The Inti "Sun" Temple of the Inca at Cuzco, Peru -- known today as Qurikancha, Qorikancha (Great Churches of the World) viz. Coricancha, and formerly as Inti Kancha in Quechua -- was the most important temple of the Inca Empire.
As will become clear, the temple is more correctly called the Temple of the Galaxy since it concentrates on the Galactic Meridian, in concordance with known Inca cosmology, which focused on the Milky Way.
The gold main altar wall map of the temple is known to be astronomical, but previous attempts by others to fully decipher the map have failed because researchers have understandably, but erroneously, especially for Northern Hemisphere natives and those used to putting the Southern Cross in the South, thus put Crux, the Southern Cross, near the bottom of the map, rather than at the top, where observers in the Southern Hemisphere would see it in the sky near THEIR celestial pole.
Below is a near facsimile of the original map of Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua, said to derive from the year 1613 AD, so that the map presumably shows the sky at some time in the more modern era. The notes made to the map sketch by the sketch maker indicate limited understanding of the astronomical system employed in the map, a map originally placed on the wall in gold by others, as this "interpreter" lacked knowledge of stellar details, a status which explains why his notes have never been very useful to anyone in assisting the map's decipherment. Indeed, many alleged identifications are simply wrong, starting with the human-faced alleged Sun figure, which, based on in its location on the map, could not be the Sun at that position by any stretch of the imagination when seen astronomically.
Note now the stars of Musca at the top left (our discovery), which have been ignored by everyone because they are drawn outside of the Temple walls, but this detail is in fact the major clue to decipherment, for it places the top of the map clearly at Crux, just to the right of Musca in the stellar heavens.
Our decipherment below of that map permits a revised, corrected interpretation of its astronomy and shows the axis of the map to run principally along the Milky Way and the Galactic Meridian from Crux to Gemini. Note here the similar style of cross-hatch stellar notation (here for Gemini) found also on the Cahokia Birdman Tablet, and also featured in a coming posting for Erere (Ererê) in Brazil.
Below is our decipherment of the Qurikancha Inti Sun Temple Astronomical Map. It is all really quite clear, once one knows where to start. Our own drawing and decipherment interpretation is based on a study of various maps and photographs found e.g. at:
THIS POSTING IS Posting Number 102 of
The Great Mound, Petroglyph and Painted Rock Art Journey of Native America
Qurikancha Gold Altar Map of Cuzco Peru Inca Inti Sun Temple Deciphered Completely as Astronomy with Crux the Southern Cross at the Top of an Axis Running Along the Milky Way and the Galactic Meridian
As will become clear, the temple is more correctly called the Temple of the Galaxy since it concentrates on the Galactic Meridian, in concordance with known Inca cosmology, which focused on the Milky Way.
The gold main altar wall map of the temple is known to be astronomical, but previous attempts by others to fully decipher the map have failed because researchers have understandably, but erroneously, especially for Northern Hemisphere natives and those used to putting the Southern Cross in the South, thus put Crux, the Southern Cross, near the bottom of the map, rather than at the top, where observers in the Southern Hemisphere would see it in the sky near THEIR celestial pole.
Below is a near facsimile of the original map of Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua, said to derive from the year 1613 AD, so that the map presumably shows the sky at some time in the more modern era. The notes made to the map sketch by the sketch maker indicate limited understanding of the astronomical system employed in the map, a map originally placed on the wall in gold by others, as this "interpreter" lacked knowledge of stellar details, a status which explains why his notes have never been very useful to anyone in assisting the map's decipherment. Indeed, many alleged identifications are simply wrong, starting with the human-faced alleged Sun figure, which, based on in its location on the map, could not be the Sun at that position by any stretch of the imagination when seen astronomically.
Note now the stars of Musca at the top left (our discovery), which have been ignored by everyone because they are drawn outside of the Temple walls, but this detail is in fact the major clue to decipherment, for it places the top of the map clearly at Crux, just to the right of Musca in the stellar heavens.
Our decipherment below of that map permits a revised, corrected interpretation of its astronomy and shows the axis of the map to run principally along the Milky Way and the Galactic Meridian from Crux to Gemini. Note here the similar style of cross-hatch stellar notation (here for Gemini) found also on the Cahokia Birdman Tablet, and also featured in a coming posting for Erere (Ererê) in Brazil.
Below is our decipherment of the Qurikancha Inti Sun Temple Astronomical Map. It is all really quite clear, once one knows where to start. Our own drawing and decipherment interpretation is based on a study of various maps and photographs found e.g. at:
- Rolf Hans Müller, Sonne, Mond und Sterne über dem Reich der Inka, Springer-Verlag, 1972. Update: the map sketch is drawn at page 12, Abb. 5 b. Nachzeichung der Skizze des Inka Santa Cruz von
Hochaltar im Sonnentempel von Cuzco.
