Early Moche House Scene Vessel

André Emmerich, New York (A-169)

Alan E. and Marianne Schwartz, Michigan, acquired from the above on May 13, 1965

Thence by descent to the present owner

Meadow Brook Art Gallery, Oakland University, Rochester, Art of Pre-Columbian America, February 15 - March 26, 1976

Cecilia F. Klein, Art of Pre-Columbian America, Meadow Brook Art Gallery, 1976, p. 33, cat. no. 65

This stirrup-spout vessel provides both a revealing look at an offering ceremony to a high ranking priest, most likely for a curing ritual, as well as a vivid depiction of architecture of ancient dwellings from the Moche era. 

The priestly figure sits at the back of the structure, visible discreetly through the side windows. The supplicant sits with his back to us, showing the sack over his shoulder; this meeting appears intimate and reverential. The traveling attendant cups his hands and has placed a strand of espingo seed pods on the floor before the priest. Dried espingo seeds were an important component of curing ceremonies and were harvested from far east of the Andes. They are still used in medicinal rituals today (Christopher Donnan, Moche Art of Peru, Museum of Cultural Anthropology, UCLA, 1978, pp. 124-127). 

The three-sided structure represents an important sacred building or temple, given its placement on the stepped platform and fine decoration. The temple can be accessed by the narrow diagonal ramps on the front. It has a gabled roof with interior cross beam supports, with mace head finials trimming the peak and a line of tapered ‘mountain peaks' along the sloped front. The right side wall has a narrow door and there are windows on each side wall. The outer walls are elaborately decorated in a deep reddish brown and cream slip, with alternating quadrants of geometric and zoomorphic design. The back wall of the structure is decorated with four rows of human faces.

Ceremonial offerings and exchanges among people from different ecological zones were prominent factors that contributed to the growth of Andean society. The attendant’s journey to a priestly healer here is well illustrated, which culminates in this intimate scene in the inner chamber of the priest’s dwelling. 

Cf. For a similar example of a Moche architectural vessel featuring the mace head as roof adornment in the American Museum of Natural History (41.2/8022), see Joanne Pillsbury, Patricia Joan Sarro, James Doyle and Juliet Wiersma, Design for Eternity, Architectural Models from the Ancient Americas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015, p. 61, fig. 66. For a similar example of a vessel showing the espingo seeds in a curing ceremony in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, (obj. No. 16-62-30/F728) see Donnan, op. cit., p. 128, fig. 200a.