By Walter Alva

Director, Brunning Archaelogical Museum, Peru

......Like many a drama, this one starts violently, with the death of a tomb robber in the first act.

     The chief of police rang me near midnight; his voice was urgent: "We have something you must see right now". Hurrying from where I live and work - the Bruning Archaeological Museum in Lambayeque, Peru - I wondered which of the many ancient pyramids and ceremonial platforms that dot my country's arid north coast had been sacked of its treasures this time.

     Pillaging tombs has long provided extra money for many people in the Lambayeque Valley.

     As cash income dries up between sugarcane harvest, villagers of Sipán speculatively eye an imposing, flat - topped pyramid and a massive adobe platform near - by, and gangs of looters put new edges on their shovels.

     These structures were built by apeople known as the Moche. From about A.D.100 to the close of the seventh century these agricultural Indians flourished in the desert margin between the Andes and the Pacific, raising huge within them their noblest dead.

     They also buried fine gold and pottery so alluring that in decades of excavation archaeologists have rarely found a major Moche tomb unplundered. The artifacts, and the priceless knowledge they represent, almost always disappear in a insatiable international black marked for stolen pre-Columbian treasures. What awaited me at the police station in February 1987, I was sure, would be but the poorest castoffs of a grave robber.

            Such castoffs ! Among 83 antiquities confiscated from a local looter's house were these two beautiful priceless gold earrings with the shape of a duck in the center; the gilded cooper faces of two jaguar - like felines, baring shell fangs. Apair of gold peanuts gleamed three times natural size, wrinkled and ridget precisely like real peanuts. A gold human head, broadfaced like an infant's, returned my astonished stare with heavy - lidded eyes of silver and cobalt pupils of lapis lazuli.

The grave looters tradition is, unfortunately, an old one. The first came in 1532, when

Spanish conquerors began ransacking the Inca Empire for gold, silver and gems. The eroded facades of  Moche shrines must also conceal troves, reasoned the invaders, and they tunneled energetically. In the 17th century looters even diverted the Moche River to undercut a pyramid.

     Across time countles of these ancient adobe structures, which Peruvians today call huacas, have yielded enough exquisite pottery, jewelry, goldwork, and other antiquities to inflame the covetous hearts of generations of collectors. To satisfy their passion, they have encouraged bands of huaqueros, or grave robbers.

      Scaling the scarred slopes of the Moche pyramid at Sipán can be treacherous work. Often enough I've missed a handhold or foothold and braked short of disaster only at the cost of skinned palms and buttocks. Yet some huaqueros dare the climb at night and, once at the summit, shovel by lantern or flashlight.

The Moche platform near the foot of the Sipán pyramid presents an easier target.

Weatherworn to the shape of a mound, the platform at its base extends 230 feet by 165 feet. Rising a mere 33 feet, it lies within handy reach of nocturnal diggers.

Note.-   Walter Alva and his wife  Susana Meneses, also an archaeologist, spent more than 8 years uncovering  tombs.  Susana and another  archaeologist Luis Chero have chartered levels of the  platform that date from perhaps A.D. 100 at the bottom to about 300 at the top.

I can easily imagine huaqueros scurrying like shadows on the February night 10 years ago, when by chance they penetrated a burial chamber within the platform. Hastily the plunderers broke up necklaces, bracelets, and other ornaments to sell piecemeal to middle men who in turn supply Peruvian and foreing collectors. For protection they posted armed lookouts atop the Moche platform and the pyramid of Sipán.

     For good reason. According to police, a twin of the little gold head they sized is now for sale in the collector's netherworld for $ 600,000. A clandestine bid for a similar gold figurine has topped $ 2'000,000.                                                                                                                                              As the time  passed, the Moche simply added new layers to the existing structure. The third level had a covered corridor, whose function we can only guess.   The structures on the various levels may have been temples.  The Tomb of the Old Lord of Sipán , the earliest burial, occupies the bottom layer (right) .  The Tomb of what may be  his descendant, the Lord of Sipán , was discovered  in the top layer, along with the tomb of a priest.

Local police tried to recover the plunder. Several days after the raid on the platform they searched a looter's house. He was away, but behind the house they found dozens of fragments of gilded copper, remains of figures and ornaments that, because of their low commercial value, had been broken to pieces and thrown out.

     The police mounted a second raid in the predawn hours. This time the adversaries met face-to-face, and one of the looters was fatally wounded.

     The village was in shock. But the artifacts that had been plundered from the platform would lead to a magnificent discovery. * * *

  Sipán's treasures lay hidden in the earth until " huaqueros ", or grave robbers, dug a 23-foot shaft into the platform in 1987.    As the treasures began to appear on the art market, Sipán  became a major site,  and his life changed abruptly when  he went there to direct the salvage excavations.

 

Now enjoy the fabolous treasures and the spectacular burial place of a pre-Inca

warrior-priest. Project director Walter Alva, archaeologist Christopher B. Donnan, photographer Bill Ballenberg, and artist Ned Seidler bring the Lord of Sipán and his culture to life.

............     INDEX                         LORD OF SIPAN TOMB