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The Sacrificial Ceremony
by Liesl Clark
The Lost Empire | The
Sacrificial Ceremony |
High Altitude Archaeology
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Burial Artefacts
The Tanta Carhua Story
"Beautiful beyond exaggeration," is how one Spanish chronicler
described Tanta Carhua. Carhua was a ten-year old Inca child
whose father offered her to the Inca Emperor as a Capacocha
sacrifice. She was taken by priests to Cuzco where she met the
Inca Emperor, and on her return journey to the mountain where
she would be sacrificed the procession passed through her home
village. According to the legends, Tanta Carhua told the
village: "You can finish with me now because I could not be
more honoured than by the feasts which they celebrated for me
in Cuzco."
Tanta Carhua was then taken to a high Andean mountain, placed
in a shaft-tomb and walled in alive. Chicha, a maize alcohol,
was fed to her both before and after her death. And in death,
this beautiful ten-year old child became a goddess, speaking
to her people as an oracle from the mountain, which was
reconsecrated in her name.
Capacocha
Very little is known about Capacocha, the sacred Inca ceremony
of human sacrifice, but with each new archaeological discovery
of a sacrificial mummy, more is revealed. The earliest and
only known written accounts of the ritual are chronicles
written by Spanish conquistador historians. From the
chronicles and from each new discovery of a mummy, the pieces
of this great puzzle are put together to reveal an intricate
and extremely important ritual that involved sacrifice of
children, worship of mountains as gods, and elaborate burial
procedures.
Sacrifices were often made during or after a portentous event:
an earthquake, an epidemic, a drought, or after the death of
an Inca Emperor. According to archaeologist Juan Schobinger,
"Inca sacrifices often involved the child of a chief. The
sacrificed child was thought of as a deity, ensuring a tie
between the chief and the Inca emperor, who was considered a
descendant of the Sun god. The sacrifice also bestowed an
elevated status on the chief's family and descendants." The
honour of sacrifice was bestowed not only on the family, but
was forever immortalized in the child. It is believed that the
sacrificial children had to be perfect, without so much as a
blemish or irregularity in their physical beauty.
After a child was chosen or offered to the emperor, a
procession would begin from the child's home village to Cuzco,
the crown seat of the Inca empire. Priests, family members,
and chiefs would accompany the child on this great journey to
meet the emperor. Huge ceremonial feasts would take place in
Cuzco where the child would meet the emperor and forever bring
credit to the family in this important event. Priests would
then lead the grand procession to the designated high
mountain. Often, a base camp would be established lower on the
mountain, at a more comfortable elevation. Here, llamas (which
carried up 80-pound loads of soil, grass, and often stones for
the camp structures from the villages below) would be
coralled, and permanent stone structures would be built to
offer shelter to the priests and the child.
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