Raimondi Stela
The Raimondi Stela is a cuboid-shaped monolith of the late Chavin culture ( black and white phase, ca 900-550 BCE) showing on the front of a mythical hybrid creature, probably an early Peruvian deity. It stands today in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú in Lima.
Discovery history
The stele is named after the Italian Antonio Raimondi (1826 - 1890) appointed who spent most of his life as a naturalist in Peru. During his visit to Chavin de Huántar Raimondi had seen the stone circa 1860 in a private home - discovered it had in 1840 a farmer in one of his fields near the temple - and 1873 highlighted the cultural significance of this work of art in a publication. According to its recommendation, the stele was made in 1874 in the capital Lima and is now in the courtyard of the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú.
Description
The Raimondi Stela is a cuboid-shaped monolith of polished granite (198 cm high, below 76 and above 73 cm wide, 17 cm thick) on the front side of a symmetrical bas-relief is engraved.
The figure on the stele is a frontally presenting anthropomorphic beings with predator tooth and raptor claws on hands and feet. In each hand it holds a scepter, which seems to be bundled out of cats and snakes. Also at belt hang right and left two snakes. The image of a violent head-dress, which towered above the other feline gargoyles and radiate exiting volutes (hair or feathers ) and snakes Dominating has.
Attempts at interpretation
Similar depictions of gods exist in later Andean cultures, as in the Huari Culture ( Bolivia ), in which the creator god Viracocha was worshiped and in the Tiahuanaco culture ( Peru) with their Divinidad de los dos Báculos ( deity with the two scepters ), represented on the fall of the Sol.
An interpretation of the complex stele is already therefore not easy because their exact location and find context is not known. Moreover, in Chavin obviously popular representations that convey to the viewer similar to Kippfiguren different images.
Julio C. Tello saw Chavin as "Mother Culture " ( cultura matriz ) of the Peruvian civilization that had a broadcast in the entire Andean region and possibly roots in the Amazon lowlands. He pointed the stele as a representation of a jaguar god, a precursor of the deity Viracocha, which was later revered throughout the Inca Empire. Max Uhle said it was not a head-dress, but a centipede shown that symbolizes a powerful deity in the Nazca culture and is repeatedly shown on painted vessels.
Today is usually assumed that Chavin was site of an elitist cult weather oracle. It was not a singular ceremonial, but had developed in interaction with other similar centers ( cultura Síntesis ). Federico Kauffmann Doig interpreted in this environment, the stele as a picture of the flying cat ( felino volador ), which was also revered elsewhere, as in the Paracas culture and the Inca as a deity Qun ( Kon).
Luis Guillermo Lumbreras has contributed through his successful excavations in the atrium of the Ancient Temple essential to an understanding of the Chavin cult. He pulls out the mythical representations of cayman -like creature on the Tello stele and on the ceramics found the conclusion that in Chavin not a felid deity was but probably primarily worshiped a " Dragon-like creatures " that was " ruler of the rains and dry seasons ". At that statement, the Raimondi Stele can not contribute, however.