SIPAN: New findings
Huaca of the moon
The exhibition was presented at the MARQ by the president of the Provincial Council of Alicante, José Joaquín Ripoll; the mayoress of Cádiz, Teófila Martínez and the archaeologists Walter Alva, head of the Sipán Archaeological Project and director of the Royal Tombs Museum, and Ricardo Morales, director of the Huaca de la Luna Archaeological Project.
From June to December 2012, the MARQ will host the exhibition 'Sipán - Huaca de la Luna. New finds'. Pieces of pottery, wood, gold, fabric, featherwork, shell and silver, among other materials, make up this collection which, for the first time, can be seen outside Peru and which will offer a broader view of the Moche culture.
The exhibition will present the pieces discovered in the latest excavations carried out in this great archaeological complex, as well as the results of the research work carried out thanks to the collaboration of the Diputación de Alicante, both in Sipán and in Huaca de la Luna.
Cadiz, declared Ibero-American Capital of Culture in 2012, will be the first city to host this exhibition, from January to June 2012, coinciding with the commemoration of the Bicentenary of the First Spanish Constitution. The collection will then travel to Alicante, to the Provincial Archaeological Museum, where it will be on display until the end of the year.
The president of the Diputación de Alicante, Joaquín Ripoll, pointed out during the presentation of the exhibition at the MARQ that "2012 will be a special year because we are going to collaborate with the City Council of Cádiz so that this exhibition will be a joint one. Thanks to the economic collaboration that the MARQ has made available to the technicians of these enclaves, it has been possible to continue researching, excavating and new discoveries have been made that we will show next year".
For her part, the mayoress of Cádiz, Teófila Martínez, pointed out that "when a city like ours sets out to carry out and produce a project of these characteristics, it has to involve many institutions. For this reason, since we began to work with the possibility of having this extremely important exhibition in Cádiz, everything has been facilitated by the archaeologists Walter Alva and Ricardo Morales, as well as the Diputación de Alicante, which has also been generous in allowing the exhibition to come first to our city and then to Alicante".
Moche culture exhibition
The works that will make up the exhibition, selected from more than 3,000, are, since their discovery and after their restoration, kept in security chambers and are currently being catalogued and inventoried.
The new discoveries made in recent years, thanks to the collaboration of the Diputación de Alicante, have allowed for the creation of the Museo de Sitio de las Reales Tumbas de Sipán at the same site, which was opened to the public a few years ago and whose purpose is to preserve this cultural treasure, as well as to continue the excavation campaigns and to enhance the value of this enclave and the site of Huaca de la Luna.
Walter Alva explained that with this exhibition "we intend to present a broader vision and contextualise the culture of the Mochicas. Beyond the jewels and their splendour, we must also see and understand the progress of this people".
Also new to the exhibition is the work that the University of Trujillo is carrying out together with the scientific team led by Ricardo Morales (Queen Sofia Prize for Archaeology 2005) at the site of Huaca de la Luna, recently proposed by Peru to be declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Ricardo Morales has pointed out that "Huaca is a term that implies a level of extreme sacredness of a place. The Moche are a people with an important philosophical level".
The Lord of Sipan
In March 2006, the MARQ hosted for the first time in Spain the largest collection of the treasure found in the Royal Tombs of the Lord of Sipan in Peru. The Alicante museum presented this unprecedented exhibition containing 133 original pieces from pre-Inca funerary offerings.
Objects in terracotta, gold, silver, lapis lazuli, turquoise, gilded copper and spondylus from the Mochica culture (1st-7th centuries AD) were part of this major exhibition, which was an international first.
"The Lord of Sipán, mystery and splendour of a pre-Inca culture" occupied all the temporary rooms of the Provincial Archaeological Museum and was visited by nearly 30,000 people.
It was in 1987 when the archaeologist Walter Alva and a group of restorers, students and workers managed to rescue from the depths of the earth a group of tombs and a treasure made up of more than a hundred pieces. They were gold jewellery carved in gold and other precious materials from the Necropolis of Señor Sipán, the sanctuary of one of the most important figures of the Moche culture.
It took three decades to recover these burial tombs and other treasures located in the town of Lambayeque (Peru), where two large adobe pyramids were found, accessed by means of large ramps.
Inside, archaeologists found the tomb of Lord Sipan. Subsequently, the tombs of the Priest and the Old Lord Sipan (two other key figures in this culture) were also discovered.
.jpg)
