Inca Mummification of Rulers and Nobility
Inca mummification was an elaborate ritual process, reserved in its most elaborate forms for the Sapa Inca, the emperor, and the members of his immediate family. The process began at the moment of death, when the body of the deceased was seated on the ground and given a small mouthful of chicha and a few coca leaves, in imitation of the journey to the afterlife. The body was then washed, and the internal organs, with the exception of the heart, were removed through an incision in the abdomen. The body was desiccated, either by being placed in a cold, dry environment such as a high mountain cave, or by being dried over a slow fire, with the hair and skin carefully preserved. Once desiccated, the body was wrapped in layers of fine cotton and llama-wool textiles, dressed in the finest clothing of the deceased, and seated in a flexed position with the knees drawn up to the chest. The resulting mallqui, or mummy bundle, was then placed in a stone-built chamber, often within a palace complex or in a cave, where it could be visited by the living.
The historical evidence for Inca mummification comes from the chronicles of Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616), Bernabé Cobo (1582–1657), Pedro Cieza de León (1520–1554), and the anonymous Relación de la descendencia, gobierno y conquista de los Incas (c. 1570). These accounts are supplemented by archaeological evidence from the excavation of royal tombs at sites such as Machu Picchu, Vilcabamba, and the mountaintop shrine of Llullaillaco.
The Process of Mummification
The Inca mummification process was a complex and carefully prescribed ritual, performed by a small group of specialists attached to the royal household. The chroniclers report that the process began at the moment of death, when the body of the deceased was seated on the ground and given a small mouthful of chicha and a few coca leaves, in imitation of the journey to the afterlife. The body was then washed, and the hair was carefully combed and dressed. The internal organs, with the exception of the heart, were removed through an incision in the abdomen, and the organs were either buried separately or placed in the body cavity. The body was then desiccated, either by being placed in a cold, dry environment such as a high mountain cave, or by being dried over a slow fire, with the hair and skin carefully preserved.
Once desiccated, the body was wrapped in layers of fine cotton and llama-wool textiles, often of great value and considerable size. The chronicler Cobo reports that the finest textiles of the empire were reserved for the wrapping of royal mummies, and that the bundles could be quite large, sometimes weighing more than 100 kilograms. The body was seated in a flexed position with the knees drawn up to the chest, in imitation of the fetal position and of the position of the mummies of the pre-Inca Paracas culture. The resulting mallqui was then dressed in the finest clothing of the deceased, including a tunic, a mantle, and a headdress, and was adorned with the gold and silver regalia appropriate to the rank of the dead.
The bundle was then placed in a stone-built chamber, called a machay, often within a palace complex or in a cave, where it could be visited by the living. The mummies of the Sapa Inca were kept in the Coricancha in Cusco, in chambers specifically built for the purpose, where they were visited by the priests, the royal family, and the public on the major festivals of the year. The mummies of the lesser nobility were kept in the family home or in the local shrine, and the cult of the ancestors was a central element of household religious life.
The Royal Mummies and the Panacas
The mummies of the deceased Sapa Inca were maintained by kin groups called panacas, the royal lineages of Cusco. Each Sapa Inca founded a panaca at his accession, and the panaca took its name from its founder, with the suffix “panaca” indicating the lineage. The members of the panaca were the descendants of the founder through the male line, and they had the obligation to maintain the cult of the founder’s mummy, to perform the prescribed rituals, and to manage the property of the lineage.
The panacas were the most important kin groups in the Inca state, and they played a major role in the politics of succession, since the candidate for the throne was typically a member of one of the leading panacas. The panaca of the reigning Sapa Inca held the largest number of ceques in the sacred geography of Cusco, and the panacas of deceased emperors retained their ceques in perpetuity, since the mummies of the deceased continued to be regarded as members of the lineage. The Spanish chroniclers, particularly Garcilaso de la Vega and Cobo, list the ten principal panacas of Cusco, including the panacas of Sinchi Roca, Lloque Yupanqui, Mayta Cápac, Cápac Yupanqui, Inca Roca, Yáhuar Huácac, Viracocha, Pachacuti, and Tupac Inca Yupanqui, and they describe the political and religious obligations of each.
The panacas were a central institution of the Inca state, and their dissolution by the Spanish in the 1540s and 1550s, when the mummies of the deceased emperors were exhumed and buried in Christian cemeteries, marked a major break in the religious and political life of the Andean nobility. The chroniclers report that the exhumation of the royal mummies was deeply resented by the surviving Inca nobility and that many of the mummies were hidden by their descendants and venerated in secret for years after the official interment.
The Mummies of Sacrifice: Capacocha and the Llullaillaco Children
A related category of mummies was produced by the practice of Capacocha, in which carefully selected children were sacrificed to the apus and to the Inca state. The children, often drawn from villages at high altitude, were prepared for months before being brought to a high mountain shrine, where they were killed, usually by a blow to the head, and buried with a rich assemblage of offerings, including gold and silver figurines, finely woven textiles, and conopas. The bodies were preserved by the cold and dry conditions of the high mountains, and several examples have been recovered in modern times in remarkable states of preservation.
The most famous such discovery was made in 1999 at the summit of Mount Llullaillaco, a 6,739-meter peak on the border of present-day Argentina and Chile, where the American archaeologist Johan Reinhard and his team recovered the bodies of three children, two girls of about thirteen and fifteen, and a boy of about six or seven. The children were found in small stone structures on the summit of the mountain, and the conditions of the site preserved their skin, hair, and clothing in extraordinary detail. The discovery provided dramatic confirmation of the chroniclers’ accounts of the Capacocha sacrifice and is widely regarded as one of the most important archaeological finds in Andean history.
The Llullaillaco children have been the subject of detailed scientific study, including DNA analysis, isotope analysis of diet, and CT scanning. The studies have shown that the children were drawn from different parts of the empire, suggesting that the Capacocha drew on a wide geographic base, and that they were well-fed in the months before their deaths, consistent with the chroniclers’ accounts of ritual feasting. The children were also given coca leaves and chicha to chew in the days before their deaths, as indicated by the presence of these substances in their stomachs.
The Post-Conquest Suppression of the Cult
The cult of the mummies came into direct conflict with the Catholic Church after the Spanish conquest in 1532. The first wave of conflict occurred in the 1530s and 1540s, when the Spanish authorities, on the instructions of the Viceroy Francisco Pizarro and the first bishops of Cusco, ordered the mummified remains of the deceased Sapa Inca to be exhumed and buried in Christian cemeteries. The order was deeply resented by the surviving Inca nobility, and the chroniclers report that many of the mummies were hidden by their descendants and venerated in secret for years after the official interment. The mummy of Tupac Amaru, the last Sapa Inca of Vilcabamba, who was executed by the Spanish in 1572, became a particular focus of indigenous devotion, and his burial place remained a site of pilgrimage into the twentieth century.
The cult of the mummies persisted in rural communities well into the colonial period, despite repeated attempts by the Church and the colonial authorities to suppress it. The syncretic combination of Inca and Catholic practices that resulted has been studied by a number of scholars, including Joseph Bastien, who documented the persistence of ancestor veneration among the modern Aymara of Bolivia, and Frank Salomon, who described similar practices among the descendants of the Inca in the highlands of Peru. The cult of the ancestors has, in some respects, never been entirely suppressed, and elements of the practice can still be observed in the rural Andes in the early twenty-first century.