Note 212 — Chapter IV · THE PROTO-CHALCITIC OR COPPER AGE OF WEAPONS.
Reading edition
It was divided, like the Greek and Roman, into centuries (
pachacas
), chiliarchies (
hurangos
), and inspectorships (
tokrikrok
), generally under royalties. The organisation was due to the Ynka Inti-Kapak (the Great),
b.c.
1500–1600. There was a large fleet (‘magna colcharum classis’) of ships not smaller than the contemporary European, ‘navigiis velificantur nihili vestris minoribus,’ says P. Martyr (
Decad.
ii. lib. 3). Neither traveller nor historian has explained how this mighty organisation crumbled to pieces at the touch of a few European adventurers.
I have read with interest the able work of M. Vicente F. Lopez, Les Races Aryennes du Pérou (Paris: Franck, 1871): he derives the word from Pirhua, the first Ynka deified to a Creator. He adopts (p. 17) against Garcilasso de la Vega, who gave the Ynkarial Empire 400 years, the opinions of the learned Dr. Fernando Montésinos el Visitador, of the later sixteenth century, who is set aside by Markham, Narratives of the Yncas (Hakluyt, 1873). Montésinos derives the Peruvians from Armenia five centuries after ‘the Flood,’ and assigns 4,000 years with 101 emperors to the dynasty; it begins with Manko Kapak, son of Pirhua Manko; and Sinchi Roka (No. xcv. of Montésinos) is Garcilasso’s official founder (p. 25).
But I cannot follow M. Lopez in his theories of ‘Aryanism’ (Zend and Sanskrit) or ‘Turanianism’ (Chinese and Tartar). The Quichua wants the peculiar Hindu cerebrals (which linger in English), and lacks the ‘l,’ so common in ‘Indo-European’ speech; ‘Lima,’ for instance, should be ‘Rima.’ It has no dual, and no distinction between masculine and feminine. But with the licence which M. Lopez allows himself, any language might be derived from any other. For instance, chinka from sinha, ‘the lion’ (p. 138); hakchikis = hashish, ‘intoxicating herb’; kekenti, ‘humming-bird,’ from kvan, ‘to hum’; huahua, ‘son,’ from su, ‘to engender,’ sunus, &c., (when in Egypt we have su); and mama, ‘mother,’ from mata, μήτηρ, mater, when we have mut and mute in Nile-land. For mara, ‘to kill,’ ‘death,’ the old Coptic preserves mer, meran, ‘to die’; and for mayu, ‘water,’ mu.
I thus prefer the monosyllabic Egyptian for Quichua roots, noting the two forms of pronoun, isolated (nyoka = I = anuk) and affixed (huahua-í, ‘my son;’ huahua-ki, ‘thy son;’ huahua-u, ‘his son’). The heliolatry of the Andes was that of the Nile Valley; Kon is the Egyptian Tum, ‘the setting sun.’ The god Papacha wears on his head the scarabæus of Ptah, or Creative Might. The pyramids and megalithic buildings are also Nilotic. The pottery shows three several styles, Egyptian, Etruscan, and Pelasgic. The population was divided into the four Egyptian castes (p. 396), priests (mankos and amautas), soldiers (aucas, aukas), peasants (uyssus), and shepherds or nomads (chakis). According to Cieza de Leon (p. 197) they thought more of the building and adorning of their tombs than of their houses; their mummies were protected by little idols, and the corpse carried the ferryman’s fee. The pyramid of Copan (Yucatan), 122 feet high, with its 6-feet steps, is that of Sakkarah. The Yucatan beard in statues is Pharaohic. The elephant-trunk ornaments (Stephens, ii. 156) are Indo-Chinese. The geese-breeding (ii. 179) is Egyptian. See also the Toltec legend of the House of Israel (ii. 172).