The first of the tombs belonging to the Lords of Sipan was found in 1987 at the Huaca Rajada site by Walter Alva and other archaeologist working with the Burning Museum. It was immediately ranked, as the world’s most important archaeologist discovery in the last quarter century and compared to the finding of King Tut’s tomb in the Valley of Kings in Egypt.
The evidence of funerary rites unmistakably points to a strongly stratified Moche society where political and religious roles were very clearly defined. The highest members of the rul-ing elite were priest (as in Huaca de la Luna), religious bureaucrats (as in Huaca de la Cruz), princesses and priestesses (as in San Jose de Moro), or warriors (in Sipan). At the Sipan burial, the number of corpses accompanying the main interment, the wealth of the attires and gold adornments, and the number of vessels with of-ferings, leave no doubt about the prominent po-sition of the buried personage in the social pyramid. The tumi, or half-moon shaped ceremonial knife –hanging from his belt or worn as the main decoration on his headpiece-, the rattles, large earrings, and nose-rings were worn as a sign of distinction by war chiefs. A scepter ending in a tumi knife at the bottom symbolized.the top end of the scepter shows an embossed decoration representing the capture of a vanquished warrior about to be sacrificed.
After placing the dead ruler’s body on a wooden dais, his face was covered with embossed gold plates that replicated in minute detail the shape of his eyes, nose and chin. His right hand holds an oval gold ingot. He has a silver ingot in his left hand. The symbolic gold-silver opposition is found again in the chief warrior’s scepters and garment decorations, probably as a sign of his power or control over the two halves of his kingdom, and as a metaphorical representation of the realms of the feminine Moon and the masculine Sun.The bottom of the sarcophagi, made of wood tied with copper, is covered by a layer of tropical shells (Spondylus sp. and Comus sp.) coming from Ecuador’s warm waters, and ceremonial clothes and decorations- including necklaces of embossed gold beads shaped as human heads, and tunics covered with gilded copper plates resembling an armor. The platform carrying the body was placed over the offerings and then covered with new layers of ceremonial clothes. Each set of clothes in-clouded not only the garments, but also a set of chest plates made with thousands of chaquira beads, gold and silver necklaces in the shape of human heads, peanuts, spiders and rays, a pair of gold earrings, and large nose-rings. Other gold and copper figurative elements were applied to the headpiece or the dress. Rattles were tied to the chief’s waist together with the coccix protector.
Once the corps was laid right at the bottom of the funerary chamber, the priests surrounded the main sarcophagi with other minor ones made with reeds bearing the corpses of the chief’s kin and attendants, some of whom had died months or even years before him. The women’s corpses were placed in the opposite direction to men’s, on the other side of the principal sarcophagi. Nearby, room was reserved from the llama’s body, symbolizing the means of transportation for im-portant personages to the world beyond. The niches on the walls were filled with pots, jugs, and bottles mostly representing human figures.
