Capac Cocha (Quechua 'Capac'=Noble, Principal, Mighty, Royal; 'Cocha'=Crime, Sin, Guilt) was an important sacrificial rite among the Inca religious society. The rite was intrinsically associated with high-altitude occurrences at the very tops of mountains or at the Sacred Titicaca Lake site.
The ceremonial rite typically involved the offering of a mighty child from noble blood to the Supreme God to appease His Judgment under serious circumstances that provoked the breaking of the Law of Nature by the Hand of the Inca or through any of the royal class in charge of the administration of the religious power invested in them.
The signs involving illnesses, death, succession of the Throne, or the birth of a son, were interpreted as the result of key events in the life of the Inca Emperor and his administration. The ceremony were undertaken to stop natural disasters or were performed during major festivals at important ceremonial sites.
To their ideology everything had to be in harmony, and the lack of it had a reason and a consequence in the realms of the Earth, the Cosmos, and the Underworld. The solemn sacrifice or royal obligation was understood as returning to the Supreme God an amount of sacred religious energy invested in the purity of the child ancestry equal to the weight of wrongful nature of the action committed against the Law of Nature, to ensure that harmony would be restore and the certainty that the life and soul of the child was preserved by having the opportunity to come to life again.
Humanity's best and honorable sacrifice was to be a messenger to the Supreme God and his court and to join their deities.
The child chosen to be a messenger had to be perfect, unblemished by even a freckle or scar. They could come from any region of the empire. The male children were no older than 10 and girls could be up to age 16 and a virgin when chosen.
They were prepared spiritually, mentally, and physically, since the day that they were borne. They had to increase their spiritual power to carry their mission. They were trained in high places and usually ascend up to the ceremonial site on top of the very high mountains to meditate and recreate themselves there, adapting to the height and fed with the royal food produced at high altitudes until the time of the sacrifice come. This was to ensure that they would be happy when they reach the gods.
The children were paired off, girl and boy, and dressed finely like little royal creatures. They also were paraded often around the 4 large statues: -of the Creator, -of the Sun God, -of the Moon God, and -of the Thunder God.
The ceremonies were circular in nature, and the sacrificial child and material offerings being brought from local and chosen communities in the provinces to the capital of Cuzco had to be in a circular and symbolic way before being redistributed to sacred places throughout the empire. The way in which it was planned fulfilled their religious and political goals. Usually the ritual was not performed in the Region from which the sacrificial child originated.
The first Inca to do this sacrifice was Pacha-Cutec, and started at the capital city of Cuzco. The chosen ones were sent to every ceremonial place around the Kingdom, if some place was forgotten or left out, it could cause political uproar there or the displease the gods in the Upper World. Then Pacha-Cutec ordered that the chosen Huacas (Shrines), representing the energy power of each of the Quarters (Suyos) or Regions of the Tahuantinsuyo, had to divide the lifeless body of the sacrificial child in four, each part representing each quarter and be performed at an exact cosmological time selected by the priests. The offering along with the sacrifice included gold, silver, and thorny oysters known as spon-Dylus.
Spon-Dylus are not related to true oysters, however they do cement themselves to rocks, rather than attach themselves by a bundle of filaments. Their key characteristic is that they have multiple eyes around the edges of their shells, and have relatively well-developed nervous systems. They were sacred to the Incas and often offered in their sacrificial rites.
Prayers were done to the gods (the Creator, the Sun, the Moon, and the Thunder) to keep the Sapa Inca safe and to guard the people of the empire as long as they existed.
In the Acon-Cagua peak, an Incan mummy of a 7-year-old boy was found buried in a semicircular stone structure. The frozen body was discovered by hikers in 1985 at 5,300/17,400ft above sea level. The mummy is well-preserved, due to the extreme cold and dry conditions of its high altitude burial.
The body was wrapped in textiles in a style derived from central coastal Peru. Six statuettes were also found buried with the boy. An analysis shows that the boy's diet consisted primarily on quinoa, dry potatoes, maize, and meat from the local fauna. A year and a half before his sacrificial dead, his diet became more marine-based. The presence of achiote (shrub which seeds produce a natural red color) was also found inside his stomach and colon.
DNA was extracted from one of his lungs. His lineage contains 10 distinct mutations. The researchers determined that it likely arose around 14,300 years ago.
In the dormant Mount Am-Pato, a 6,309m/20,700 strato-volcano in the Andes of Southern Peru, about 100km/60mi North West of Arequipa, and part of a 20km/12mi North-South chain of 3 major strato-volcanoes, a well-preserved frozen body of an Inca girl who was sacrificed as an offering to the Inca gods, was found by a group on climbers in September 1995.
During an ascent the climbers noticed a bundle inside the crater that had fallen from an Inca religious site on the summit. They also found many items that had been left as offerings strewn about the mountain slope down which the body had fallen. These include statues and food items.
Two more ice mummies, a young girl and a boy, were discovered in an archeological expedition to Ampato, two months later, in search for more bodies. In December 1995, they recovered another female mummy. Owing to melting caused by volcanic ash from nearby erupting volcano of Saban-Calla (5,976m/19,606ft), the most active volcano in Peru, most of the Inca burial site had collapsed down into a gully that led into the crater.
No comments:
Post a Comment