CONCLUSIONS. 



The imperfect state of several of the human skeletons found at Machu Picchu appears 

 to have been due to some cause other than the natural process of decay, and offers an 

 interesting problem in connection with the mortuary customs of the place. The most plausible 

 way of accounting for the loss of certain parts from a skeleton, as a skull, a lower jaw, 

 or bones of a limb, is on the supposition that these portions may have become separated 

 and misplaced or lost, either during the removal of the mummies from temporary mortuaries 

 to their final burial places or else during some festival, when, according to custom, the 

 mummies were taken from houses and graves, and after being washed and perhaps decked 

 in new clothes and wrappings were given places of honor as silent witnesses of various 

 ceremonies. 



There is no doubt that veneration of the dead was an important feature of religious belief 

 under Inca rule. Some of the ceremonies in which the mummies were assigned a passive 

 part are briefly described by Christoval de Molina in The Fables and Rites of the Yncas, 

 written between 1570 and 1584. He tells how the annual festival of the Situa was cele- 

 brated by the subjects of the Inca at Cuzco in the month of August, and a few passages 

 from the translation by Sir Clements Markham give a clear idea of the attention and care 

 lavished upon the bodies of the dead : 



"At the end of their feast (the first day of the festival) they returned to their houses, 

 and by that time a pudding of coarsely ground maize had been prepared called sancu and 

 clba. This they applied to their faces, to the lintels of their doors, and to the places where 

 they kept their food and clothes. Then they took the sancu to the fountains, and threw it 

 in, saying, 'May we be free from sickness and may no malady enter this house.' They 

 also sent this sancu to their relatives and friends for the same purpose, and they put it 

 on the bodies of the dead that they might enjoy the benefits of the feast." 



The foregoing evidently relates to "all the people, great and small," while the following 

 quotation refers to a part only of the population : 



"They also brought out the bodies of the dead lords and ladies which were embalmed, 

 each one being brought out by the person of the same lineage who had charge of it. 

 During the night these bodies were washed in the baths which belonged to them when 

 they were alive. They were then brought back to their houses, and warmed with the same 

 coarse pudding called sancu; and the food they had been most fond of when they were alive 

 was placed before them, and afterwards the persons who were in charge of the bodies 

 consumed the food." 



The bodies were brought out, richly adorned, and deposited in the square. "All the people 

 of Cuzco came out, according to their tribes and lineages; . . . They passed the day in 

 eating and drinking and enjoying themselves : . . . The priests came out in procession, 

 and the families of Hurin and Hanan Cuzco [Upper and Lower Cuzco] each with the 

 embalmed bodies of their ancestors. They passed that day in the manner already described, 

 and in the evening they took back the Sun and other huacas to their temples, and the 

 embalmed bodies to their houses. . . . The same feast called Sitna, was celebrated at 



