378 ASHMEAD—HUACOS POTTERIES OF OLD PERU. (Nov. sf 7 
TESTIMONY OF THE HUACOS (MUMMY-GRAVE) POT- — 
TERIES OF OLD PERU. 
BY ALBERT S. ASHMEAD, M.D. 
(Read November 20, 1903.) 
When we search the cemeteries of old Peru, we find by the side 
of every mummy a number of objects which are useful for him. — 
His pious hands have withia ready reach whatever is needed for his 
eternal voyage. Drink being indispensable in a country of so 
much dryness as Peru, good care was taken to place convenient to — 
his hands a quantity of water or wine vessels to appease thirst. 
These clay vessels have human form and give rise to our admira- 
tion, just as do the statuettes of the Egyptian tombs or the earthen 
Cuites found in those of Tanagras among the Greeks. 
Historians agree in recognizing in these Egyptian and Grecian — 
images the doudb/e or duplicate or soul which survives the departed. 
Death was definite only if these statuettes disappeared. 
The belief in a soul, very widespread among every eo 
existed in Peru. And to satisfy it these people found it convenient 
to transform the drinking vessel into a sow/, that is to say, an image — . 
resembling the deceased. Besides, these little rotteries had reality — 3 
pleasing to the artist. The varieties of them are great, representing 
the child, the woman, the old man, the fat, the lean, the noble and 
the poor man, with every expression of physiognomy, as sorrow, 
joy, anger, etc. Occasionally the figures have pendants on the 
ears or the nasal septum perforated for the introduction of a ring. 
This last character of figure is in the Museum of the Trocadero, — 
Paris. 
Some of these potteries show signs of diseases. I have seen one — 
representing a double hare-lip. Syphilitic and lupoid (wolf- — 
cancer) lesions are very frequently shown on the faces, especially — . 
the nose and upper lip. We know that these diseases existed — 
in America long before the time of Columbus, and some eminent — 
scientists have made the mistake to believe that because the former 
disease was very widespread, so common that the old Mexicans had 
deified it by incarnation into a god (Nanahuatl), that it was carried _ 
first to Europe by returning Spaniards. But this is a great mistake, — 
for Virchow shows that this disease had existed in Europe certainly — 
as early as 1472. And Raymond, of Paris, who dug up the bones of 
