Pachacamac
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The ancient city of Pachacamac is a ruin 40 km southeast of Lima, Peru in the Valley of the Lurín River. This site had at least one pyramid, cemetery and multicolored fresco of fish by the Early Intermediate period (c. 200-600 CE). Later, the Huari (c. 600-800 CE) sponsored construction of the city, probably using it as an administrative center. A number of Huari influenced designs appear on the construction in this period and on the ceramics and textiles found in the cemeteries of this period. After the collapse of the Huari empire Pachacamac continued to grow as a city state eventually becoming an empire itself, though it never grew as large as the Huari empire. The majority of the common architecture and temples were built at this stage (c. 800-1450 CE).
It seems the empire had collapsed by the time the Tawantinsuyu arrived on the scene. By then the valleys of the Rímac and Lurín had a small state they called Ichma and they used Pachacamac as primarily a religious site for the veneration of the Pacha Kamaq creator god. The Ichma joined the Inca empire and Pachacamac became an important administrative center. However the Inca maintained it as a religious shrine and allowed the Pachacamac priests to continue functioning independently of the Inca priesthood. This included the oracle, whom the Inca presumably consulted. The Inca built five additional buildings, including a temple to the Sun on the main square.
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[edit] The Pachacamac empire
The Pachacamac empire was one of the pre-Inca cultures whose empire extended over a large swath of the Peruvian coast sometime after the disappearance of the Huari and before the rise of the Kingdom of Chimor.
[edit] Pacha Kamaq
Pacha Kamaq ('Earth-Maker') was condidered the creator god by the peoples who lived in Peru before the Inca conquest. He was taken into the Inca pantheon, but somewhat reluctantly, being seen mainly as an ineffective rival of Viracocha.
His myths are sparse and confused: some accounts, for example, identify him as Manco Capac's cowardly brother Ayca, while others say that he, Manco Capac and Viracocha were the sole three sons of Inti the sun god. Another story says that he made the first man and the first woman, but forgot to give them food - and when the man died and the woman prayed over Pachacamac's head to his father Inti to make her the mother of all the peoples of earth, Pachacamac was furious. One by one, as the children were born, he tried to kill them - only to be beaten and to be thrown into the sea by her hero-son Wichama, after which he gave up the struggle and contented himself by becoming the supreme god of fish.
[edit] In popular culture
Pachacamac was the name of the ship that originally carried the abducted Professor Calculus in The Seven Crystal Balls album of The Adventures of Tintin. The next album, Prisoners of the Sun, would deal with Tintin discovering an ancient Inca tribe still active in South America.
A character that appears in the videogame Sonic Adventure is named Pachacamac after the ancient ruin.
[edit] Reference
- Mcleish, K. (1996) Myths and Legends of the World, The Complete Companion to all Traditions, Blitz, United Kingdom.
[edit] External links
