Transported to Another World: Ancient Peru

Wouldn't it be nice to get away for a while, to spend some time in a really exotic environment? Well, you can. Just book a ticket to Peru: a Journey in Time at the British Museum, where the past, the present and the future merge into an other-worldly experience. 

And this is another world, a very strange different world, where the inhabitants make curious but stunning artefacts, where they sacrifice humans to appease the gods, where great civilisations develop, but without the invention of the wheel, or the invention of writing.

If you have no script, images play a huge part in everyday life. And in this absorbing show we're confronted by a succession of arresting objects made by the peoples who lived in Peru over the course of several thousand years. Such items were used in ceremonies to seek the assistance of higher powers for the living and to prepare the dead for the afterlife. And these were not merely inanimate objects; they were seen as living beings themselves. 

The first exhibits we see include this striking funerary mask and painted pottery image of a musician playing a flute. They were made by the Moche people, who lived along the coast and the inland valleys of northern Peru from about 100 to 800 AD. The mask has an archaic feel.... if it was from the Old World you might think it came from hundreds of years BC. And as for the pottery: while the body is very stylised and appears quite simplistic, the face is remarkably natural and realistic. You almost get the impression of a dignified Renaissance portrait. 

Some of the artefacts on show here are from the British Museum, but very many are on loan from collections in Peru. It's a unique chance for us to view these objects without travelling halfway across the globe.  

Artists in the civilisations that inhabited this part of the Americas made many objects depicting birds, cats and snakes, symbolising the sky, the earth and the underground. These were central to the worldview of the peoples of the Andes, opening the door to the pantheon of gods and to the ancestors of the living. 

Here, again from the Moche period, we see the three portrayed in painted pottery. The feline, strangely, reminded us of one of those cats with the waving arm that beckons you into a Japanese restaurant. Behind the bird at the top of the picture you can see another pottery image, of a white-tailed deer, an animal with a special significance in Andean mythology for its ability to transform itself into a hybrid human. 

Sharing that feeling of being somewhere extremely unfamiliar now? Maybe it's the Andes. Maybe it's altitude sickness. Mountain peaks harbour spirits, and their representation veered toward the abstract at times: another piece of Moche pottery here, with the stepped triangle standing for the mountains and the crest for the water flowing from the peaks through the rivers to the sea. Got a 1920s Expressionist feel to it, perhaps?

This show takes us back almost 5,000 years, to a time way before the Moche. One of the earliest vessels on display is this intriguing pottery contortionist, found in a grave on the north coast, possibly dating from as early as 1250 BC. 

The ability to transform the body into different shapes apparently had a special status in Andean society, and it's suggested that the figure might represent someone born with a disorder called Marfan syndrome, which can lead to longer limbs and a greater ability to stretch.

We liked the way this show was presented. The walls are covered with video projections or large-scale photography giving you a sense of place, Andean music plays softly in the background, some short videos give you a feel for the way traditional crafts and fishing or farming practices continue into the present day. There's quite a vibrancy to the exhibition, at a venue where you sometimes fear you're being overwhelmed by detail. 

Death plays a large role in this Andean story, and one of the most stunning objects on display is a relic of the Nasca people, famed for the mysterious massive images they etched into the ground in southern Peru, images that can only be deciphered from the air. 

The Nasca created elaborate fabric wrappings to encase their dead before they were entombed -- just how many layers is revealed in a computer animation. Spread out in a very large glass case is one of these funerary blankets, made of wool from llamas or alpacas and cotton. It has 74 images of a human-like being, wearing a headdress and jewellery associated with deities, each holding a severed head. And it's in a remarkable state of preservation, considering it's around 2,000 years old. 

And if you think that would make a great tea-towel design, the British Museum shop got there before you, and you can actually buy one on the way out. Not sure death heads are the ideal Christmas present, though. 

This exhibition is very strong on the Moche period; there are some astonishingly realistic pottery heads to be seen, as well as much about the ritual battles that led to the losers being taken prisoner and used gruesomely as human sacrifices. There are also artefacts demonstrating the importance of chewing coca leaves in ceremonies; this decorated pot is in the shape of a man who holds a container and dipper for lime powder, which was chewed with the leaves to make their active ingredient more effective. 

However exotic he may be, he did vaguely remind us of a Toby Jug.

As we noted earlier, the Andean peoples did not have the wheel, and they had no horses either. People walked, or ran, and our last picture shows a bizarrely realistic leg and sandalled foot that celebrates the Chasqui, fast runners stationed along a network of roads that allowed messages, food and gifts to be transported across the Inca empire. A relay of runners could carry a message from Quito in present-day Ecuador to the Inca capital at Cusco -- a distance of 3,000 kilometres -- in just five days. 

The Incas were the last indigenous civilisation to rule the Andes before the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century, and this show, which ends with them, has perhaps a little less about the period and the majestically located citadel at Macchu Picchu than you might expect. The gold llama that's the poster image for the Peru exhibition is in fact remarkably tiny. That takes nothing away, though, from the enjoyment and interest to be had from this show, which we wholeheartedly recommend. 

Practicalities

Peru: a Journey in Time continues at the British Museum until February 20. It's open daily from 1000 to 1700, with lates on Fridays to 2030. The museum is closed December 24-26. You'll want to allow yourself a journey time of around 90 minutes for this trip to the Andes. Full-price tickets are £15 (or £20 including a Gift Aid donation) and are bookable online here. The museum entrance is on Great Russell St, with Holborn and Tottenham Court Road the nearest Tube stations.

Images

Copper and shell funerary mask, Moche, 100-800 AD, Museo de Arte de Lima, and painted pottery musician playing a flute, Moche, 100-800 AD, British Museum

Moulded, painted pottery feline, bird and snake, Moche, 200 BC-500 AD, Museo de Arte de Lima

Painted pottery stepped triangle vessel, Moche, 100-800 AD, Museo Larco, Lima

Pottery vessel in the shape of a contorted body, Cupisnique, 1250-500 BC, Museo de Arte de Lima. Photo by Daniel Giannoni
Mantle depicting human figures with feline mouth masks holding severed heads, early Nasca, 100 BC-100 AD, Museo de Arte de Lima

Painted pottery vessel depicting a figure holding a lime container, Moche, 200-600 AD, Museo Larco, Lima

Painted pottery muscular leg with sandal, Inca, 1400-1532 AD, British Museum