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The Unveiled Lady Cao

Liz and I were supposed to go to the Huaca El Brujo on Friday, but due to some circumstances, the trip got postponed until today.  Thank goodness it did!  We definitely had an angel looking out for us!

The Huaca Cao Viejo and Huaca El Brujo are 60 km from Trujillo on the coast.  It is quite an ordeal to get to the ruins!  When you arrive, you are met with hundreds of grave depressions in the ground.  Around the ruins, another civilization - the Lambayeque culture - buried 100s if not 1000s of people.  It was odd to see the somewhat open graveyard.  We could even see textiles sticking out of the ground that were used to wrap the bodies.  I even found a bone just laying around.  Strange feeling!

National Geographic has done a story a few years ago on the Huaca El Brujo.  It was from the Moche civilization as well and was a bit gruesome.  The Huaca Cao Viejo is a truncated pyramid with lots of multi-colored friezes and reliefs on the stepped walls.  The reliefs were stylized life-size warriors, prisoners, and priests depicting human sacrifice of the prisoners.  The Moches were sometimes referred to as the "decapitators".  The prisoners were cut on various places on their bodies in order to extract their blood into gold chalises the priests then "drank" or poured on the earth (heard both stories).  The prisoners were roped together and marched naked to the temple where they were sacrificed.  You could see this entire story depicted in the reliefs. 

Clara took Liz and I on this tour.  She is very well connected and ran into some very important people she knew at the site.  It just so happened that one of them was the director of archeology at the site and he was entertaining some friends of his from the local rum company.  They had all kinds of special events planned and since they love Clara, they let us participate!

The first event, and by far the most memorable, was the viewing of the mummy Lady Cao.  She was the mummy they just uncovered about 6 months ago and is written up in the June 2006 issue of National Geographic.  It was incredible!!!  We had to don surgical masks and hair nets before we could enter the examination room where she was stored.  She was in a plain white cardboard box with what appeared to be cellophane on the top (reminded me of the box roses come in).  All that was between us and her was the box and 6 inches of air!  They believe she was a female ruler (rare) because of the tattoos on her arms, hands and feet as well as how she was mummified and entombed.  It appears that she was approximately 25 years old and died in childbirth.  She was well preserved because of their use of mercury in the preservation process.  You could see the tattoos even on her skin and the extra skin in the abdomen due to childbirth!!

Since we were part of the last group to view, we got another special opportunity!  The daughter of the director of archeology at one of the universities, was in our group.  She was doing research on textiles and such, so they actually opened some of the research artifact drawers to show us the clothing Lady Cao was wearing.  She was dressed in four different dresses with the inner two in almost perfect condition.  One of the dresses was painted black and brown with images of waves.  The other was also black and brown, but embrodered with "cat fish".  Both were very fine woven material.  She also had an outer dress made of 350 copper squares strung together like the old knights mail.  We then got to see many of the artifacts buried with her including copper staffs, gold/copper head piece, bowl found over her face, tons of earrings and nose rings depicting various animals and figures (happy faces, scorpions, parrots, sea otters, cat fish etc.), needles, ceramics, necklaces....  One of the ceramics appeared to be a woman with a child and a medicine man working on her - could this be a story of her?  From all the artifacts, it looks like she would have been perfectly outfitted in the next life!  WOW - what an opportunity!

And it didn't stop there!  We were then allowed to go see her tomb - up close and personal - under the rope and right up next to the gorgeous and colorful reliefs on the walls. 

The events continued with a reinactment of a royal processional with Lady Cao being carried on her litter through the huaca preceeded by the blowing of the conch shells.  They had a presentation and then we were able to take lots of pictures.  We even got to take some pictures with us wearing the head dress and holding the staffs.  What fun! 

For some additional information, go to the following link:

 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/mummy-peru_2.html

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