Mama Qucha or Mama Cocha (

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several Indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, an Indigenous South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language ...

: "Mother Sea" , "Mother Lake", or just "sea") is the ancient

Incan The Inca Empire, officially known as the Realm of the Four Parts (, ), was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The Inca civilisation rose fr ...

goddess of sea and fishes, guardian of sailors and fishermen, wife of Wiraqucha, mother of

Inti Inti is the ancient Inca mythology, Inca solar deity, sun god. He is revered as the national Tutelary deity, patron of the Inca state. Although most consider Inti the sun god, he is more appropriately viewed as a cluster of solar aspects, since t ...

and

Mama Killa Mama Quilla ( Quechua "Mother Moon", Hispanicized spelling ''Mama Quilla''), in Inca mythology and religion, was the third power and goddess of the moon. She was the older sister and wife of Inti, daughter of Viracocha and mother of Manco C� ...

. She was commonly worshipped to calm rough waters and to obtain good fishing, and was considered one of the four Elemental Mothers (the others being Pachamama, Mama Nina, and Mama Wayra). The word ''mama'' in ''Mama Qucha'' comes from the Quechua language, where it means "mother"; this usage predates Spanish contact and appears widely in names of Andean deities such as Pachamama and Mama Quilla. Along with Mama Quilla (the Moon) and Pachamama, she constituted the Incan lunar trinity. In some regions of

empire An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outpost (military), outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a hegemony, dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the ...

people believed she was the goddess of all

bodies of water A body of water or waterbody is any significant accumulation of water on the surface of Earth or another planet. The term most often refers to oceans, seas, and lakes, but it includes smaller pools of water such as ponds, wetlands, or more ra ...

, including lakes, rivers, and even human-made water sources. Mama Qucha was more important to people living beside the coastal regions due to nearness and dependence upon the sea. Inca beliefs in Mama Qucha and other water deities indicate that the people back then understood the basics of the

hydrological cycle The water cycle (or hydrologic cycle or hydrological cycle) is a biogeochemical cycle that involves the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth across different reservoirs. The mass of water on Earth remains fai ...

. They knew the

seawater Seawater, or sea water, is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% (35 g/L, 35 ppt, 600 mM). This means that every kilogram (roughly one liter by volume) of seawater has approximat ...

was replenishing the rain, which then fell over the ground. Wife of the supreme god Wiraqucha and mother of Inti and Mama Quilla, Mama Qucha was also the deity that represented all that was feminine and, in the same way, gave balance to the known world. She was often identified with the very rainwater that falls to fertilize the earth. Another important point is that Mama Qucha inhabited the "world above", that is, the Hanan Pacha. In the Inca empire, the universe was conceived to be composed of three aspects or planes complementary to each other: Uku pacha (world below), Kay pacha (world of the present) and Hanan pacha (world above). Mama Qucha inhabited the last one together with the righteous people and other Inca gods such as: Wiraqucha, Inti and Mama Quilla, among others. An ancient Inca legend tells that Mama Qucha was the daughter of the Sun and the Moon. She was also sister of "Inca" (the Son of the Sun) and physically she was described as a pale and beautiful young woman, sent from heaven with her brother to teach people to live and work in peace and love. The people, upon meeting her, recognized her as their protective mother and under her and Inca's guidance they made houses and roads, temples and fortresses. Thus they tilled the earth, which soon bore fruit.

References

{{deity-stub Inca goddesses Water goddesses