- Notes from Peru, online at http://ephemera.cat/bloc/2009/07/06/notes-from-peru-1-qorikanchas-altar/, which writes: "If one visits the Convento de Santo Domingo in El Cusco, Peru, one will
find the remains of the ancient Temple of the Sun (Inti kancha) or Gold
Temple (Qori kancha)....
there is a copy of the sketch of the gold panel over the altar, drawn by Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacutic [Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua] in 1613. This panel depicted in a concise way the andean cosmology." Notes from Peru has a copy posted of that sketch and it was of great importance in obtaining the correct decipherment. - "The original sketch of the main Altar of the Sun Temple at Cuzco is found in the documents of Father Francisco de Avila, constructed together with the Inca scribe Santa Cruz Pachacuty-Yanquii Salcamayhua. The original sketch is said to date to the year 1613. It was accompanied by explanatory texts in Aimará, i.e. Quechua language, with the addition of Spanish words."
- Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua (1613). Relación de las antigüedades deste Reyno del Piru. (Secund.:) Marcos Jimenez de la Espada (ed., 1879). Tres relaciones de antiguedades peruanas. - Madrid, Imprenta y fundicion de M.Tello. p. 257. Online map image with original comments converted from handwritten text (found at Müller above) to printed text. Representación de la cosmovisión incaica por Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua (1613), según una imagen en el Templo del Sol Qurikancha en Cusco.
Qurikancha Gold Altar Map of the Cuzco Peru Inca Sun Temple Deciphered as Astronomy with Crux the Southern Cross at the Top
The Corresponding Stars for Qurikancha with an underlying star map from Starry Night Pro
astronomy software -- http://astronomy.starrynight.com
-- but the interpretation and explanations are by Andis Kaulins,
who is unaffiliated with Starry Night Pro
- As one can see, Crux, the Southern Cross is at the top of the Gold Altar Astronomical Map, flanked to the left by the stars of Musca, which are marked as being outside the walls of the temple.
- Carina is the central large group of stars, though surely not seen then exactly as we see those stars in the modern era. Carina marks the elliptical shape in the middle of the map, running here down to Sirius. We shall see more central use of Carina in sky maps in the rock art of Ererêc, a municipality in the state of Ceará in the Northeast region of Brazil.
- To the left of Carina, the "sun face" does not mark the sun but marks the Large Magellanic Cloud ("LMC"), which has a bright circular shape.
- The large star below LMC is Canopus, second brightest star in the sky
- To the right of Carina, the figure marks the shape of Vela and Antlia.
- Alphard in Hydra's neck is the star marked below that and is the brightest star in Hydra, known in Arabic as "the solitary one" because no other bright stars are near it, whence also the singular marking in this map.
- The bottom of the ellipse is marked by Sirius in Canis Major, the brightest star in the night sky, nearly twice as bright as Canopus.
- The cross shown there at the bottom of the ellipse is formed in Monoceros using stars of Canis Major, Monoceros and Procyon in Canis Minor. Note that the map gives different blackness weight to each of the two verticals of that cross because of the differing brightness of the stars used. Monoceros is largely ignored in astronomy today because its stars are fairly faint, but the cross on this map crosses virtually at the Galactic Meridian and the middle of the Milky Way, which was of importance to the ancients.
- To the left of the bottom of the ellipse we see that the fourteen stars found there mark the stars of either Lepus alone or Columba and Lepus combined as rows of 3, 5, 4 and 2 stars. The only question is whether the 3 stars are from Lepus or from Columba above it. Preferred might be the option of Lepus alone, as in the image below at a star magnitude limit of 5.20, bit we regard the three upper stars as being the brightest stars of Columba as the most likely option, those being far more prominent than these three:
- Below Columba and Lepus we then find Orion marked clearly by the 3 stars of Orion's Belt and two half-circles marking upper stars of Orion.
- The line extending from Orion to the left marks the Celestial Equator in the general era around 1613 A.D., the presumed date of the map.
- The jagged line left of Orion marks the extended length of Eridanus.
- Below Orion there are 7 stars that either mark the "shield" of Orion which we have previously shown to have marked the Temple of the Seven Dolls, or, however, equally possible here are the bright stars of Taurus and the Hyades, especially since the map does not draw all 7 in one line.
- The bottom of the Milky Way here is marked by the stars of Gemini as two figures and below them Gemini (or, also possible is an elongated, extended version of Auriga) as marked by a cross-hatched rectangle.
- To right middle of the map one sees the nebulous Head of Hydra whose relatively faint stars are divided into rows of 3, 4, 3 and 2 stars each, as shown in the special cutout in the decipherment.
- Marked below Hydra are Leo as an animal
- Regulus seems to be extended from Cancer, which is shown as a roundish curling object.
- Ursa Major is represented as a tree of life kind of figure.
THIS POSTING IS Posting Number 102 of
The Great Mound, Petroglyph and Painted Rock Art Journey of Native America
Qurikancha Gold Altar Map of Cuzco Peru Inca Inti Sun Temple Deciphered Completely as Astronomy with Crux the Southern Cross at the Top of an Axis Running Along the Milky Way and the Galactic Meridian