aimed at cleansing the city of ills, in August-September; and Capac Raymi,
the great festival of the sun linked to male initiation rituals at the time of the
austral summer solstice, in December.Further Reading
Molina, Cristóbal de. Account of the Fables and Rites of the Incas. http://muse.jhu.edu.ezp-
prod1.hul.harvard.edu/books/9780292729995.
———. “An Account of the Fables and Rites of the Yncas.” Translated and edited by Clements R.
Markham, 3–64. Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, no. 48. London: Hakluyt Society, 1873. New
York: Burt Franklin, 1963, 1964, and 1969.
———. Relación de las fábulas y ritos de los incas. Critical edition by Paloma Jiménez del Campo,
paleographic transcription by Paloma Cuenca Muñoz. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2010.
———. Account of the Fables and Rites of the Incas. Translated and edited by Brian S. Bauer, Vania
Smith-Oka, and Gabriel. E. Cantarutti. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011 [1575].
Urbano, Henrique Osvaldo. “Molina, Cristóbal de (ca. 1529–1585).” In Guide to Documentary Sources
for Andean Studies, 1530–1900, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, vol. 3, 427–28. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 2008.
Zuidema, R. T. “The Sidereal Lunar Calendar of the Incas.” In Archaeoastronomy in the New World,
edited by Anthony F. Aveni, 59–107. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.
■GARY URTONMUMMIES, ROYAL
Although ancestor worship in the Andes is an ancient practice predating the
Incas by several millennia, it is best known from the Inca cult of the royal
mummies, thanks in large part to Spanish eyewitnesses who saw the mummies
playing an active role in the lives of the living. Panacas (the royal descent
groups established during a ruler’s lifetime) were responsible for preserving the
memory of their ancestors as well as “the cult of his body and the sustenance of
the family,” according to the chronicler Bernabé Cobo, and they “adored the
body as a god” (Cobo 1979 [1653]). The panacas owned vast tracts of land in
Cuzco and environs (see Estates, Royal), causing Huascar, Atahualpa’s brother,
to complain that the dead had the best of everything in the land. When the
mummies were not holding court at Cuzco’s Sun temple or engaged in
celebrations in the city’s main square, they retired to their country estates.