Temples+and+Shrines



Temples, devoted to many Gods of the Inca religion, were universal sanctuaries to them and proved to be vastly important to their culture. People made pilgrimages from all over the Inca empire, which comprised of Southern Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and parts of Bolivia and Argentina. Shrines were built in each of these Temple, representing their devotions to their Gods, who stood for every natural cause on the Earth, such as the sun, the moon, the sea, the earth, etc.The Incas made offerings to their gods in these temples by making offerings to shrines, often these offerings included sacrificed animals, human blood, and tumblers of silver and gold. Many of the shrines themselves, depicted their Gods, one the most important being //Inti//, the Sun God and //Viracocha//, the creator, and these shrines were many times, made of solid gold. These sacrifices were held to ensure crop fertility, an emperor's well-being, or were simply performed during festivals or seasons (Cobo 3-5, 22-25).

Coricancha In //Inca Religion and Customs//, Father Bernabe Cobo talks about several temples the Inca built and used as designated places for prayers and sacrifices; specifically those depicted on the map above. The term [|//guaca//] was used by the Incas to describe the gods and idols they worshiped, as well as the places designed to be used as places of worship; where essentially, they performed sacrifices and prayers, however, the Inca had a vast amount of //guacas//, sometimes ones that belonged to certain nations or provinces or certain families had their own, so it is nearly impossible to name all of them. Since the city of Cuzco was the universal sanctuary of the entire kingdom (Cobo 47), the most important temple or //guaca// that will be mentioned first is the Sun temple of Cuzco, also known as //Coricancha//; meaning "house of gold", it was held to the center of the Inca Empire and this was the reason it was one of the most venerated temples that included many riches in gold and silver; the altar of the Sun was housed inside this temple which was adorned with sheets of gold in place of tapestries and statues of gold and silver. //Corincancha// was embedded with gold walls, ceilings, and altars. This temple was dedicated to the Sun but it also housed statues of //Viracocha// (the creator), the Thunder, and the Moon, who were all important idols to the Inca; which later were placed in separate temples to be given better care and worship. Many priests and servants who served the temple lived there and were responsible for holding festivals and ceremonies of the temple. It was from this temple that Inca Emperor, //[|Atahualpa]//, had his ransom taken in exchange for his freedom when he was captured by Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro (Cobo 48-49).

This image shows what is now Coricancha, the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco; A monastery was built by the Spaniards with the stones of the actual structure built by the Inca. According to Cobo, one part of a wall was still intact and a thin sheet of silver could still be seen on the ashlar stones (Cobo 49).

Pachacama  This temple is located near Lima, in Coastal Peru; it was not built by the Inca but rather dated back much earlier. 'Pachacama' is the name of the idol to which this temple is dedicated, it translates to 'marker of the world'. When the Inca conquered the valley of Pachacama, they saw how magnificent this temple was and decided to keep it the way it was, but not before making an addition to the site, another building was added where the Sun could be worshiped, and so the convent of the mamaconas was constructed (Cobo 85-86).



Although this is a modern-day map made by a tour operating company in Peru, it shows the relative distance between the Pacific ocean, Lima and Pachacama.



 The Incas used this temple to worship this 'maker of the world' and made sacrifices to venarate him, which included silver, gold, animals, human blood, and any valuable things that they had (Cobo 87). This image shows a few artifacts recovered by archaeologists from the [|Pachacamac Archaeological Project].

Copacabana



This is the third most important temple, located near Bolivia on an island in Lake Titicaca, the image shown depicts the Shrine of the Sun, it was constructed and highly revered by the people of the Collao (Lake Titica Basin) even before the Inca took over the temple. In his account, Cobo explains that the Inca inspired so much fear and regard that even those who belonged to other indigenous groups and greatly appreciated their land were too afraid to conceal any important structures from the Inca that they would travel to Cuzco just to disclose their highly esteemed temple's location and purpose; this was the case with Shrine of the Sun (Cobo 91-92). As soon as Inca emperor that was in power at the time, [|Tupa Yupanqui], found out about the temple's existence he quickly made a visit and was impressed by its grandness so much that he " took the matter of enhancing importance of this shrine so seriously that he did everything in his power to sustain it, enlarge it, and make it more illustrious" (Cobo 93).

Apurima



Not much is known about this temple except that it was a very colorful one, it was located along the banks of the Apurimac River and it had "a post the thickness of a man set inside of it, and this post was covered with blood from sacrifices that were made to it. A gold band the thickness of one hand was wrapped around it; this band had a pair of solid gold breasts, like a woman's breasts" (Cobo 108).

 Conclusion

The Inca had a numerous amount of temples or //guacas//, these are only to name a few; it's easy to see how much importance they placed on their ideology and creating places where to worship their gods. The Inca's expansion and growth to power transcended through their ideology, We can see that in the Copacabana Temple example, that the Inca King wasn't just looking to expand and acquire land but rather to have another majestic shrine added to their existing assembly of //guacas//. It was of great importance for them to have a place of worship in whatever region they conquered and we can see this because often, pilgrimages were made to these temples even when they didn't have residence established in the city of that particular temple. it was crucial for the Inca to worship the Sun, the Earth and the Moon because this had a great effect on the turnout of their agriculture as well as on their warfare.