Acllas
The acllas (from Quechua: akllasqa 'chosen') were women of singular beauty. They were chosen from various places in the Inca Empire to serve the Inca or the Sun god or Inti. Its preparation was carried out in the Acllahuasi where the women lived under the surveillance of the isolated Mamaconas in a service of high honor.
There were various types of Acllas, among the most important we have:
- Sunshine (in Quechua, Intiq Akllasqan) They devoted their entire life to the worship of the Sun God.
- State strike (in Quechua, Suntor Akllasqan)
- Ceremonial fence (in Quechua, Taki AkllaChoose from your singing skills. His work was to cheer the feasts of the imperial court.
Selection and Training
Each year, the Inca government sent representatives, called Apu Panaka, to collect eight- to ten-year-old girls from the provinces as tribute to the state. The selected girls were mostly from the upper social classes, often from the families of non-Inca provincial leaders of the (curaca) class, however, not limited to this. They were chosen based on their beauty, abilities and intelligence and sent to be trained in provincial centers to live together in building complexes called Acllahuasi (house of the chosen ones) that could have up to 200 women in residence. Only those of the highest status were sent to Cuzco for further training.
The girls were trained for four years in topics related to religion, weaving, cooking and making chicha. They then became mamacunas (priestesses) and married prominent men or were assigned to religious duties. The most skilled and physically perfect were sent to Cuzco, the capital of the empire, and could become secondary wives or concubines of the Inca emperor and other nobles. A few were destined to be sacrificed in a religious ceremony called Cápac Cocha. Several archaeological contexts for aclla have been identified, specifically at Huánuco Pampa, including recently discovered evidence of a male aclla. Their status and role in society is sometimes compared to that of Yanacona men.
Service
The Acllas were a diverse group in terms of their functionality in Inca society. The general social role of the acllas were 2: those that were involved with religious rituals and those that were given to men as wives. Within these roles, the assignment of the acllas was divided by status. Acllas of higher status (those who were considered more beautiful, more skilled, and who came from high-status families) were sent to Cuzco to serve the sun on the Coricancha or became secondary wives to the Incas. The acllas of lower status typically stayed in their regions of origin and were placed at the service of minor religious cults or were given as gifts to the Inca nobility.
Despite the differences in terms of how they ended up, the services they provided tended to be very similar; The acllas were in charge of creating textiles, preparing food, preparing chicha for ritual consumption, and any other skills they need to be a good wife or priestess. Their services are considered a foundation for Inca conceptions of hospitality. This point was made clear by Inca Pachacútec who ordered the creation and expansion of the Acllahuasi with the purpose of strengthening "the generosity of the administration".
However, their work may even have been more specialized and nuanced than this general understanding of their role. Some sources suggest that there were many different types of acllas with specific titles. Among them were the Wayror Akllaq (principal choice), which served the sun and the moon, the Wayror Akllaq Sumaq that were dedicated to the main huacas, and the Aklla Chaupi Katikin Sumaq who weaved clothes and worked on farms. Other sources suggest that they may have had more responsibilities than are normally attributed to them. Due to their unique position in society, they may have also had a role as scribes.
Social Importance
While acllas are often regarded as commodities within the empire, their influence and significance reached far beyond a simple item to be traded. In fact, many of them tended to benefit socially from their position as aclla, since those who were married to provincial leaders were given their own land and commanded over the laborers who worked the land.
The use of acllas was linked to kinship and the maintenance of hegemony within the empire. The family of an elected aclla would be raised in social status. The acllas themselves would honor the main Inca gods and would be honored in return. Those that were not slaughtered in Cuzco could be returned to their own communities and slaughtered there. This would create a ritual link between Cuzco and the local region; Cuzco had taken a member of the local community and turned them into a representative of the central state. The aclla had been blessed by the Emperor and became the guardian of the local huacas. This marked the entry of the empire into local tradition and religion.
The acllas were an extremely important tool of the state crafts for Cuzco. They thought largely of the system of reciprocity that kept the empire running without a formal money economy. Redistributing women was an extremely successful way to win the loyalty of those who had just been conquered by the Incas because it conferred status on the families of selected women and helped build trust among officials and locals. His service was also essential in establishing Inca culture throughout the empire. The labor they provided in the form of textiles was used in donations to help form alliances and they themselves were also used as a kind of gift that helped confer status on the recipient. Those who received an aclla as a wife were also given all the abilities it could provide, allowing that person significant power.
Acllas rendered in service for sexual purposes similarly conferred importance due to their abilities to create the necessary means for rituals, namely the making of chicha which was an integral part of religious ceremonies. Their presence is observed at the ritual site of Huánuco Pampa, where the structures that have been excavated suggest a large presence of acllas who had access to the extensive stores of corn and grain to make chicha. It was important that they were present at the site because chicha could not be stored for long periods of time; it had to be done more or less on the spot.
Although less common, there is some evidence that acllas were used in human sacrifice. This was tied to their role as dons and the empire-wide system of reciprocity due to their economic significance. In a ritual context, they were an extremely valuable sacrifice because they represented the capacity for so much potential wealth through the use of their skills in weaving, chicha making, and hospitality. They also represented a connection between Cuzco and the outlying regions they had conquered. This tying of the center to the periphery was one of the most important aspects of the sacrifice of the acllas. The story of Tanta Carhua is one such account of the process of uniting the center and the periphery.
Colonial documents contain a record of Tanta Carhua, who was sacrificed as Cápac Cocha in her aillu home of Urcos. After visiting Cuzco and being honored by the emperor, Tanta Carhua approaches her saying, "You can end me now because she couldn't be more honored than by the festivities they held for me in Cuzco." Upon her return home, Tanta's father became the curaca of her aillu. Tanta was deified and hers' sacrifice... ritually affirmed the new role of her father and her father's descendants as a link between Urcos and Cuzco while dramatizing the community's subservience to Cuzco & # 3. 4;.
Types of Acllas
In the Inca Empire there were various types of Acllas, among these we have:
Acllas of the Sun
In the Inca Empire, in order to provide the best possible cult to the sun god, in addition to its various classes of priests, the Incas had created an important institution of virgins dedicated to its service, known as Intip Chinán, into which the girls chosen in their infancy (at the age of eight) to become acllas after a strict novitiate that covered the first years of their stay in the convent, under the direction of a superior, Mamakona, educator, watchman and examiner of the young women under his guardianship.
Acllahuasi was the name of the temple of the acllas. But this religious profession was not only a call or an obligation to go to the service of religion, but rather a selective and careful education for the girls of the upper classes, since, once they reached the age nubile, between thirteen and fifteen years of age, they began to be "presented in society", to be the potential fiancées of lords of the nobility, since the period of service in the Intip Chinán as aclla was also the guarantee of the quality of her lineage and the endorsement of the best education and, evidently, the best publicly exhibitable proof of her indisputable virginity.
Not keeping the obligatory chastity and, above all, being surprised with a man meant, for the practicing vestal, her unappealable death sentence, a cruelly exemplary death, leaving her to die of starvation, so that she would not be the hand of the human being that killed the priestesses, but the abandonment.
If a pregnancy was produced by one of the aclla, provided there was no evidence against the required adherence to the strict norm of required virginity, it was considered that such pregnancy had been carried out by the explicit and personal will action of the sun god and, automatically, the son that the vestal had, was considered a privileged son of the sun god and, as such, received a favored treatment for the rest of his days.