with the skull for all the good work he had done for their people, giving them medical supplies and work and tools and everything. And that’s why they gave it back to us. It was a gift from the Mayan people.’
So fate had it that the crystal skull should accompany Frederick Mitchell-Hedges as he left Lubaantun for England.
Putting his overseas adventures behind him, Mitchell-Hedges was eventually to settle in England. In 1951 he took up residence in the impressive seventeenth-century Farley Castle in Berkshire. There he would lecture guests from overseas about his expeditions and his wonderful antique collection, and show the crystal skull to members of the British aristocracy who were invited to elegant dinner parties in his grand candlelit dining-room.
Frederick Mitchell-Hedges used to delight in telling his guests that it was called ‘the Skull of Doom’. He said, ‘It has been described as the embodiment of all evil’ and that ‘according to legend [it] was used by the High Priest of the Maya’ to will death. ‘It is said that when [the Mayan priest] willed death with the help of the skull, death invariably followed.’6 According to Anna, much of this description could actually be put down to her father’s sense of humour, but he had been told by the high priest of the Maya that if the skull were to fall into the wrong hands, it could be used for evil purposes.
Mitchell-Hedges was no doubt fascinated as lords and ladies gazed upon the awesome image of the skull. Their initially fearful reaction was so very different from that of the Maya who had helped to bring the skull up from the darkness of its tomb. The rich sophisticated Europeans saw only fear where the ‘poor’ ‘uneducated’ Mayans had seen cause for celebration and joy. Was it that in those dying days of the British Empire the skull was a stark reminder that none could escape their fate? No grand titles, no worldly riches could overcome the inevitability
