Funerary mask
This mask was made of an alloy of 74 percent gold, 20 percent silver, and 6 percent copper which was then hammered into a sheet and shaped into the form of a face. Interestingly, cinnabar, a red mineral pigment, covers much of the cheeks and forehead of this mask, obscuring the gold surface. The cinnabar may emulate the patterning of face paint worn by individuals of importance: according to early colonial accounts a courtier was charged with the task of maintaining such paints. Faint traces of the textile wrappings that once enveloped the mummy bundle can be detected in impressions on the red paint. Masks in museum collections are often missing such surface embellishment (see 1979.206.556), as the pigment would have been removed in modern times to highlight the golden substrate. The eyes of this mask have thin, skewer-like projections emerging from the pupils, perhaps suggesting powerful or even piercing vision. In other masks these projections include small beads of amber and emerald, which have led scholars to interpret the projections as tears. On the ears and ear ornaments can be seen restored examples of the silver-surfaced overlays (now corroded green) that would have also been originally present attached to the mask. Further surface additions include danglers on the U-shaped nose ornament. Such spangles would have caught the light of the bright sun and conveyed a sense of movement and life as a mummy bundle was conveyed to its final resting place.
Masks such as these, with their characteristic ovoid eyes terminating in a point, are associated with the Lambayeque culture, named for a region near the modern city of Chiclayo on Peru’s north coast. This polity, also known as Sicán, erected great monumental centers such as Batán Grande, Chornancap, and other sites. Recent excavations at Chornancap by Carlos Wester and his team have revealed that such masks were part of the burial regalia of high-status women as well as men. According to myths on the north coast, gold was particularly associated with male rulers, silver with noble women, and copper with commoners. A mask from Chornancap, found in the tomb of an importance priestess, was made of silver.
The pointed ovoid eyes on this mask and others, sometimes referred to as winged eyes, have been identified as defining features of a being known as the Sicán Deity. According to Izumi Shimada and colleagues, an individual interred with such a mask would have been thought to take on aspects of the Sicán Deity’s power, and would have been transformed into a venerated ancestor upon death.
Joanne Pillsbury, Andrall E. Pearson Curator, 2015
References
Jones, Julie, and Heidi King. Gold of the Americas. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002, pp. 36-37.
King, Heidi, Rain of the Moon: Silver in Ancient Peru. With contributions by Luis Jaime Castillo Butters and Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; University Press, 2000, p. 21, fig. 8.
Mackey, Carol J. and Joanne Pillsbury. “Cosmology and Ritual on a Lambayeque Beaker,” in Margaret Young-Sánchez, ed., Pre-Columbian Art & Archaeology: Essays in Honor of Frederick R. Mayer, pp. 115-141. Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2013; p. 120, fig. 6.
Shimada, Izumi, “Behind the Golden Mask: Sicán Gold Artifacts from Batán Grande, Peru,” in Julie Jones, ed., The Art of Precolumbian Gold: The Jan Mitchell Collection. Boston: Little Brown, 1985, pp. 60-75; fig. 6.
Further Reading
Elera, Carlos G., “The Face Behind the Mask,” in Victor Pimentel, ed., Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and Moon, pp. 96-105 (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2013).
Hildebrand, Joyce, Karen Buckley eds. Ancient Peru Unearthed: Golden Treasures of a Lost Civilization. Exh. cat. Calgary: The Nickle Arts Museum, University of Calgary Press, 2006.
Jones, Julie ed., The Art of Precolumbian Gold: The Jan Mitchell Collection. Boston: Little Brown, 1985.
Shimada, Izumi, ed., Cultura Sicán: Esplendor preincaico de la costa norte. Translated by Gabriela Cervantes. Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú, 2014.
Shimada, Izumi, Cultura Sicán: Dios, riqueza y poder en la costa norte del Perú (Lima: Fundación del Banco Continental para el Fomento de la Educación y la Cultura, Edubanco, 1995).
Shimada, Izumi, and Jo Ann Griffin. “Precious Metal Objects of the Middle Sican.” Scientific American (April 2004), pp. 80-89.
Shimada, Izumi, Jo Ann Griffin, and Adon Gordus. “The Technology, Iconography, and Social Significance of Metals: A Multidimensional Analysis of Middle Sicán Objects,” in Colin McEwan, ed., Precolumbian Gold: Technology, Style and Iconography, pp. 28-61. London: The British Museum, 2000.
Shimada, Izumi, Ken-ichi Shinoda, Julie Farnum, Robert S. Corruccini, Hirokatsu Watanabe. “An Integrated Analysis of Pre-Hispanic Mortuary Practices: A Middle Sican Case Study.” Current Anthropology 45, no. 3 (2004), pp. 369-402.
Wester de la Torre, Carlos. Mystery and History in the Lambayeque Culture: The Priestess of Chornancap (Lambayeque: Museo Arqueológico Nacional Brüning, 2013).
Artwork Details
- Title: Funerary mask
- Artist: Lambayeque (Sicán) artist(s)
- Date: 900–1100 CE
- Geography: Peru, North Coast
- Culture: Lambayeque (Sicán)
- Medium: Gold, silver-copper alloy, cinnabar
- Dimensions: H. 11 1/2 in. × W. 19 1/2 in. × D. 4 in. (29.2 × 49.5 × 10.2 cm)
- Classification: Metalwork-Gold
- Credit Line: Gift and Bequest of Alice K. Bache, 1974, 1977
- Object Number: 1974.271.35
- Curatorial Department: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing
Audio
1649. Funerary mask, Lambayeque (Sicán) artist(s)
Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech
PALOMA CARCEDO DE MUFARECH (English translation): The gold itself is not what is compelling about these masks. What’s most important is what we don’t see.
JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK (NARRATOR): These gold masks were designed to adorn and transform ancestor bundles. These bundles were part of rituals, celebrations, and processions carried out by the living to honor and commune with the dead. Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech, Professor of Architecture at the University of Lima, specializes in metallurgy of the Lambayeque, also known as Sicán.
PALOMA CARCEDO DE MUFARECH (English translation): The rectangular and round parts of the ear ornaments would have been completely covered with tiny turquoise feathers.
JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK: Look closely and you can see small holes in the whites of the eyes where feathers were attached.
PALOMA CARCEDO DE MUFARECH (English translation): A mask like this was an astonishing sight, because the eye would be covered with blue feathers, and the iris would be red, and in some cases they were decorated with green emeralds. We would only see traces of the gold.
The forehead and the cheeks were covered with cinnabar. Cinnabar is important because it’s related to a process of regeneration, where the dead person goes to the afterlife. In Sicán culture, this is the process of transformation into an ancestor – an important figure who watches over the community from the afterlife. Living people can ask their ancestors to protect the community.
JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK: Another mask in this display has been cleaned, revealing the gold sheet on which the Lambayeque artist affixed embellishments.
PALOMA CARCEDO DE MUFARECH (English translation): When these masks were unearthed and subsequently sold, Europeans wanted to see the gold. They didn’t know the value of the embellishments. Indigenous peoples valued the gold as a support, an incorruptible material that would not tarnish over time, and could hold this significant iconography. Unlike in modern Europe and the United States, gold was not a commodity in the ancient Andes.
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