GHU Logo
The Great Heights University Library
Academic discovery, digital access, and research support

The two faces of Inca history : dualism in the narratives and cosmology of ancient Cuzco /

Yaya, Isabel.

The two faces of Inca history : dualism in the narratives and cosmology of ancient Cuzco / by Isabel Yaya. - 1 online resource (xii, 296 pages) : illustrations, maps. - The early Americas: history and culture ; v. 3 . - The Early Americas: History and Culture 3. European History and Culture E-Books Online, Collection 2013, ISBN: 9789004248670. .

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Making History -- Filiation is History -- Inca and Local Elites -- The Ancestral Rulers of the Dry Season -- Epics of the Old Sun -- The Inca Calendar and Its Transition Periods -- Conclusion -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index.

Available to subscribing member institutions only.

The historical narratives of the Inca dynasty, known to us through Spanish records, present several discrepancies that scholarship has long attributed to the biases and agendas of colonial actors. Drawing on a redefinition of royal descent and a comparative literary analysis of primary sources, this book restores the pre-Hispanic voices embedded in the chronicles. It identifies two distinctive bodies of Inca oral traditions, each of which encloses a mutually conflicting representation of the past that, considered together, reproduces patterns of Cuzco’s moiety division. Building on this new insight, the author revisits dual representations in the cosmology and ritual calendar of the ruling elite. The result is a fresh contribution to ethnohistorical works that have explored native ways of constructing history.

9789004233874

10.1163/9789004233874 DOI

2012027324


Incas--Historiography.--Peru--Cuzco
Incas--Kings and rulers.--Peru--Cuzco
Inca cosmology--Peru--Cuzco.
Inca calendar--Peru--Cuzco.


Cuzco (Peru)--History--Sources.

F3429.1.C9 / Y38 2012

985/.37