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Juanita - The Ice Mummy

Today I visited the Museo Santuarios Andinos (Andes Sanctuary Museum) here in Arequipa.  The museum houses a very special and unique artifact - a frozen mummy of the beautiful, young girl Juanita.  Juanita is a mummy that was found frozen in the Ampato Volcano in September, 1995.  She is very unique in that she was frozen, so is in almost perfect condition with skin, hair, eyes, teeth and organs (DNA).  She was found after the ash from an erruption of a near-by volcano melted the snow and ice around her enough to dislodge her from her ice tomb.  Because she was buried on the side of a hill, once dislodged, she rolled down into the volcano crater where she was found completely by accident within a few weeks.  A research team just happened to be on an expedition and found a few exposed artifacts from the tomb.  Hoping to find a body, they began to look around the area and luckily found Juanita still frozen 500 feet below. 

Per the museum information:  The Ampato Volcano, with an apporximate height of about 21,000 feet above sea level, sheltered this beautiful Inca girl in its bosom for about 500 years or more.  She must have been about 12-14 years old at the time of her death.  She was actually a human sacrifice that the Inca priests offered to the volcano Apu Ampato to keep the volcano from errupting.  It was probably a great honor to be offered up as a sacrifice.  

The Incas only used children for their human sacrifices because of their purity.  Children that could potentially become a sacrifice were taken to Cusco for special schooling.  Once selected for the sacrificial position, the child would participate in many rituals to prepare themselves for the journey to the volcano.  In Cusco, they would be welcomed by an important Inca who would transfer his divinity to the child.  From that moment, the child accepted the reality of his-her death and her own communication with the mountain gods where she would be offered in a journey, without a return, towards divinity. The child would be accompanied by a great court of very important people on the very long journey (several months) from Cusco to the volcano - in this case, Apu Ampato in the Colca Canyon near Arequipa.

Once the procession arrived at the volcano, they had many more festivities and rituals.  Once the rituals were complete, the child would be given a sedative drink to put them to sleep.  In the case of Juanita, they killed her via a precise blow to her right eyebrow which caused her death. 

Juanita was buried in very fine clothing made especially for this honorable occasion.  Her dress and cape were in red and white icuna wool - red for spirituality and white for divinity.  They wrapped her up and buried her with many offerings made of gold, silver, copper and shells.  Gold was for the sun god, silver was for the moon god, copper was for the earth and the shells were for the rain.  Many of the metal offerings were damaged by thunder bolts.  The metal attracted the lightening so many of the metal artifacts were melted or had big holes in them.   

The offerings were various pieces of ceramics, clothing, jewelry, dolls, tools etc. - things that she would need in her next life.  In addition, many types of food were also buried with her in specially woven bags.  In one of the woven bags, they found some of her umbilical cord.  In the Incan culture, the umbilical cord and sometimes the placenta were kept after birth, dried and used as medicine during the child's life. 

Juanita is helping us understand part of the history of Peru and the Incan culture.  The museum and researchers are treating her with the utmost respect and care!  It was an honor to be able to see her! 

So far, 18 child mummies have been uncovered at various volcanoes in Peru (14) and Argentina (4).  These children were sacrificed sometime during the years 1420-1520.  The Incas would make human sacrifices after an erruption to, hopefully, make the gods happy and quiet them for a while.  Usually 5 offerings per disaster were made (1 for each of the 4 Inca regions and 1 for Cusco).  Since only 18 have been found, it appears there are many more to be found.   

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