Stirrup-spout bottle with mountain sacrifice scene
On the lower half of the bottle, a feline and an iguana wait expectantly. What events might follow are unknown as the stories behind these images have been lost in the remote past. This elaborate scene, however, may have been part of a complex saga of cultural heroes. Different versions of this theme or depictions of other parts of the story can be seen on other works in the Met’s collection (see MMA 67.167.38 and MMA 65.266.88), as well on vessels in museum collections in Lima, Peru (ML003106 at Museo Larco, and C-03300 at Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú).
Archaeologists have emphasized the relationship between mountains, temples, and sacrifice in Moche communities (see, among others, Bourget 2016: 25-30). The remains of a prominent mass sacrifice were uncovered at Huaca de la Luna, the most important ceremonial complex in the Moche Valley during this era. This temple, built at the foot of a mountain, includes an enclosure erected around a rocky outcrop. Archaeological excavations revealed the sacrificed bodies of numerous warriors within layers of dried mud, which was interpreted as evidence that this bloody event occurred during moments of environmental perturbation, specifically the periodic catastrophic rains associated with El Niño (Bourget 2001).
Moche civilization flourished on the North Coast of Peru between 200 and 800 CE. Ceramics were used to store and cook food, and they were also used in some of the most important rituals of their time. Elaborate vessels such as the present example were used in elite residences and temples, some to end up as funerary offerings. The bifurcated spout, called a stirrup-spout after its resemblance to that part of a horse’s saddle, was common on the North Coast from the second millennium B.C. until the arrival of the Spaniards in the sixteenth century CE.
Hugo C. Ikehara-Tsukayama, Senior Research Associate, Arts of the Ancient Americas, 2023
References and Further Reading
Bourget, Steve. Sacrifice, Violence, and Ideology Among the Moche. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016.
Bourget, Steve. "Rituals of Sacrifice: Its Practice at Huaca de la Luna and Its Representation in Moche Iconography," in Moche Art and Archaeology in Ancient Peru, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, pp. 89-109. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2001.
Castillo, Luis Jaime, Cecilia Pardo, and Julio Rucabado. Moche y sus vecinos: Reconstruyendo identidades. Lima: Museo de Arte de Lima, 2016.
Donnan, Christopher and Donna McClelland. Moche Fineline Painting: Its Evolution and Its Artists. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1999.
Makowski, Krzysztof. "Las divinidades en la iconografía mochica," in Los dioses del antiguo Perú, edited by Krzysztof Makowski, pp. 137-75. Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú, 2000.
Uceda Castillo, Ricardo Morales Gamarra, and Elías Mujica Barreda. Huaca de la Luna: Templos y dioses moches. Lima: Fundación Backus, World Monuments Fund Peru, 2016.
Artwork Details
- Title: Stirrup-spout bottle with mountain sacrifice scene
- Artist: Moche artist
- Date: 500–800 CE
- Geography: Peru
- Culture: Moche
- Medium: Ceramic, slip
- Dimensions: H. 8 1/4 × W. 5 × D. 7 1/2 in. (21 × 12.7 × 19.1 cm)
- Classification: Ceramics-Containers
- Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Cummings, 1964
- Object Number: 64.228.64
- Curatorial Department: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing
Audio
1646. Stirrup-spout bottle with mountain ritual, Moche artist(s)
Gabriel Prieto
GABRIEL PRIETO: The current evidence suggests that human sacrifice was an essential element of Andean religion through time and across the territory. Human sacrifice is usually carefully planned. It has a purpose and is part of a larger discourse. Political, religious, ideological.
JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK (NARRATOR): The Moche artist who made this bottle lived in desert valleys at the foot of Peru’s coastal mountains. This vessel bears reference to human sacrifices the Moche ritually enacted – sacrifices that had deep and complex connections to both physical and supernatural realms.
The five-peaked mountain shown on this bottle is a mythic landscape, inhabited by animals and supernatural beings. A fox-like mammal and an iguana gather around a being in a feline headdress, who is playing a shell trumpet or pututo.
[PUTUTO SOUND]
The Moche believed the sound of the pututo opened a connection with the spirit world.
[PUTUTO SOUND]
A second figure lies face-down over the top of the mountain peak, hair flowing down. Gabriel Prieto, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida, interprets this as a reference to human sacrifice.
GABRIEL PRIETO: For some scholars it represents the moment when the rains from the highlands come from the top of the mountain down to the bottom of the valleys. And because of the color of the water that is kind of reddish orange color, for some people, it means that it's the blood from the mountains, the blood from the victims that were offered, to fertilize the land.
JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK: Among the Moche, sacrifice was a carefully considered, deeply meaningful religious practice. In 1995, archaeologists working in this region uncovered the remains of over 50 young men, possibly warriors, who had been violently, ritually sacrificed. Some bodies were embedded in mud, indicating sacrifices made in a stormy “el Niño” year.
Rain was uncommon in the coastal desert, but significant amounts fell every few decades. Moche priests may have enacted such rituals in connection with these exceptional events that could result in great fertility – or catastrophic floods and death.
GABRIEL PRIETO: Across human history, the sacrifice of a person is the ultimate sacrifice, is the most sacred thing that you can offer to the gods. If you think about it today, we do a number of sacrifices. We send people out to war. And we know that these people will die for a reason.
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