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INCA GOLD
Associated to Place: articles -- by * Moonbeam MorningStar (38 Articles), Historical Article 1 Featured June 23 , 2008
What did gold mean to the Incas? It wasn't what you might think.


Just say the words "Inca" or "Cuzco" and the next word to pop into your head might be "El Dorado". There are still rumors today of a hidden city of gold somewhere near Cuzco because even though the Spaniards looted the Incan treasures and took away as much as they could carry, the greed for gold was never satisfied. When the Spanish came to Cuzco, the same Inca craftsmen who created the incredible temple ornaments, idols, goblets and jewelry to forced to work melting down these objects into ingots that were easy to carry away and trade. In the end, gold was the ruin of the empire.

All of the Inca gold was found in the form of nuggets or panned out as flakes from the mountain rivers. There were no mines. The ore was smelted with charcoal and bellows. The art of goldsmithing was probably first practiced and perfected by metalworkers of the Chimu Kingdom, who in turn taught others.

What did gold mean to the Incan people? You may be surprised.

There is a story told by the 16th century Inca historian, Garcilaso de la Vega, about how a rod of gold from the Sun God himself led to the founding of the city of Cuzco.

Seeing the condition they were in (living like wild beasts with neither order nor religion) our Father the Sun was ashamed for them and he decided to send one of his sons and one of his daughters from heaven to earth in order that they might teach men how to adore him and acknowledge him as their god...Our Father the Sun set his two children down at Lake Titicaca and he gave them a rod of gold a little shorter than a man's arm and two fingers in thickness.

"Go where you will," he said to them, "and wherever you stop to eat or sleep, plunge this rod into the earth. At the spot where with a single thrust it disappears entirely, there you must establish and hold your court. And the peoples whom you will have brought under your swayu shall be maintained by you in a state of justice and reason, with pity, mercy and mildness.

Having thus declared his will to his two children, our Father the Sun dismissed them. Then they left Lake Titicaca and walked northwards, trying vainly each day to thrust the rod of gold into the earth...

Finally the Inca and his bride entered into the Cuzco Valley...there they tried their rod and not onlyh did it sink into the earth but it disappeared entirely...thus our imperial city came into existence."

 To the Inca, gold was the sweat of the sun and silver was the tears of the moon. They loved to see these two precious metals shining everywhere they looked, especially gold. It is astonishing to think of entire houses, even down to the bathtubs, made of gold. Gold was amassed in Cuzco in unbelievably vast quantities. Chiefs and governors brought gifts of gold to the royal Inca when they were guests of the realm. Finely crafted gold objects were also given when the Inca visited the many, ever-expanding provinces of the kingdom. Every day more and more gold poured into Cuzco until it became the "richest" city in the so-called New World.

But neither the Incas nor their subjects ever needed to buy anything. Taxes sustained the empire in the form of tributes paid - but not in gold. There was no such thing as money. The population of about twelve million paid their taxes in about a billion man-hours a year of work. There were temples and fortresses to be built, farming terraces to be constructed and maintained, roads to be laid out. Payment was given in clothing and food.

It was against the law to take gold (or silver) out of Cuzco, and unthinkable to "spend" it because it was a sacred substance, used only for things that would please the deeply aesthetic Incan eye for beauty and, through that, reflect the glory of the Heart of Fire - the Sun God - who entrusted them with the safekeeping of this radiant stuff. The official imperial religion was the cult of the Sun God. Under law, all gold was kept in the stewardship of the divine emperor who used it only in ceremonial items, decorations for the temples and tombs, and to reward loyalty. No one could "own" gold. It was never used for buying or selling, and had no commercial value.

Among the highest Inca values were not great wealth or riches but beauty and sensual pleasures. Author William H. Prescott wrote that the Incas "loved to retreat and solace themselves with the society of their favorite concubines, wandering amidst groves and airy gardens that shed their soft, intoxicating odors and lulled the senses to voluptuous repose. Here, too, they loved to indulge in the luxury of their baths, replenished by streams of crystal waters which were conducted through subterraneous silver channels into basins of gold."

Gold was holy, the highest of all earthly substances because it contained and reflected the essence of the Sun. The Spaniards obviously had a different view of gold, and when they came to Cuzco and demanded it, it was simply given to them. That wasn't enough, though, and having a share of gold only produced a greed for more and more.

"Now, Cuzco had one palace, a temple of the sun, with a garden of gold. Everything, but everything, in this garden was made of solid gold: trees, plants, flowers, rocks, butterflies. The fame of Cuzco, as the ‘golden city’ was tremendous, but to the Spaniards it was still not enough and they began torturing the people, hoping to find out where El Dorado, the Land of Gold, could be found....

And the rest, sadly, is history.


References:

Graphic courtesy of Rediscover Machu Picchu

Heaven's Mirror: Quest for the Lost Civilization by Graham Hancock

Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations edited by Arthur Cotterall

www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6502/incaempi.htm
Hearth
Posted Jun 12, 2008 - 07:46 , Last Edited: Jun 23, 2008 - 22:58











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