The Puma Design of Cusco: City Layout and Symbolism
The puma design of Cusco is the cosmologically significant urban plan attributed to the ninth Sapa Inca, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, who reshaped the capital of the Inca state into the form of a puma lying on its side. The head of the animal is identified with the fortress of Sacsayhuamán on the hilltop to the north, the body of the animal with the central urban core of Cusco, the navel (the literal meaning of Qosqo in Quechua) with the Sun Temple of the Coricancha, and the tail with the confluence of the Huatanay and Tullumayo rivers. The plan is described in detail by the principal colonial chroniclers, including Garcilaso de la Vega, Pedro Cieza de León, and Bernabé Cobo, and has been verified in part by modern archaeological surveys of the surviving Inca walls, the huacas of the city, and the radiating ceques, or sight lines, that connected the urban center to the surrounding sacred landscape.
The chronicler tradition
The principal account of the puma design is found in the Comentarios reales de los Incas of Garcilaso de la Vega, written in the early seventeenth century and published in 1609, in the Crónica del Perú of Pedro Cieza de León, written in the 1550s, and in the Historia del Nuevo Mundo of Bernabé Cobo, written in the 1650s. The three accounts are not identical, but they agree on the principal features: that the city was reshaped in the mid-fifteenth century, that the head was at Sacsayhuamán, that the body of the animal lay along the spine of the central city, that the navel (or, in some readings, the heart) was marked by the Coricancha, and that the tail was at the confluence of the two rivers.
Garcilaso, drawing on the testimony of his Inca relatives, adds that the puma was the Sinchi, a celestial and ferocious creature whose form expressed the warlike character of the empire, and that Pachacuti was guided in the reshaping of the city by the god Viracocha, who instructed him in the proper arrangement of the streets, the temples, and the huacas. The chroniclers also report that the lower jaw of the puma was formed by a row of stones placed at the entrance to the city, and that the eyes were two large carved stones, the Suntur Wasi and the Hatun Suntur, set on a ridge above the present-day district of San Cristóbal.
The chronicler tradition has been analyzed in modern scholarship, most influentially by the Dutch ethnohistorian Tom Zuidema in The Ceque System of Cusco (2002), who showed that the puma design of the city is closely linked to the broader Andean conception of the Tawantinsuyu, the “four regions together,” and to the political geography of the empire. The plan, in Zuidema’s reading, is not a single zoomorphic outline so much as a cosmological diagram that placed the imperial capital at the center of a system of ceques and huacas extending out to the borders of the empire.
The shape of the city
The plan of imperial Cusco, as reconstructed from the chronicles and from archaeological survey, was oriented approximately 30 degrees east of true north, so that the principal axis of the city pointed to the rising sun at the June solstice. The principal ceremonial precinct, the Haucaypata, faced this axis, and the principal temples, palaces, and storehouses of the city were placed along it. The Cusipata, a secondary plaza attached to the southern edge of the Haucaypata, was reserved for the armies and the administration of justice, while the Haucaypata itself served as the principal plaza of the empire.
The residential and administrative units of the city were organized into rectangular blocks, each of which was occupied by a particular lineage, a panaca, or an administrative function. The most important panacas, including the Hatun Ayllu of the imperial family, were placed closest to the ceremonial center, while the panacas of more distant lineages occupied the peripheral cells. The cells of the urban grid were oriented to the cardinal directions and to the principal axis of the city, and the streets that separated them were narrow and straight, with water channels running along their central axes. The city was divided into two principal moieties, the Hanan (upper) and the Hurin (lower), each containing nine of the principal panacas, with the two moieties converging on the central plaza.
The urban grid was, however, less rigid than the chronicles sometimes suggest. Many of the imperial buildings were sited in conformity with the topography of the basin, and a number of huacas — sacred rocks, springs, and trees — were incorporated into the grid without modification. The integration of natural features with the built environment is a central feature of the Inca architecture of the city.
The ceque system
The puma design of Cusco is closely linked to the ceque system, a network of 41 (or, by some accounts, 42) sight lines that radiated from the Coricancha to huacas distributed across the Cusco basin. The ceques were surveyed lines that connected the urban center to the surrounding sacred landscape, and the huacas along them were treated as foci of religious veneration. Each ceque was assigned to a particular lineage, which was responsible for the maintenance of the huacas along its length and for the celebration of the ceremonies associated with them.
The ceque system, as reconstructed by Zuidema and others, organized the Cusco basin into a series of zones that reflected the political and cosmological order of the empire. The first ceque, associated with the imperial lineage, pointed toward the rising sun and the ceque of Sacsayhuamán. The subsequent ceques, running clockwise around the basin, identified the principal huacas of the surrounding mountains, springs, and rocks, and ended, on the western side, with the ceques of the Hurin moieties, the lower lineages, and the lineages associated with the underworld. The system is described in detail in the Relación de los quipucamayos of 1542, a document compiled from the testimony of Inca administrators and now in the library of the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid.
The ceque system provides a framework for understanding the puma design. The puma was not a single zoomorphic figure but a cosmological diagram that linked the city, the surrounding landscape, and the imperial cult into a single integrated system. The head of the puma at Sacsayhuamán, the body in the urban core, and the tail at the confluence of the rivers were, in effect, the central elements of a much larger symbolic geography.
The archaeological evidence
Modern archaeological work has confirmed several aspects of the chronicler tradition. Excavations in the central city have uncovered sections of polygonal masonry and the foundations of imperial buildings consistent with the chronicler descriptions, and surveys of the surrounding basin have identified many of the huacas mentioned in the Relación de los quipucamayos. The identification of the head of the puma with Sacsayhuamán is widely accepted, and the identification of the navel (the literal meaning of Qosqo) with the Coricancha is supported by the orientation of the principal axis of the city.
The Spanish conquest, which began in 1532, and the colonial rebuilding of the city, which continued through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destroyed much of the original urban fabric, and the modern street plan of Cusco does not closely follow the Inca grid. However, the surviving Inca walls, the Relación of the quipucamayos, and the surviving huacas in and around the city are sufficient to reconstruct the puma design in its broad outlines. The Spanish used the Inca walls as foundations for many of their colonial buildings, and a substantial quantity of Inca polygonal stonework remains visible in the cellars, courtyards, and lower stories of the colonial city.