Inca mythology Inca mythology of the Inca Empire was based on pre-Inca beliefs that can be found in the Huarochirí Manuscript, and in pre-Inca cultures including Chavín, Paracas, Moche, and the Nazca culture. The mythology informed and supported Inca re ...

, one of the main Incan creation myths was that of the Ayar Brothers, who emerged from a cave called Paqariq Tampu (also spelled Paqariqtampu) (

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 ...

''paqariy'' 'to dawn, to be born', ''-q'' a

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

, '' tampu'' 'inn, lodge'; hispanicized and mixed spellings ''Pacaritambo, Paccarectambo, Paccarec Tambo, Paccarictambo, Paccaric Tambo, Paqariq Tambo, Paccaritambo''). This "house of production" was located on the hill called Tampu T'uqu (Quechua ''t'uqu'' 'niche, hole or gap in the wall', today also the modern word for 'window'; hispanicized ''Tambotoco, Tamputoco''). It had three windows. According to the myth, the tribe of Maras emerged from one of the niches, called Maras T'uqu ''(Maras tocco)'' by spontaneous generation. The tribe of Tampus emerged from the ''sut'i t'uqu'' window. Manco Capac, his three Ayar brothers, and his four Mama sisters, emerged from the chief window in the middle, the ''qhapaq t'uqu''.de Gamboa, P.S., 2015, History of the Incas, Lexington,

Pachacuti Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, also called Pachacútec (), was the ninth Sapa Inca of the Chiefdom of Cusco, which he transformed into the Inca Empire (). Most archaeologists now believe that the famous Inca site of Machu Picchu was built as an ...

visited the site and "venerated the locality and showed his feeling by festivals and sacrifices. He placed doors of gold on the window qhapaq tu'uqu, and ordered that from that time forward the locality should be venerated by all, making it a prayer place and '' wak'a'', whither to go to pray for oracles and to sacrifice."

References

G. Urton, The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Inkas (Univ. of Texas Press, 1990) Inca mythology Department of Cusco Indigenous American philosophy {{SouthAm-myth-stub