Ayar Llocsimasikunamanta: An Interpretation of the foundation myth of the Incas

Abstract

This is the first part of a work that explores some of the symbolic structures of the well-known mythical cycle Los Hermanos Ayar. The author assumes that this mythic corpus legitimized the exercise of power by the Inca governors and that its argument would have comprised the ideological base of the magical-religious official system in the constituent stage of the Tawantinsuyu. Consequently, he proposed his reinterpretation as a theory of political power, and discuss the ideas commonly understood that handled this cycle like a mythical memory of a military deed or as an allegory of agricultural, maintenance and culinary activities. He finds support in the same chronicles, and in other ethnohistorical and ethnographic sources, which show the myth as a theoretical construct and an expression of the political organization in the origins of the Inka State.