Inca Mummy Bundle

Wrapped tightly in cotton cloth and accompanied by pottery, food and other socially significant material (and sometime with a detachable artificial head), Inca and pre-Inca mummy bundles represent a way not only to preserve the physical remains of the dead, but also to ensure their continued social presence.  For many societies the living and the dead often have more to do with one another than we might presume from our own social norms.   Soon after the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, Cieza de León wrote of his encounter with numerous very visibly present, but dead, members of Inca society: “certainly it is marvellous to behold the great number of these dead among the sands and dry places, with their clothing worn and decayed by the passage of time.”Cieza de León (1995 [1553]:  197). Here, with the Inca mummy bundles, we see wrapping to preserve a physical essence enabling a continued spiritual presence.

Reading

Friedrich, K.M. et al.  2010. The Story of 12 Chachapoyan mummies through multidector computed tomography. European Journal of Radiology 76(2) 143-150http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrad.2009.07.009,

National Geographic’s interactive mummy bundles of Puruchuco web resource: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/content/inca/