CARVED TERRACES OF THE PALACE OF CHAN-CHAN.
ANIMAL CARVINGS ON THE WALLS OF CHAN-CHAN.
Aside from their scientific importance, the antiquities of Peru are interesting to travellers because they have many features that appeal to one’s imagination and love of mystery. They lie out of the beaten track of the sightseer, who journeys annually, guide-book in hand, to gaze on the ruins of their Egyptian and Pelasgian contemporaries in the Old World. But they possess the greater fascination of the unsolved problem, made doubly attractive by apparently innumerable “clues,” which stimulate the imagination and tempt one to construct independent theories as to their origin and antiquity. Karnak and the Pyramids may be no more ancient than Nasca; certainly the Sphinx is not nearly so great an enigma as are the huacas of Trujillo and Ancón cemeteries; and there is nothing in Oriental antiquities that quite resembles the mummies taken out of one of these mysterious burial mounds.
RUINS OF CHAN-CHAN.
The method of preparing the ancient Peruvian corpse for burial was unique, though it cannot be couriered artistic, as, at first sight, the huaca looks like a large sack well filled and bound around with a network of ropes. The process of unwrapping, which is a long one, reveals the corpse in a sitting posture, with the arms clasping the knees and the head bent over. Sometimes the swathings are of finely woven vicuña cloth, and ornaments of gold and silver are hung on the corpse, beautiful and costly vases and various other articles of value being placed beside it. From a study of these articles it has been possible to learn, to some extent, what the mode of life was among these ancient people, and many of the huacas have furnished data of the greatest importance. Fine textiles, woven in curious designs, are found in most of the cemeteries; but in those of greatest antiquity no textiles appear, and this fact affords a clue to their great age also, as buried textiles have been found to outlast periods of fifteen hundred years. The nitrous nature of the soil in which these burials have taken place accounts for the wonderful preservation of the mummies, which are really desiccated corpses. The burial of the poor was a simple ceremony and in some cases consisted merely in depositing the corpse in a grave in the sand; though, always, the treasures of the departed were placed beside them, and it is not unusual to find tools, household utensils, and articles of personal adornment scattered over the arid fields. The great plain of Chimu, near Trujillo, which covers a territory twelve miles long by six miles broad on the northern bank of the Moche River, and which was so rich in buried treasure when the Spaniards first began to plunder its temple, palaces, and burial ground, that the king’s fifth of the gold taken out amounted, in 1576, to ten thousand ounces, is literally strewn with human skulls, pieces of pottery, and other huacas. The cemetery of Ancón has apparently inexhaustible treasures, and excursion parties seldom return to Lima after a visit to its graves without bringing trophies of their outing in the form of prehistoric relics.
MORTUARY CLOTH WITH SYMBOLIC EMBLEMS.