Over the course of the sixteenth century, Spaniards in Peru heard various versions of the Inca myth of origins. The myth describes the journey of four (or three) brothers and their sisters from a place referred to as Pacariqtambo to Cuzco, the future capital of the Inca empire. The Spaniards found the story unsatisfactory because they were unable to extract from it any reasonable historical content. During the last thirty years or so, Andeanists (Rowe, Urbano, and Zuidema, among others) have investigated the social, calendrical, and geographical meanings of the different versions of the myth for clues to what could be learned about the capital of Cuzco, the place where the brothers arrived. Gary Urton is the first to examine what the myth can tell us about the place they were said to have come from.
The book is based on a rigorous and clear-headed reading of the available published sources, on a careful review of documents (the most important of which is in private hands) relating to Pacariqtambo, and on years of field work in the Cuzco region. The results are truly impressive. Beginning at Pacariqtambo amounts to reading several of the most detailed available versions of the Inca myth of origins from the vantage point of the men who recounted these versions to Spaniards. This recounting—as Urton shows—was not an exercise in “objective” narration of a fixed text but an attempt to gain privileges within the newly created viceregal state. From here, Urton proceeds to an analysis of the historical and political geography of the region of Pacariqtambo that is described in the myth and concludes with a discussion of the relevance to his theme of a set of pilgrimage rituals currently performed in that region.
Our understanding of Inca, colonial, and contemporary Andean culture and religion depends significantly on how we define the relation between myth and history on the one hand and the interface between oral and written traditions on the other. Urton has made a significant contribution to the formulation of these issues. In addition, his description of religious syncretism breaks new ground. For Andeanists, the book will be indispensable for some time to come. There are a lot of technical intricacies here: they are handled with exemplary economy and lucidity. One can thus say with confidence that this elegant, sober, and beautifully reflective book repays reading far beyond the limits of Andean studies.
