Sprawling pre-Hispanic mural found in Peru a century later – ARTnews.com

More than a century later, epic pre-Hispanic mural painting in northern Peru has resurfaced, thanks to the work of a German archaeologist and group of students.

France Press agency He reports that Sam Gavami, an archaeologist at the University of Freiburg, helped rediscover the mural, which he estimated could be about 1,000 years old. It is believed that the painting combines the styles of the Moche and Lambaek peoples.

The mural was reportedly part of the Huaca Pintada temple, and shows, in one section, what the news agency described as a “procession of warriors” that “can be seen heading towards a bird-like deity”.

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Entrance to a museum with people moving into it.

To date, the most recent evidence of its existence was a 1916 black-and-white photograph taken by Hans Heinrich Brüning, a German ethnologist who knew about the painting because looters had tried to loot it. Bruning was studying the Moche tribe, whose rites and customs he studied, and whose documents are now in a museum dedicated to him in the Peruvian city of Lambayeque.

Since Brunning photographed the mural, it has been obscured by foliage. for every France Press agencyNo one tried to discover the painting either—not, at least, until Guami went looking for it. The news agency described a “long battle to obtain permission from the family that owns the land where the mural was found” by al-Qafami.

While it is not entirely clear what the mural depicts, Ghafami said he will continue to study it. He said his images “seem to be inspired by the idea of ​​a sacred hierarchy built around the worship of ancestors and their close relationships with the forces of nature.”

He went on to praise the mural as a major find, calling it “unique in the history of pre-Hispanic Peruvian mural art”.

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