Worship of the Sun

Pachakuteq created the system of wakas and seq’es emanating in all directions from the Qorikancha. He had Sun temples built in many places across the empire so that everyone could honor the Sun (Cobo, [1653] (1956)). In addition to the particularly venerated Qorikancha in Cuzco, the site of Sunturhuasi and the usnu of Hanan Hawkaypata square were also among the privileged places where one could honor the day star. Many other wakas were frequented, but most were destroyed by the Spanish conquerors in their attempt to eliminate idolatry, as they put it at the time. Many of the surviving wakas were made of rock, most of which were carved. A detailed examination of these shows that a large number of these sites were characterized by a favored astronomical orientation (Gullberg, 2009, 2020). But a certain number of them were not, although identifying such preferred directions is not always obvious (Urton, 1978).