Page 75 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Chapter 9

Once and Future King

During my travels in the Andes I had several times re-read a curious
variant of the mainstream tradition of Viracocha. In this variant, which
was from the area around Lake Titicaca known as the Collao, the deity
civilizing-hero had been named Thunupa:

Thunupa appeared on the Altiplano in ancient times, coming from the north with
five disciples. A white man of august presence, blue-eyed, and bearded, he was
sober, puritanical and preached against drunkenness, polygamy and war.
1
After travelling great distances through the Andes, where he created a
peaceful kingdom and taught men all the arts of civilization, Thunupa
2
was struck down and grievously wounded by a group of jealous
conspirators:

They put his blessed body in a boat of totora rush and set it adrift on Lake
Titicaca. There ... he sailed away with such speed that those who had tried so
cruelly to kill him were left behind in terror and astonishment—for this lake has no
current ... The boat came to the shore at Cochamarca, where today is the river
Desguardero. Indian tradition asserts that the boat struck the land with such force
it created the river Desguardero, which before then did not exist. And on the water
so released the holy body was carried many leagues away to the sea coast at Africa
...
3

Boats, water and salvation

There are curious parallels here to the story of Osiris, the ancient
Egyptian high god of death and resurrection. The fullest account of the
original myth defining this mysterious figure is given by Plutarch and
4
says that, after bringing the gifts of civilization to his people, teaching
them all manner of useful skills, abolishing cannibalism and human
sacrifice, and providing them with their first legal code, Osiris left Egypt
and travelled about the world to spread the benefits of civilization to
other nations as well. He never forced the barbarians he encountered to
accept his laws, preferring instead to argue with them and to appeal to
their reason. It is also recorded that he passed on his teachings to them

1 South American Mythology, p. 87.
2 Ibid., p. 44.
3 Antonio de la Calancha, Cronica Moralizada del Orden de San Augustin en el Peru,
1638, in South American Mythology, p. 87.
Good summaries of the Plutarch account are given in M. V. Seton-Williams, Egyptian
4
Legends and Stories, Rubicon Press, London, 1990, pp. 24-9; and in E. A. Wallis Budge,
From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, Oxford University Press, 1934, pp. 178-83.

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