A Sunday exploring ruins, part 2: Saqsaywaman

After spending some time at Q'enco we crossed the highway and walked the short distance to the last of the Inca sites we were going to see that day. Saqsaywaman is situated about two kilometres from the central plaza of Cusco and, like Q'enco, was used as a ceremonial site. This, however, was meant not only for the nobility but for the common folk as well, and it is huge! 

Edwin pointed out how part of the grounds are used by the local people who gather here on weekends for picnics, to play soccer and have fun. We were fortunate to be given a different perspective than most tourists because Edwin took us in through the entrance the Inca would have used for big ceremonial gatherings. Coming up some stairs we soon stood in front of the entrance to a tunnel. Here, we had to wait for a group of people to come out before we, too, could enter. Edwin explained that, to the Inca, this tunnel was symbolic of the womb. People had to pass through its narrow passageway; coming out on the other side was like leaving the womb and being born. It was completely dark almost as soon as we had stepped in, and I, second in line after Edwin, had to ask him to stop for a moment because I suddenly felt really strange. 'Don't worry', he said,' just put your left hand on the wall and always keep to the left. It's only ten metres long.' After a moment I could continue slowly, his voice, reassuring, ahead. My palm glided along the wall, made smooth so many centuries ago with round hand-held rocks. I felt the wall curving to the left – but I could not see a thing! It was an amazing experience, and when we came out at the other side I understood how this really was like leaving the darkness of the womb. To me, the short journey through the darkness had felt like an eternity. Edwin told us later that, had we turned right instead of left, we would have entered a circular space that would have kept us walking around and around endlessly. I'm glad we didn't end up there!

We emerged in a big, flat, grassy area that would have been covered with a shallow layer of water at Inca times. This was the cleansing place everybody had to pass through after leaving the tunnel, before entering the ceremonial grounds proper. The water came from a spring above and was channeled down to the bath, but now the water was used elsewhere, and the cleansing pool was dry.

Next, Edwin led us to a strangely striped greenish rock that jutted out conspicuously. This, he told us, would have been surrounded by a retaining wall at Inca times because the Inca tried to protect rocks and mountains since they were sacred to them. It was so smooth that it is used as a slide for children and adults alike nowadays, and there was much laughter and shouting on this Sunday afternoon. Edwin told us that, as a kid, he used to come to Saqsaywaman with his friends or family almost every day to play hide and seek in the ruins and slide down the rock.

We rounded the rock and now stood high above the ceremonial grounds. A huge grassy area spread out below us, surrounded by enormous walls. They were much lower than they had been originally because not only the Spanish took what they needed for building Cusco, but the local people got their own building material here up to the 1930s when it was finally put under protection. 

 

Overlooking this enormous theatre we tried to imagine what it must have been like at these gatherings, with thousands of people assembled below, happily celebrating as their descendants are at festivals today. 

These walls, too, had niches, but there were not only a few but dozens of them here for the mummies to oversee the ceremonies. 

Edwin told us how, at other times, this place was used for the initiation rituals of adolescent boys. Once a year the twelve year-olds were gathered here for two weeks to go through their initiation phase. They were engaged in all kinds of skill building and testing exercises and had to give their best at everything the priests asked them to do. After they had gone through it all they were considered to be adults. 

 

This time was used as well to assign each boy his future job in society. The priests watched them for the entire time and assessed their abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and according to what they observed the boys became farmers or soldiers, craftsmen or labourers. One of the competitions was a race from the nearby hill to the plaza we now saw from above. The fastest boys were made runners, one of the most honourable jobs. Runners carried messages over huge distances with the help of a relay system where the next runner was warned of the approach of the last one with the sounding of a concha, a kind of horn made from a big sea shell.

We climbed down a steep flight of stairs, rebuilt, like so many other walls and steps, in recent years because the original stones were used in construction elsewhere. To clearly distinguish what is left from the original buildings and what has been reconstructed it was decided that the reconstruction has to be done with smaller rocks.

Walking towards the wall across the plaza we started to realize just how immense these incredibly exact shaped rocks really were. The tallest of them is eight metres high, but the biggest, though not as tall, is six metres deep and weighs between eighty and one hundred tons. How did the Inca manage to move rocks that big?! How did they manage to shape them so that they fit together as tightly and neatly as a puzzle? Standing beside these walls I once again was in awe. 

 

Edwin explained that the rocks had been quarried in the hills above the site and moved by hundreds – thousands? - of men pulling with ropes, round stones placed underneath to help make the task a bit easier. Trunks were used for the same purpose, but the Inca did not know the wheel, nor had they discovered iron. Thus they used hand-held round rocks – granite or the even harder hematite – to shape the rocks for the walls. One theory is that, to fill in missing pieces in a wall, they made a wooden frame that fit exactly in the gap, filled it with clay and, once dry, removed it. The rock was then carved right after the model and slid in. How exact they must have been in their work to accomplish that!

The inside corners, we saw, were saw-toothed, just one more means of proofing the walls against earthquakes. Such amazing architectural feats! So many of the colonial buildings were destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again by earthquakes through the centuries, yet these straight-edged walls have withstood them all, the sand stone walls here just like the granite walls in Machu Picchu. 

At the end of the two-hour tour we said good-bye to Edwin, thankful for this interesting insight into a culture that accomplished so much in so little time, without the use of modern tools, without a written language. What would this place, this area, look like had they been allowed to continue on? Would they, like so many other strong empires, have gradually declined, become decadent and weak? Would they have been swallowed up anyway? We will never know.