The Golden Sun Image of Coricancha
Punchao — Quechua for 'daylight' — was the holiest image of the sun god Inti, enshrined in the principal hall of the Coricancha in Cusco. In the dispatch Viceroy Toledo sent to the King of Spain in 1572, it is described as a figure of a boy cast in solid gold, ringed with golden disks to catch and throw the light. Its chest was hollow, and sealed inside was a paste worked from the hearts of the dead Inca kings. Through that paste the deceased rulers and the sun god shared a single golden body: to venerate Punchao was to venerate at once the god and the royal line. The image received daily offerings, its portion of food burned according to rite.
When the Spaniards sacked Cusco in 1533, Punchao had already been spirited away. For nearly forty years it moved with the neo-Inca court of Vilcabamba through the forested mountains of the eastern Andes, the most treasured object of the exiled dynasty. In 1572 Toledo's expedition destroyed Vilcabamba; the last Inca, Túpac Amaru, was run down in flight, and Punchao was taken with him — king and god carried back to Cusco together.
Túpac Amaru was beheaded on the plaza of Cusco. Toledo proposed in his dispatches to send Punchao to King Philip II, and after that the reliable record goes silent. The golden image that condensed an entire dynasty vanished there, one of the enduring unsolved disappearances among Andean artifacts.
