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Inca Qero (Ceremonial Drinking Cup)

Inca ceremonial wooden drinking cup (qero, c. 15th–16th century CE) with incised or painted geometric and figurative decoration. Used in ritual toasting (tinka) ceremonies to seal social bonds and make offerings to deities. Examples held at major collections including the Museo Larco (Lima), Dumbarton Oaks, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Scholarly Significance

Represent the Inca qero (ceremonial drinking vessel) tradition, demonstrating the continuity and transformation of Andean ritual art before and after Spanish conquest.

Notes

·The qero (Quechua: 'wooden cup') was the primary ritual drinking vessel of the Inca elite. Qeros were always used in pairs — one for the human drinker and one to offer to the deity or ancestor being invoked in the tinka (toast) ceremony.
·Pre-conquest Inca qeros (c. 1400–1532) typically bear geometric decoration derived from the tocapu textile pattern vocabulary — stepped diamonds, key meanders, concentric rectangles, and vertical band divisions.
·Post-conquest colonial qeros (c. 1530–1700+) show a dramatic shift to figurative narrative imagery: Inca rulers in their traditional dress, battles, agricultural scenes, and mythological figures, rendered in a distinctive resin-inlay polychrome technique (mopa mopa lacquer inlay).
·The continued production of qeros well into the colonial period (through at least the 18th century) indicates that Andean elite families maintained traditional ritual practices despite Spanish pressure.
·The flared-mouth, flat-base form of the Inca qero has precedents in Tiwanaku and Wari cultures (c. 500–1000 CE), indicating a long Andean tradition of this vessel form.
·Notable collections: Museo Larco (Lima, largest collection), Dumbarton Oaks (Washington D.C.), Brooklyn Museum, Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, and the Musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac (Paris).