The Peruvians
were as successful as the Egyptians in the miserable attempt to
perpetuate the existence of the body beyond the limits assigned
to it by nature. *49
[Footnote 49: Ondegardo, Rel. Prim., Ms. - Garcilasso, Com.
Real., Parte 1, lib. 5, cap. 29.
The Peruvians secreted these mummies of their sovereigns after
the Conquest, that they might not be profaned by the insults of
the Spaniards. Ondegardo, when corregidor of Cuzco, discovered
five of them, three male and two female. The former were the
bodies of Viracocha, of the great Tupac Inca Yupanqui, and of his
son Huayna Capac. Garcilasso saw them in 1560. They were
dressed in their regal robes, with no insignia but the llautu on
their heads. They were in a sitting posture, and, to use his own
expression, "perfect as life, without so much as a hair or an
eyebrow wanting." As they were carried through the streets,
decently shrouded with a mantle, the Indians threw themselves on
their knees, in sign of reverence, with many tears and groans,
and were still more touched as they beheld some of the Spaniards
themselves doffing their caps, in token of respect to departed
royalty. (Ibid., ubi supra.) The bodies were subsequently removed
to Lima; and Father Acosta, who saw them there some twenty years
later, speaks of them as still in perfect preservation.]
They cherished a still stranger illusion in the attentions which
they continued to pay to these insensible remains, as if they
were instinct with life.
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