Our Peruvian weaver came to Cornell at the end of the 19th century as a gift from a grateful family - but how did she become this family's to give?

Presented by Mr. Larco, 1899:

The original catalog of the Anthropology Collections records the donation of a “female Peruvian mummy and artifacts.” Attached to our Peruvian weaver is a tag reading “Peruvian Mummy, Donated by Mr. Larco, 1899”, thus identifying the donor and confirming the date of the donation.

The “Mr Larco” in question was Rafael Larco Herrera, a wealthy plantation owner from the vicinity of Trujillo on the north coast of Peru. He belonged to a family of avid antiquarians and collectors that included his brother Senator Victor Larco Herrera, his brother-in-law Alberto Hoyle, and his son the archaeologist Rafael Larco Hoyle.

The Larcos were as enthusiastic in sharing and showcasing antiquities as they were in collecting them. At the turn of the century, Victor Larco opened one of the first archaeology museums in Lima. After noting the paucity of pre-Columbian Peruvian material in the Prado, his brother Rafael Larco donated a portion of his archaeological collection to the Spanish government.

The elder Rafael Larco instilled his interest in archaeology in his son. As an archaeologist Rafael Larco Hoyle is best known for his work withPeruvian north coast ceramics, particularly his seriation of Moche pottery and his description of the Cupisnique and Salinar cultures.Later, in 1926 Rafaelís son, Larco Hoyle, opened a museum bearing his fatherís name. The Rafael Larco Herrera museum, now in Lima, is the worldís largest private collection of Peruvian ceramics.

The Larco family's Cornell connections:

Although Rafael Larco Herrera never attended Cornell as a student, his family had a close relationship with the university. His brother, Alberto Fortunato Larco Herrera, was Cornellís first Peruvian student. Alberto was at Cornell from September of 1894 until June of 1898 and graduated with a degree in engineering. Alberto was so enthralled by the university that he penned a work of verse entitled, “Hail to thee, My Alma Mater! - A Tribute of the Oldest Peruvian Graduate to Cornell University.”

Rafael Larco Herrera also appears to have thought highly of Cornell, because in 1919 he sent his son Rafael Victor Larco Hoyle to Cornell to study agriculture.

Grave robbing and donations:

Rafael Larco Herrera's donations were by no means unusual in this era. The late 19th and early 20th centuries was the golden age of museum collecting. The University of Pennsylvania Museum, the Peabody Museums at Harvard and Yale, the Smithsonian, and Chicagoís Field Museum stuffed their shelves with pre-Hispanic loot from South America.

The antiquities donated to these museums and those collected by the Larcos were not unearthed by archaeologists during the course scientific excavations, but were instead torn from tombs by grave robbers. These grave robbers were both freelance huaqeros (looters) and workers employed on the family estates.

Peru has a long and inglorious history of tomb robbing, dating to at least the time of the Spanish invasion. The looting of Huaca del Sol, an Early Intermediate adobe pyramid in the Moche Valley, is an extreme example of such avarice. By diverting the Moche River in 1602, the Spanish hydraulically mined the pyramid in order to reach the gold filled tombs at its base. By the 19th century grave robbing had reached epidemic proportions. The accounts of the German archaeologists Reiss and Stubel who excavated at Ancon necropolis in the 1880ís indicate that much of the cemetery had already been despoiled by looters.

While on one of his turn of the century expeditions to Peru on behalf of the Smithsonian Institute, Ales Hrdlicka also observed and lamented such looting of cemeteries in the vicinity of the Hoyle hacienda in Trujillo:

"The vandalism in this place was appalling. Hundreds of vessels which could not be sold or transported, lay broken and even entire over the surface, and skulls and bones, in many instances damaged by the diggers, lay in every directionÖ.When we returned an hour later, we found to our astonishment five men busily engaged in digging in the graves, and at the same time saw a railroad hand car on which they came. They proved to be a party of railroad laborers, who came out under the direction of their foreman, to engage in their usual Sunday recreation of digging for pottery." (Hrdlicka 1914: 16-17).

Rafael Larco Herrera probably had contacts with treasure hunters who supplied him with artifacts. His brother Victor Larco Herrera certainly employed grave robbers, as attested to by Hrdlicka. At that writerís wish and before his arrival, Sr. Larco detailed a number of his employees to collect all the skeletal remains that were exposed in one of the large prehistoric cemeteries near the hacienda of Chiquitoi that had not previously been examined, and from several other localities (Hrdlicka 1914: 46).

Mummies and modern art:

Although gold, textiles, and ceramics, rather than the mummies themselves, were the usual focus of tomb raiders, the desiccated bodies generated considerable interest in the United States and Europe. An ìIncaî body exhibited in Paris was to generate the greatest Andean influence on modern art. On a visit to the Musee de Homme in 1889, the Norwegian Edvard Munch was confronted with the specter of a desiccated mummy whose face was transfixed in an eternal cry of anguish. This ìmummy gapeî would later be translated into Munchís 1893 painting “The Scream.”

From London to New Orleans, public mummy unwrappings were held before packed halls full of paying customers. Even Cornell University was caught up in the fad. In 1887 ìa limited number of invited spectators assembled in the anatomical lecture room to witness the ceremony of unwrapping the Egyptian mummyî as performed by Professor Tyler the curator of Cornellís natural history museum. This mummy was Penpi, an Egyptian scribe who lived during the Late Intermediate Period (828-665BC). He was excavated from a tomb at Thebes in 1883 and donated to Cornell, along with his sarcophagi, by the American Consul in Cairo, G. Pomeroy.

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