The Incas have a lot to answer for, having told the Spaniards that the peoples who came before them were primitives, constantly fighting with one another. In fact, there were many other civilised cultures dating back to before 2000 BCE, and in due course we’ll be introducing you to some of their sites as we travel up the Northern coast. If you, like me, prefer to have some kind of organising structure, then this might give you an idea of how much was going on. (As it’s in Spanish, AC is, of course, BCE and DC is ACE.)
We spent the morning at the outstanding Larco Museum which has over 50,000 pots from many of the civilisations above. The museum’s setting is marvellous, with humming-birds and a profusion of flowering plants:
The museum’s curators had done a wonderful job, noting, for example, that the Moche’s portrait vessels of individual warriors did not include women (at least, none have been found so far). To think that this was a portrait of a real person!
The captions pointed out that the vessels we were looking at were used for ceremonial purposes or in burials, and were not the kind of thing you’d find in regular people’s homes. And there were detailed notes on the symbolism and meanings of the many, many ceramics and designs. But for now, these are some of our favourites.
There were textiles and feathered designs as well, but this particular scene of the production of cloth seemed pretty gruesome to us – perhaps to do with the underworld continuing what goes on above?
The museum is famous for its extensive collection of pre-Columbian erotica with extraordinarily explicit sexual activities. The poor curators must have had quite a time trying to set the scenes of fellatio and anal sex in context. We found the scenes of sex from the underworld (that is, after death) particularly strange – here are a couple of the less explicit ones as examples:
Your Peruvian travels are certainly giving me a history lesson. Thank you.
And the ceramics are wonderful, if not a little creepy. Well some of their faces are anyway.
Well, you know us, Nicky – reading all the labels in the museum. Some of the sculptures were indeed pretty creepy – kind of incomprehensible and sometimes violent. Gripping stuff though.
Marvellous account, gorgeous photos.
Thanks, Elizabeth – all M’s work! She does have a flair for this stuff,!
The Larco! That was the museum I was thinking of in my comment yesterday. Such brilliant ceramics. I particularly love all the Moche stuff. Also when you look at the pots, remember they never ‘discovered’ the wheel so as far as I know, it’s all hand built, not thrown.
Yes, astonishing to think these are not ‘ thrown’ pots. The other museum, whose name I still can’t remember, is a small private collection, mostly textiles, in Miraflores. The Larco is extraordinary.
What amazing ceramics. The museums in Lima are tremendous in sharpe contrast to their surroundings- but things may well have changed!
Nope! Lima still pretty run down and polluted with traffic jams lasting years I suspect. The museum with its stunning garden and elegant restaurant felt like it had been sorted of lowered into place from another planet.
I was interested to read about the Incas reporting that the people before had been primitive and look forward to insights about those who came before.
Stunning to see a selection of the ceramics. You must have been in the museum for ages!
Yes, we were there for a good long while – the images are mesmerising and so very vivid – haunting stuff…