Manco Capac- Inca DemigodDemigod"Son of the Sun"

Origins

Inti the sun god looked down and saw humanity living without agriculture or law. He sent two of his children into the world: Manco Capac and his sister-wife Mama Ocllo. They rose from the waters of Lake Titicaca at the Island of the Sun, carrying a golden staff called the Tapac Yauri. Inti gave one instruction: walk until the staff sinks into the earth, and there build a capital. Where the staff sank, the soil would be fertile enough for settlement. This is the account Garcilaso de la Vega preserved.

Sarmiento de Gamboa and Betanzos recorded a different beginning. At Pacaritambo, eight siblings emerged from three caves. Manco Capac and his brothers came from the central cave, Capac T'oqo, the Royal Cave. Lesser peoples emerged from the flanking openings. The siblings set out together, carrying the golden staff, but the journey would leave only one of them standing.

The Fate of the Brothers

The journey from Pacaritambo was shaped by elimination. Ayar Cachi could hurl stones from his sling hard enough to level mountains. His siblings feared him. They tricked him into returning to the cave to retrieve forgotten objects, then sealed the entrance with a boulder. From within his prison, Ayar Cachi's voice became the thunder that echoes through the Andes.

Ayar Uchu was transformed into a stone huaca at Huanacauri hill, where young nobles would later undergo initiation rites in his presence. Ayar Auca flew ahead to Cusco on wings that had sprouted from his back and turned to stone as a guardian of the future city. Manco Capac alone kept his mortal form. His brothers did not die. They became the mountains and the thunder. The sacred landscape of the Andes was made from the founders who could not finish the journey.

The Golden Staff

Manco Capac and his remaining companions traveled northward through the highlands, testing the earth with the golden staff at each stopping point. Among the founding women, Mama Huaco carried a sling with deadly aim. Sarmiento records that she killed an enemy and tore out his lungs to intimidate those who would bar the founders' passage.

At last, in a valley ringed by mountains, the golden staff sank completely into the earth. This was Qosqo. The Navel of the World. Cusco.

The Navel of the World

Manco Capac claimed the valley and gathered the scattered peoples of the region. He taught them to farm and to build in stone. He organized them into ayllus, kinship communities, and gave them laws. Mama Ocllo taught women to spin and weave, and to brew chicha, the sacred corn beer that accompanied every ceremony. He divided Cusco into Hanan and Hurin, upper and lower, and built the first temple to Inti where the Coricancha would later stand.

The First Mummy

When Manco Capac died, his body was mummified. Bernabé Cobo recorded that the mummy was kept with great reverence. His descendants maintained it as the center of a panaca, the royal kin group that preserved each ruler's lands and servants in perpetuity. At festivals, the mummy was carried out and seated alongside the living, offered food and drink, consulted through intermediaries. Dead rulers did not leave Inca society. They sat among their descendants.

His son Sinchi Roca succeeded him as the second Sapa Inca, and from that succession came twelve more rulers, each claiming descent from the Son of the Sun who first drove a golden staff into the earth at the navel of the world.