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The Vault · Relics & Sacred Objects

The Staff God of Tiwanaku: The Gateway of the Sun

In the archive

Held
In place: Tiwanaku, near Lake Titicaca, Bolivia (UNESCO World Heritage Site)
Date evidence
Tiwanaku flourished c. 500–1000 CE; the gateway's exact date is uncertain
Era
Era V · Late Antiquity
In the archive
The Inca

At almost 3,850 metres above sea level, on the high plain near the southern shore of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, a single block of andesite stands in the ruins of Tiwanaku. It is a gateway about 3 metres high and 4 metres wide, cut from one stone, cracked through the top. Above the doorway, in the centre of a carved frieze, a figure faces the viewer. It stands on a stepped platform and holds a staff in each hand, and its head is ringed with rays ending in animal heads. On both sides, rows of smaller winged figures turn toward it. The Spanish and later travellers called it the Puerta del Sol, the Gateway of the Sun. Its builders' name for it, and for the figure, is lost.

Reading the gateway

What the carving shows, and what has been claimed about it. Turn each card.

  • The central figure (the Staff God): A frontal being standing on a stepped platform, holding a staff in each hand, with a rayed head-dress. The pose is documented across the Andes.
  • The attendants (48 winged figures): Three rows of winged figures, some bird-headed, run or kneel toward the centre, holding staffs.
  • An older tradition (from Chavín): Staff-holding deities appear much earlier, as on the Raimondi Stela of the Chavín culture of Peru, over a thousand years before Tiwanaku.
  • Viracocha? (a later identification): Often called Viracocha, the Inca creator, whose myths begin at Lake Titicaca. But Tiwanaku is centuries older than the Inca, and its people's own name for the figure is unknown.
  • A calendar? (Arthur Posnansky and others): The frieze has been read as a calendar. The counting depends on how the figures are grouped; it is not accepted by most archaeologists.
  • Moved and broken (the stone's history): The gateway was found cracked and not certainly in its original position; it has been moved and re-erected, which complicates astronomical readings.

Study the object

Photographs of the site belong to their photographers.

Paste any IIIF manifest into the viewer to study published images; it needs JavaScript.

Tiwanaku

  • A great city and ceremonial centre that flourished from about 500 to 1000 CE, with monumental platforms and sunken courts, and influence across the southern Andes.
  • The gateway stands in the Kalasasaya, a large walled platform, but it was found broken and is probably not in its original position. It was later re-erected.
  • Tiwanaku declined around 1000–1100 CE, perhaps with drought. By the time of the Inca, centuries later, it was already an ancient ruin, and the Inca treated it as a sacred place of origin.
  • It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.

Symbology and sacred encoding

The Staff God. A frontal figure holding two staffs appears across Andean art for two thousand years: on the Raimondi Stela of Chavín de Huántar in Peru, many centuries earlier; at Tiwanaku; and in Wari art. Scholars call this the Staff God or "Staff Deity". It seems to have been a major deity or a model of divine power, but its names and myths in each culture are unknown.

Viracocha. The figure is popularly called Viracocha, the creator of Inca religion, whose myths say he rose from Lake Titicaca and created the sun and the peoples of the world at Tiwanaku. The link is attractive but late: the Inca myths were recorded by the Spanish, a thousand years after the gateway was carved.

The rays and attendants. The head rays, the condor and puma heads, and the 48 winged attendants (in three rows of eight on each side) form a symmetrical composition. Its meaning is uncertain.

The "calendar". The engineer Arthur Posnansky, in the early twentieth century, read the frieze as a calendar, and claimed that Tiwanaku was built more than 15,000 years ago on astronomical grounds. Archaeological dating shows the city is of the first millennium CE, and his calendar reading is not accepted.

The interactive cards above summarise these readings.

Connections

The Inca (ch44), for Viracocha and the later sacred status of Tiwanaku. Compare the Inca Khipu (V62) and the Codex Borgia (V41), from the religious art of Mesoamerica.

✦ The evidence, honestly

What's well supported by the evidence

  • A monolithic gateway at Tiwanaku, carved with a frontal Staff God and winged attendants, from the city's florescence c. 500–1000 CE.
  • The Staff God as a long-lived Andean motif, from Chavín to Wari and Tiwanaku.

What is not supported

  • That Tiwanaku is tens of thousands of years old, or that the frieze is a proven calendar.
  • That the figure is Viracocha as the Inca understood him. That identification is later.

What's genuinely open

  • Who the Staff God was to the people of Tiwanaku, and what the frieze meant.
  • The gateway's original location and exact date.

Sources

The site and the gateway

Iconography

From The Divine Archives · https://getconexto.com/vault/gateway-of-the-sun.html

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