Among the many exquisite metal objects made by Sicán goldsmiths were thousands of gold and silver beakers or cups. The numbers created are incalculable, as the vessels have been looted en masse, for example from Batán Grande at least from the 1930s until the 1980s—the thieves first employed spades, then bulldozers.¹ From evidence gleaned by the archaeologist Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech:

cups were placed in the four corners of high-ranking burial chambers and piled up to form columns. A single tomb might contain as many as about two hundred cups, grouped in columns of ten cups each, arranged according to cups of the same form, weight, size and iconography … organized in pairs.²

Decorated with bands, embossed with patterns or animal motifs, often bearing the likeness of the Sicán ancestor deity Naymlap, the kero-shaped beakers were sometimes inlaid with semi-precious stones (cat. 134). Other portrait or face cups were also made (see cats 135, 194). They were almost certainly used in life as well as being interred with the noble dead:

Deceased members of the Sicán aristocracy in Lambayeque were buried seated, within their funerary fardos [mummy bundles] with gold or gilt crowns and masks, as well as artificial arms and hands bearing gold or tumbaga [alloy] cups decorated with motifs associated with Naymlap.³

Christine Dixon

1. See Roger Atwood, ‘The rape of Batán Grande’, Archaeology, vol. 60, no. 4, July/August 2007, pp. 29–33.

2. Luisa Maria Vetter Parodi, ‘Beverages, music and libations in pre-Columbian rituals: Cups as guiding elements’, in Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech (ed.), Inca: Origins and mysteries of the civilisation of gold, Venice: Marsilio 2010, p. 150, citing Paloma Carcedo and Izumi Shimada, ‘Behind the golden mask: Sicán gold artifacts from Batán Grande, Peru’, in Julie Jones (ed.), Art of Precolumbian gold: Jan Mitchell Collection, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1985, pp. 60–75.

3. Carlos G. Elera Arévalo, ‘Cosmovision models in the Central Andes in the pre-Columbian period’, in Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech (ed.), p. 96.

Among the many exquisite metal objects made by Sicán goldsmiths were thousands of gold and silver beakers or cups. The numbers created are incalculable, as the vessels have been looted en masse, for example from Batán Grande at least from the 1930s until the 1980s—the thieves first employed spades, then bulldozers.¹ From evidence gleaned by the archaeologist Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech:

cups were placed in the four corners of high-ranking burial chambers and piled up to form columns. A single tomb might contain as many as about two hundred cups, grouped in columns of ten cups each, arranged according to cups of the same form, weight, size and iconography … organized in pairs.²

Decorated with bands, embossed with patterns or animal motifs, often bearing the likeness of the Sicán ancestor deity Naymlap, the kero-shaped beakers were sometimes inlaid with semi-precious stones (cat. 134). Other portrait or face cups were also made (see cats 135, 194). They were almost certainly used in life as well as being interred with the noble dead:

Deceased members of the Sicán aristocracy in Lambayeque were buried seated, within their funerary fardos [mummy bundles] with gold or gilt crowns and masks, as well as artificial arms and hands bearing gold or tumbaga [alloy] cups decorated with motifs associated with Naymlap.³

Christine Dixon

1. See Roger Atwood, ‘The rape of Batán Grande’, Archaeology, vol. 60, no. 4, July/August 2007, pp. 29–33.

2. Luisa Maria Vetter Parodi, ‘Beverages, music and libations in pre-Columbian rituals: Cups as guiding elements’, in Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech (ed.), Inca: Origins and mysteries of the civilisation of gold, Venice: Marsilio 2010, p. 150, citing Paloma Carcedo and Izumi Shimada, ‘Behind the golden mask: Sicán gold artifacts from Batán Grande, Peru’, in Julie Jones (ed.), Art of Precolumbian gold: Jan Mitchell Collection, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1985, pp. 60–75.

3. Carlos G. Elera Arévalo, ‘Cosmovision models in the Central Andes in the pre-Columbian period’, in Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech (ed.), p. 96.