Moon Goddess, Wife of the Sun
Mama Killa, Mother Moon, was sister and wife to the sun god Inti; in the royal genealogy the dynasty's founders Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo were reckoned children of the sun and moon. Silver was her metal. Within the Coricancha a chamber was set aside for her, its walls sheathed in silver plate around an image of the moon with a woman's face, and the preserved bodies of dead queens kept watch on either side. Her earthly counterpart was the Coya, the Inca queen, who led the moon's rites as the king led the sun's.
She watched over the lives of women — marriage, weaving and childbirth all fell under her care — and the ritual calendar ran by her phases, each month reckoned from the new moon. Coya Raymi in September was her festival and the queen's, the month of the Situa rites that purified Cusco.
An eclipse had its own reading: a great serpent or a puma had sprung upon the moon to devour her, and if it succeeded she would fall to earth and the world go dark. So on eclipse nights the city erupted — pots beaten, trumpets blown, dogs whipped into howling — until the shadow withdrew. Cobo sets down the details in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo. Beyond Cusco her greatest sanctuary was the Island of the Moon in Lake Titicaca, where the stone walls of the Iñak Uyu house of chosen women still stand.
