Note 93 — Chapter XI

Twenty years after this was written, the Licentiate Polo de Ondegardo discovered where five of these figures were concealed, which proved to be the actual mummies of the Yncas and their wives, dressed in their clothes. Ondegardo, who was corregidor of Cuzco, showed them to Garcilasso de la Vega in 1570. One mummy was that of the Ynca Uira-ccocha; the second of Tupac Ynca Yupanqui; the third of Huayna Ccapac; the fourth of Mama Runtu, queen of Uira-ccocha; the fifth of Ccoya Mama Ocllo, mother of Huayna Ccapac. They were perfect, wanting neither hair, nor eye-lashes, and were dressed in the clothes they wore when alive, with the llautu or fringe. They were seated with the arms crossed on the breast, and eyes cast down.

Acosta, who also saw them, says that the eyes were made of small pellets of gold, “so well imitated that no one would have missed the real ones”. The mummies were taken to Lima by order of the Viceroy Marquis of Cañete, and eventually interred there, at the hospital of San Andres.