known as the sidereal lunar cycle. In order to represent the sequence of months
based on the sidereal lunar cycle, the calendar specialists appear to have
registered units of 82 days organized in rows of 27 + 27 + 28 (= 82) days. As the
textile calendar could register only alternate rows of 27 and 28 days, this annual
sidereal lunar calendar organized the rows of squares as follows: 28 27 28 27 28
27 28 27 27 27 27 27 = 328 (= 4 × 82). A fragment of another female mantle
shows part of a calendar that, in its reconstruction, probably included 13 rows of
28 squares each giving a total of 364 (= 13 × 28) squares, one unit short of the
number of days in the solar (or stellar) year. As all rows in this textile calendar
round off the number 27.3 to 28, this appears to have been a sidereal calendar. It
is interesting to note that there is little evidence in the Inca calendar of the use of
the synodic lunar cycle (29.5 days), the base for monthly periods in European
calendars.
Further Reading
Urton, Gary. “A Calendrical and Demographic Tomb Text from Northern Peru.” Latin American Antiquity
12, no. 2: 127–47, 2001.
Zuidema, R. Tom. “The Inca Calendar.” In Native American Astronomy, edited by Anthony F. Aveni, 219–
- Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977.
———. “A Quipu Calendar from Ica, Peru, with a Comparison to the Ceque Calendar from Cuzco.” In
World Archaeoastronomy, edited by Anthony F. Aveni, 341–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
———. El calendario inca: Tiempo y espacio en la organización ritual del Cuzco: La idea del pasado.
Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú and Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica
del Perú, 2010.
———. “Chuquibamba Textiles and Their Interacting Systems of Notation: The Case of Multiple Exact
Calendars.” In Their Way of Writing. Scripts, Signs, and Pictographies in Pre-Columbian America, edited
by Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gary Urton, 251–75. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library
and Collection, 2011.
■R. TOM ZUIDEMA
CAPAC HUCHA
Glossed as “royal or sacred obligation” and also spelled capac cocha or
capacocha, the ritual event of a Capac Hucha was a gift-bearing procession
composed of young boys and girls, as well as young women, destined for
sacrifice at select shrines, often located on high mountaintops. Before the
processions departed Cuzco, the participants took part in an elaborate ritual and
“blessing” by the ruler, the deities, and the mummies of the deceased Incas.
Capac Hucha sacrifices linked Cuzco, the center, with the outermost confines of
the empire, from the snow-clad volcanoes of Collasuyu and Cuntisuyu, to
islands off the coast of Chinchaysuyu.