PACHACAMAC, pii'eha-kii'mitk. RUINS OF. The remains of a vast city of the Vuneas, the ancient coast Indians of Peru, situated about 20 miles southeast of Lima. It was their sacred city before the conquest of the Incas, and held the shrine of Pachacamac, the Creator or Maker of all things. The Incas, after they had subjugated the Yuncas, erected here a great temple of the sun and a house of the Virgins of the Sun. The ruins cover four large hills which furnished abundant building material used in combination with bricks or adobes of sun-dried earth. The site is at present a waste of drifting sand, some times obscuring the buildings which in the rain less and frostless region are in a fair state of preservation. The city was well laid out, having broad streets and a surrounding wall with large gates for entering. The houses were great com munal structures built in terraces like the New Mexican pueblos. There were capacious reservoirs and irrigation works; the hills were terraced and upon the level areas thus secured were located the temple and other buildings. The principal Yunea structure. the temple of Pachaeamae, is located on a headland about 500 feet above the sea, which breaks at its feet.
The hill has been surrounded by four terraces, forming a semi-lunar pyramid, the summit sev eral acres in area. The entrance is from the cast and the ascent is by a series of ramps. The walls were at one time painted red and adorned with frescoes. The temple covers an area of
600 X 450 feet, and is an aggregation of rec tangular buildings and sunken courts or the vari ous terraces. The shrine is on the summit at the southern corner behind two projecting rocks. The Inca convent stands on low ground near a small lake. It is also built of adobe bricks and covers an area 350 X 200 feet. It consists of a square, terraced area covered with buildings• and from this extends a long wall having 18 cells on the inner face. At a right angle another wall ex tends to a square terrace hacked also with a niched wall. in which a fine example of the round arch has been found.
Around the temple of Pachaeamac is a vast cemetery in which the flexed bodies of the dead, wrapped in cloth and secured with a network of cord, were placed in vaults lined with adobe bricks and roofed with canes and rushes. Some of the tombs have three or more chambers. The objects buried with the dead consist. of pottery, bronze, gold, or copper objects, textiles, weaving apparatus, pigments, food, and the like.
Paeliacamac being a central shrine, first of the Yuncas and later of the Incas, was exceedingly rich : it is said that Pizarro secured here 1700 pounds of gold and 1600 pounds of silver at the sack of the temples. Consult: Squier. Peru (New York, 1853) Wiener. Perou et Bolicie (Paris, 1880).