Burial of the Lord of Sipán

In February 1987 looters digging at Huaca Rajada, near the village of Sipán in the Lambayeque valley, found gold objects; a quarrel among them brought in the police, and on 1 April the archaeologists Walter Alva and Luis Chero began excavating. In the burial platform they found the untouched tomb of a man aged 35–45, buried in a coffin with three sets of gold ear ornaments inlaid with turquoise, a gold back-flap weighing almost a kilogram, a gold sceptre-like object and two necklaces of large peanut-shaped beads, ten of gold and ten of silver. Six people were buried with him — a child of nine or ten, two robust men who may have been warriors and three young women — together with a dog and two llamas; above lay a man whose feet had been cut off, perhaps as a guardian. The tomb held 451 ceremonial objects of gold, silver, copper, textile and feathers.

Comparison with Moche iconography suggests that he was a high-ranking warrior-priest. Radiocarbon dating places the burial and the neighbouring tomb of a priest around AD 250; other publications give the 3rd century or about 300. The older tomb of the “Old Lord of Sipán” lay deeper, in the earliest phase of the platform, and by 2007 fourteen tombs had been found at the site. Most of the finds are displayed in the Royal Tombs of Sipán Museum in Lambayeque, opened in 2002.