Photo: Francesco Sammarco
“Bird priest” (lower figure on the right, with wings, beak-like nose and foots to shape of a bird’s claws) in front of the Lord (taller figure on the left), on the motif of the presentation of the sacrificial blood of defeated and captive warriors, offered in a goblet. An Ulluchu fruit is at the feet of the Lord.
The elusive Ulluchu, War, Blood and Sacrifice among the Moche
The topics linked with the ritual use of the “Ulluchu” fruit among the Moche people of ancient Peru mostly speak of ritual combat, war, sacrificial practices, ritual blood-letting and – possibly – as we shall see, even of the shamanic, otherworldly, ecstatic visionary journeys of their warrior-priests.
The elusive Ulluchu has been previously associated to Carica candicans – a kind of wild papaya (Carica papaya L.) with anti-coagulant properties – by Italian archaeologist and anthropologist Mario Polia, and most recently convincingly identified by Rainer W. Bussman and Douglas Sharon as a group of species of the genus Guarea, belonging to the Meliacea family.
One of the first depictions of this rare fruit appears in the Moche culture [circa 1-750 CE] of Peru, in a banner associated to what has been called the “Ulluchu Man”, a figurine about 50 cm tall representing an odd-looking half-crab half-anthropomorphic deity, found in level 1 of the burial site of the “Lord of Sipán”. The Lord was a high-ranking shaman, or a priest, a warrior-priest, a spiritual leader, or a bit of this all, found in an impressive Moche burial ground, near Chiclayo, in Peru.