Ushnu


In the Inca Empire the ushnu was an altar for cults to the deities, a throne for the Sapa Inca, an elevated place for judgment and a reviewing stand of military command. In several cases the ushnu may have been used as a solar observatory.
Ushnus mark the center of plazas of the Inca administrative centers all along the highland path of the Inca road system.
The ushnu had also the function of a basin with a drain for libations. During the most important Inca festivals such as the Situa in Cusco, the capital of the Inca empire, the emperor poured chicha into the top basin as an offer to his father the Sun god and those who attended the ceremonies could drink it at a lower outlet. Sacrifices were also held in proximity of or at the ushnu.
While in the capital the ushnu was the axis of the Inca ceremonies, in the provinces of the empire they represented the central power and had a public role and were generally quite large structures, bigger than the ushnu in Cusco.
The shape of the ushnu varied in the vast extension of the Inca conquered territory. The one in Cusco, considered to be the center of the whole empire, was a sugarloaf-shaped stone pillar, covered with gold. In the administrative centers, the ushnus had the shape of elevated platforms or truncated pyramids with one or more superposed platforms and a stairway climbing to the top. Some ushnus, which have been the object of archaeological excavations, showed the existence of basins with drainage systems.
file:Chinchero PumaQaqa shrine ushnu DSC 3149.jpg|thumb|The Pumaqaqa carved stone in Chinchero was an elevated throne and ushnu standing on the side of the plaza
It has been suggested by some scholars that Intihuatanas, such as those found in Inca royal estates of Pisac and Tipón, and carved stones in Machu Picchu, Chincero and Sacsayhuamán could have been ushnus, due their use as seats and altars for religious cults.
As a social marker the ushnu provided an elevated position for the high level Inca nobility while common and non-Inca people stayed in a lower position in the plaza.
Notable ushnus are found in Vilcashuamán, Huánuco Pampa, Chinchero the three of them in Peru and Samaipata in Bolivia and Shincal de Quimivil in northern Argentina.

History

The truncated pyramids and the circular pillar with a basin−pit system found during the archaeological surveys in Caral date back to the Andean preceramic period and represent mountain and water cult symbols. After passing through the Chavín culture in the Early Horizon and the Tiwanaku culture in the Middle Horizon they might have become the Inca ushnu.
According to the chronicle of Guamán Poma de Ayala it was the Inca emperor Pachacuti Inca Yupanquy who ordered the construction of a throne for him in every district of his empire.
Ushnus are mentioned by the chroniclers who described the Inca empire in the 16th century, among them Francisco Xerez, Pedro Cieza de León, Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala and Juan de Betanzos.
According to the chronicle of Francisco de Xerez in 1532 Francisco Pizarro, reached Cajamarca, where the Inca emperor Atahualpa was quartered with his troops. There, in the middle of the city plaza, Pizarro saw what he called a fortress. He climbed it and could spot a multitude of Incan soldier in the fields, thus he ordered his four small cannons to be hidden on the top of the fortress to get ready for the attack. Then an Indian came, in the name of Atahualpa, telling the Spanish soldiers to settle where they wished except at the fortress, which was their sacred ushnu. They disobeyed and the first shots to the Inca's men, that started the Battle of Cajamarca, were shot from the top of the ushnu. Unfortunately that ushnu no longer exists.
The earliest depictions of ushnus are found in the drawing by Guamán Poma de Ayala at folios 240, 242, 386 and 400. They are found in Cajamarca, Cusco and Vilcashuamán and he calls them usno while representing them as truncated step pyramids.
Other images of ushnu platforms are found in the drawings and books by 19th century explorers such as Léonce Angrand Ephraim George Squier, and Charles Wiener.
file:Ushnu of Huanuco Viejo by Charles Wiener.jpg|thumb|Ushnu of Huanuco Viejo by Charles Wiener
file:Ushnu of Vilcashaman_Leonce Angrand.jpg|thumb|Ushnu of Vilcashuamán by Léonce Angrand

