A carved rock surrounded by a curved wall at the Torreón temple, Machu Picchu,
Peru. The structure may have served as a celestial observatory. Adriana von
Hagen.Inca worship of the Sun (Inti) was a central feature of Inca state religion, as the
Inca himself was considered to be the Son of the Sun, while his wife, the Coya
(queen) was considered to be descended from the Moon (Quilla) (see Deities;
Religion). While solar and lunar worship were central elements in Inca religion,
ritual, and politics, the celestial bodies of the sun and moon themselves were
observed closely, especially for calendrical purposes. Chroniclers inform us that
a series of pillars for viewing the annual (apparent) north/south movement of the
sun was constructed on the hilltops around Cuzco. The accounts of the
arrangement and spacing between the sun pillars vary considerably in the
various sources, and there have been many attempts to reconstruct the system of
solar observations in the capital. Pillars would certainly have marked the two
solar extremes, the solstices, but it is unclear from the testimony exactly how the
additional pillars were arrayed, or precisely what they were intended to mark.
Inca astronomers also closely observed the moon. The two periods of the
synodic lunar cycle (the 29.5 days of the lunar phases) and the sidereal lunar
cycle (the 27.3 days of the moon’s monthly north/south movement) appear to
have been integrated with the period of the sun’s annual movement into the Inca