Encyclopedia of the Incas

Because of the temple’s wealth and grandeur, many chroniclers devoted long
passages to its description. Cieza de León, who saw it sixteen years after it was
first ransacked by Spanish soldiers, called it one of the richest temples in the
whole world. The complex housed the “hall of the sun” and several “chapels,”
according to the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega. Other chroniclers say images
of the Creator deity, the Sun, and Illapa, the thunder god, shared the
Coricancha’s main “altar,” suggesting that the three may have been worshipped
as different aspects of a single solar deity (see Deities; Religion). The Villac
Umu, the high priest of the Sun, presided over the Coricancha. Every year, for
instance, when the sovereign summoned portable versions of the empire’s
leading huacas (shrines) to Cusco for an oracular congress, the Villac Umu, the
empire’s highest ranking medium, served as the voice of the Sun (see Oracles).
A single entryway led into the complex, which may have contained as few as
four, and as many as seven, rectangular halls surrounding a central courtyard. (A
Dominican church and cloister, built over and around the Coricancha in Colonial
times, has obscured or destroyed many Inca walls.) The enclosing wall of the
temple complex features one of the most superb constructions in Tahuantinsuyu,
a curved wall of andesite. “In all Spain,” wrote Cieza, “I have seen nothing that
can compare with these walls” (Cieza 1959 [1553]).
Only three Spaniards, dispatched from Cajamarca to Cuzco in early 1533 to
hasten the shipment of gold to secure the captured ruler Atahualpa’s release, saw
the temple before its plunder (see Invasion, Spanish). Some chroniclers would
have us believe that gold sheet covered the entire compound, but the earliest
account states that only the façade of the hall of the sun was sheathed in gold,
while on the side that was shaded from the sun, the gold was “more debased.” It
is reported that the three Spaniards used crowbars to remove 700 gold plates
from the hall of the Sun.
In the Coricancha’s central courtyard, eyewitnesses observed a stone carved in
the shape of a seat and covered in gold, a gold basin, and next to it an image
shaped like a young boy, called Punchao (day, or young Sun), all made of gold.
Dressed in a tunic of fine cloth and wearing the mascaypacha, the Inca “crown”
and symbol of kingship, Punchao’s hollow stomach contained the ashes of
deceased rulers’ internal organs. At a noon ceremony, women uncovered the seat
and offered the image maize, meat, and chicha (maize beer). At night, Punchao
“slept” in a small room on a seat covered in iridescent feathers. The Coricancha
also housed a silver image of Quilla, the Moon goddess. The mummies of the
deceased rulers and their queens were seated on benches at the Coricancha when