Filmmaker in Search of Her Subject - visit to northern coastal Peru #1

part #1:

In addition to my two or so weeks in Lima, and my travels to the south, principally to the town of el Carmen, center of Afro-Peruvian culture, I went up north to visit the town of Zaña and the region around it.  This, like the rest of my time in Peru, was for the purpose of learning more about Afro-Peruvian culture, especially its music and dance, because Zaña is home to the important Afro-Peruvian museum.

Zaña is in the coastal region of Peru, near the small city of Lambayeque.  To get there, once again I took a bus-cama, leaving Lima in the late afternoon and arriving in Lambayeque in the morning of the following day.  From Lambayeque, I took a licensed cab to get to Zaña.

The museum is a re-creation in miniature of what archaeologists believe the pyramids looked like at the time the ruler was buried.  The "good stuff" is down in a deep basement, again representing the archaeological site.

On the way, however, I decided to make a stop at a place unrelated to my work:  the museum which houses most of the collection taken from the pyramid and tomb of el Señor de Sipan.

Who is this Señor de Sipan, you ask.

Glad you brought it up.  Peru, in addition to being the home of the Incas, was home to several other important civilizations.  One of these was the Sipán, or Moche, who actually pre-dated the Incas.  The civilization flourished from about 50-700AD, while the Inca rule only began in 1438, and ended less than 100 years later, in 1533.

The later rules of Sipán were mummified and buried in pyramids, and a few decades ago, in the later 1980s, a grouping of three of these pyramids were discovered and explored.

The pyramids now looks like a large, bare hills.  They were made of adobe bricks, and over the centuries, the rains have eaten away at it.  This is one of the reasons they were only recently discovered.

replica of one of the many adornments found on the mummy of the Señor de Sipán:  gold necklace and earrings with owl heads;  the owl represents the afterlife

Excavations of the second to largest of these pyramids revealed the elaborate tomb and mummy of what is presumed to have been a great ruler, now referred to as el Señor de Sipán (the Lord of Sipán).

The museum contains a replica of the mummy of the ruler, his wife, and someone important who was buried under him (possibly his father) while the actual remains have been left in the pyramid (which I didn't have time to visit).  The display in the museum shows what the burial chamber looks like, and has many of the fabulous gold, silver, turquoise, and other jewelry with which he and his wife were adorned.

Of course, a couple of guards, dogs, and other former beings were buried along with them, presumably to wait on them, keep them company in the afterlife, and so forth.

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Eve A. Ma, a former university professor, lawyer, and director of a non-profit cultural organization, is the producer-director of two documentaries about Afro-Peruvians:  A Zest for Life and Masters of Rhythm with addendum.  Sign up for her newsletter to keep up with her work and get a special video:  www.PalominoPro-signup.com