Origin of the name

Little is known of the Quechua root of the term ushnu. The Quechua−Spanish dictionaries were produced since a few years after the conquest by the Spaniards and they include the word ushnu although written with obsolete spelling.
  • The first of them was produced by Domingo de Santo Tomás in 1560. It includes the term ozño with the meaning of «altar for sacrifices where they sacrifice»
  • The dictionary by Diego González Holguín was published in 1609 and gives the translation of vsnu in two different ways, underlining two possible uses: «Judge's Court stone stuck in the ground» and «Cairn when it is a large stuck stone»
  • In 1612 the Aymara dictionary by Ludovico Bertonio describes the tern hushnu as «an altar as it is seen in the punas»
  • The priest Cristóbal de Albornoz at the end of the 16th century in his instructions for discovering idolatry describes the ushnu as follows: «there is another waka called usno on royal roads and in the squares of the settlements»
  • According to Catherine Allen, professor emeritus of Anthropology at the George Washington University and to R. Tom Zuidema, late anthropologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the current use of the Quechua word usnu seems to be related to the word suck, chupar in Spanish.
  • Pino Matos, Peruvian archaeologist, states that in the Department of Ancash the contemporary word ushnu refers to «a place made of stones where water can filter» to the ground. This meaning was then extended to «a place where liquids were offered or place of libations».
  • Moreover, Pino Matos states that the name ushnu was first proposed in 1965 by the Peruvian anthropologist Manuel Chávez Ballón during a project carried out by the Institute of Andean Research and directed by John Victor Murra. He suggested that the ceremonial platform in the center of the Huánuco Pampa plaza had to be called ushnu according to the local Quechua pronunciation. Then starting from the 1970s the term was currently used by the archaeologist to name altars and platforms existing in the Inca settlements.
The ushnu existing in Cusco used to be a place of ceremonial offers, where the liquid poured as an offer into an upper container could drain down to avoid spilling: this way the deity to whom the liquids were offered appeared to be drinking. When the ushnus were built in the new conquered areas, where they adopted the physical form of platforms or pyramids, a drainage was emplaced together with a stairway and in some cases a seat on the top.

Uses of the ushnu

The different uses of the ushnus can be summarized as follows

Structure

Except the Cusco ushnu, which was never described by the chronicles as a platform, practically all the other masonry ushnus are platforms either stepped or in a truncated pyramid shape. On the contrary the natural carved stone may have very different shapes depending on the original rock outcrop, with one common point: the seat or throne on top of it.
The structure of built ushnus is made of stone. Some of the masonry is well worked imperial Inca style with big blocks, but most of the ushnus have a rustic style, also known as pirca style, with pirca meaning wall in Quechua.
Different authors define the usnhu in different ways.
  • Morris states «ushnus are stone buildings in the shape of a platform or truncated pyramid».
  • Bauer says it is «a platform as a truncated pyramid with an access or a stairway to reach its top where a seat or a stone block may exist».
  • Cavero Palomino gives a more detailed definition: «an architectural structure with rectangular plan having up to four over-posed platforms that have an access in the frontal part and had different functions according to the place in which they were built».
  • Gasparini & Margolies define the ushnu form the architectural point of view as «The Usñu was a five-tiered pyramid or simply a rectangular elevation where the Inca —in other cases the governor—sat to govern and judge. It seems that the Usñu was the symbol of power and government of the Incas in the conquered towns»
  • Last but not least Zuidema tries to provide a different view, based on the function: the ushnu «is basin or fountain associated to a gnomon which can be considered the axis mundi for the cult of ancestors, the wakas and other deities of the Andean cosmic world»

    World view and unification

For the Incas, the world was composed of three planes:
In Quechua the word pacha means both time and space. Thus the Sapa Inca or his representative, on top of the ushnu, was seating in a central position connecting all the sacred ceques directions. This represented a three-dimensional and a temporal connection between the world below and the surface, with an eye to the sky.
Hyslop states that the ushnus were a form to unite the Inca capital to the provincial and administrative centers of the empire. This strategy was working through the Capacocha ceremonies which took place on top of or beside the ushnus and «connected the point of sacrifice with the child's origin by straight routes».
There was also a desire, through these representations during the Capacocha to symbolically connect the sacred sites of the conquered territories to those properly Inca, making this celebration probably the greatest of the ceremonies performed in the Inca empire.
The ushnu as a well recognizable character of Inca architecture represented one of the main symbols of the central power in peripheral settlements and administrative centers. As a sort of theatricality of power the ushnu was intended to produce a uniform collective consciousness that allowed all person subjected to the Inca to feel connected to the astral deities and to the sacred places. This was primarily intended to ensure ideological domination over the multitudes of newly subjugated peoples in the recently conquered territories.
With reference to Huánuco Pampa, Morris observes that the Inca state architecture which imposed central plazas dominated by an ushnu «can be compared in many ways to a huge stage to be used by the state for the integration of a fragmented interior area. In addition to providing housing for people and economic activities, the architecture provided a way through which divisions and combinations could be manipulated by the Inca. In part the architectural backdrop was symbolic, but a final effect in terms of architecture is that it really can and does shape human activities and relationships».