See a newly discovered throne room in Peru that may have belonged to an ancient queen

Archaeologists have discovered a richly decorated throne room on Peru’s northern coast that may have belonged to a female ruler of the Moche culture about 1,300 years ago.

The room is located in Pañamarcaan archaeological site built and inhabited by the Mochean indigenous civilization that existed between roughly 350 and 850 AD. flourished – centuries before the better known Incas Machu Picchu to the southeast. Rediscovered by archaeologists in the 1950s, Pañamarca contains monumental mud platforms, walls and temples, as well as extensive, colorful murals.

Peruvian and American researchers affiliated with the Archaeological landscapes of Pañamarca research program has been studying the ancient Moche site since 2018. During their most recent field session, they found a seventh-century adobe throne room in Pañamarca’s so-called Hall of the Imaginary Moche. According to one statementthe walls and pillars of the room are covered with painted scenes featuring a ‘powerful woman’. In one work she receives a line of visitors; in another she sits on a throne.

These ancient murals ‘may indicate that it was a woman who used the space, possibly a ruler,’ says project director Jessica Ortiz Zevallos tells Reuters.

The woman in the paintings seems to be connected to the sea, the crescent moon and craftsmanship. One of the recently uncovered murals shows a workshop full of women spinning and weaving, along with a line of men wearing textiles and “the female leader’s crown, complete with hair braids,” the statement said.

“There is no surface in this area that is bare,” project archaeologist José Antonio Ochatoma Cabrera told Reuters. “Everything is painted and beautifully decorated with mythological scenes and characters.”

Since researchers began studying Pañamarca, they have found murals depicting priests and priestesses, warriors, supernatural beings, a man with two faces, and ceremonies involving prisoners. But the statement notes that “a throne room for a queen has never before been seen in Pañamarca, nor anywhere else in ancient Peru.”

“Pañamarca continues to surprise us,” says Lisa Treveran art historian at Columbia University, in the statement: “not only because of the painters’ ceaseless creativity, but also because their works subvert our expectations about gender roles in the ancient Moche world.”

The scholars are not sure whether the woman depicted in the throne room murals was mythical or real, let alone whether she was a priestess, a goddess or a queen. Still, they are certain that the room was heavily used: the back of the throne has eroded and the team found green stone beads, fine threads and human hair on it.

Together, the signs of use “make that clear [the throne] was inhabited by a real living person – and the evidence all points to a seventh-century female leader of Pañamarca,” the statement said.

Speak with Artnet newsRichard Whiddington, Trever says the findings “tell us so powerfully [Moche] women were not only ‘priestesses’, but that they were leaders who also wielded socio-political power.”

During the same field session, researchers discovered another room overlooking the site’s central plaza. Also called the Hall of the Braided Snakes, its many pillars are decorated with paintings of snakes intertwined with human legs – a previously invisible motif in Moche art. On the walls there are murals of warriors, weapons and a monster hunting people.

The Moche people painted with muted mineral pigments such as iron oxides and clay. Some of their famous murals can be found on their temples of the sun and moon near present-day Trujillo. The culture mysteriously disappeared in the ninth century and was left behind no written data.

For now, researchers are focusing on protecting and preserving the unique and colorful art of the Moche.

As Trever tells Artnet news“We often say that Pañamarca was a place of unprecedented creativity, and every season it seems that point becomes even more true.”