Exhibition "The Gold of the Inca Empire. God. Power. Eternity. 2000 years of a great civilization" in the Russian Ethnographic Museum of St. Petersburg, dedicated to the great past of the Ancient Peru, is virtually an exceptional museum event.

Perhaps it could have been described this way, if gold, according to entrenched views, has equated to money by Inca.

But it was not the case. Gold and silver represented for the Incas exclusively religious, magical and ritual values. The Incas identified gold with "droplets of sunny sweat", and silver - with "tears of the moon".

"Gold of the Inca Empire": the reason for the tremendous appeal of the precious metal creations is not so much that they consist of gold or silver, but rather in the understanding that their show us the magnitude of the creators who remain unknown and whose story will never be told.

This exhibition, apart from the leitmotif associated with gold, is one more proof of the artistry and aesthetic perfection of the works of ancient Peruvian masters speaking the universal language of creativity accessible to the whole mankind.

Visitors to the State Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg are welcome to admire the world-famous creations from the funds of the Peru Museum of Gold and may also immerse themselves in the atmosphere of one of the most mysterious and highly developed cultures in the history of our world.

The exhibition invites inquisitive visitors to a some kind of expedition to the Inca Empire in order to understand Incas beliefs and visions of their Gods and Power along with pursuit of Eternity.

The conquistador Francisco Pizarro González, having executed Atahualpa, put an end to the Inca Empire. So the world full of contradiction has fallen. This was the world with organization which fully corresponded to the spirit of its inhabitants. In this world, a remarkable political and economic unity was established, in which even the inhabitants of the poorest regions could live secure and with dignity. The life of this society was based on the basic principle of justice: "Give and you will be given".

The Incas in this world adhered to numerous wise rules. It would be enough to quote one of them to show Incas greatness:

Nicanquis purinanchis ñañun puscanchis" - "Strong who cries together with the weak, will survive".

The Inca Empire is one of the most advanced and sophisticated cultures in world history. The Incas emerged at the turn of the 13th century and established the empire which occupied the entire territory of Peru, extending to Columbia, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador, with a population of more than 7 million people.

According to one of their legends, a very long time ago, complete darkness reigned over the world. There were no laws, religion or order, and people lived in terrible conditions, almost like animals. So, the god of the sun Inti showed mercy on the people and sent his children to the prominent crag of the Island of the Sun (Isla del Sol): Manco Capac with his sister and wife Mama Ocllo. The sun god gave them a golden staff and ordered them to settle where the staff sank in the ground from the first strike. After roaming for long, they came to the Watanay River valley. There, Manco Capac thrust his golden staff into the ground and it sank without resistance. With this divine gesture, the location for the future capital of the Inca Empire was determined. The city of Cuzco, which in the language of the Incas means ‘the navel of the world’.

This city, inscribed in 1983 on the UNESCO World Heritage List, still astounds with its look of ancient Inca times. Its solid walls, which continue to serve as the wall for almost half of the buildings in the centre of the city, seem to have been built for eternity.

In addition, the Incas built an extensive road system – perhaps only comparable to that of Romans ¬– extending from the north to the south of the vast Inca Empire. They also developed an impressive courier system allowing any message to be delivered to the most far-flung corners of the empire through a relay system in a matter of days. The Inca road system, covering 23,000 km, is also inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The roads traverse six South American countries, right up to the Andean highlands.

Moreover, the Incas developed a sophisticated record-keeping system using “talking knots” (quipus), which accurately recorded tax collection in the state. According to information available today, the Incas had two types of quipu: one for statistical record-keeping of valuable objects (e.g., stocks, the number of people, animals, plants and plots of land), while the other used for information exchange, such as correspondence. Quipu remains an unsolved mystery of this culture.

The Exhibition “The Gold of the Inca Empire: God, Power, Eternity. 2000 Years of a Great Civilization” will be on show between 27 March and 1 August 2019 at the Russian Ethnography Museum, St. Petersburg. This will be the first time this world-renowned exhibition is on display in St. Petersburg. It will offer visitors an exhaustive view of Inca traditions and rites, and of Andean cultures predating them, and that existed before the Spanish conquest.

The artefacts are on loan from the collection of the famous Gold Museum in Lima, Peru (Museo Oro Del Peru), which owns one of the largest private collections of pre-Columbian Peruvian art in the world. The Gold Museum of Peru was founded in 1960 by the Peruvian politician and collector Miguel Mujica Gallo.

“The Gold of the Inca Empire: God, Power, Eternity. 2000 Years of a Great Civilization” legendary exhibition offers the residents of St. Petersburg inhabitants and all Russians interested in art a rare opportunity to see the unique treasures of the sophisticated Inca civilization and the pre-Inca cultures. The gold of the Incas and those ancient peoples who brought forth the early cultures of Peru not only reflects the material riches accumulated during the pre-Columbian era but is also testament to the spiritual and artistic achievements of the early Indian peoples of Peru.

This sensational exhibition will mark the jubilee of 50 years of diplomatic relations established in the spring of 1969 between Russia and Peru.

Over the course of four months, housed in a luxurious marble hall of the Russian Ethnography Museum in St. Petersburg, visitors will get the chance to admire valuable gold artworks and learn more about the life of the people and communities of the lost era and faraway lands.

We hope that this better understanding will contribute to the consolidation of relations between Russia and Peru and help reaffirm the true value of this country’s culture and history.

All exhibits on display are part of Peru’s national cultural heritage. These objects are unique given that Peruvian goldsmiths, on religious grounds, never replicated their works.

These exhibits constitute only a small part of the legendary infinite gold trove of the Incas. The majority was melted into ingots by Spanish conquerors and taken out of the country. A large number has been preserved nonetheless. Visitors of the State Ethnography Museum in St. Petersburg will have the opportunity to view these specimens and, surrounded by many other artefacts from the Gold Museum of Peru, will be immersed in the atmosphere of one of the most enigmatic and sophisticated cultures in the history of the world.

The exhibition invites curious visitors on an expedition to the Inca Empire, to learn about their beliefs and conceptions of Gods, Power, and their aspiration for Eternity.

During his numerous trips to the most remote parts of Peru and around the world, this avid collector gathered wonderful works of art and weapons that belonged to famous people. Some of these objects are true treasures.

All these valuable objects, which include more than 8,000 artefacts in gold and silver, precious stones of the Inca epoch and other pre-Columbian Peruvian cultures, and the large collection of weapons and firearms from all over the world that he paid for personally, were bequeathed by Miguel Mujica Gallo to Peruvian culture. Today, they are displayed in the Gold Museum of Peru (Museo Oro del Peru) that he founded in 1960 in Lima and are on public view.

Many of the valuable artefacts presenting the pre-Columbian Peruvian art of goldwork from the Gold Museum of Peru collection were displayed in more than 70 cities in America, Asia and Europe, enjoying tremendous success all around the world. In every city, whether Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, Washington, Stockholm, San-Francisco, Canberra, Vienna, Moscow, Berlin or other big and small cities, every time hundreds of thousands of visitors filled the exhibition halls to admire these treasures of world cultural heritage.

This is the realisation of Miguel Mujica Gallo’s will, as he always held that art was a special ambassador of its country and must thus not be exclusive to it but available to people from other states as part of the world cultural heritage.