feminine life among the people of the
Incas. In the first place, we find that even in the religion of the
Peruvians woman held an honored place. The sun was the chief personage
in the theogony of the Peruvians; but he had his satellites, and among
them the most important was the moon, his sister and wife. In this union
of a god to his sister we are reminded of the Egyptian cult, wherein
Osiris was married to Isis, and it is somewhat curious that in both
nations, Egyptian and Peruvian, wherein there obtained this feature of
incest elevated to sacred places, there was also the introduction of the
same offence against nature in the royal house; for both Peruvian Inca
and Egyptian Pharaoh were given to marrying their sisters, that the
royal race might be preserved uncontaminated by any alien strain.

The religion thus acknowledged the status of woman by giving her a place
among its deities; nor did it stop at this point, though, as is so
frequently to be found in primitive cults, it mingled the sacred and the
profane in a manner rather confusing to our more complex modern thought.
The institution of the "Virgins of the Sun" was in some ways a most
singular reproduction of the Roman Vestal and the Catholic nun, and in
others the exact opposite of the intentions of these European types. The
Virgins of the Sun were young maidens who from their infancy had been
dedicated to the service of their deity, and who, when very young, were
placed in convents. Here they were instructed by elderly matrons called
_mamaconas_, who taught them religious theory and duty as well as the
material arts of spinning, embroidery, and other occupations suited to
their sex and situation. These maidens were usually selected from those
of royal blood or from the daughters of the greater nobles, though a
girl of great beauty would sometimes be raised from the ranks of the
commonalty to the high dignity of a Virgin of the Sun. Their life was
strictly conventual; no one but the Inca himself, or his queen, could
enter the consecrated precincts without having duties to call them
thither. Chastity was most strongly inculcated, and it is said that no
lapse was ever known on the part of an inmate of these convents. This is
not so surprising when the provisions of the law of the Incas on this
subject are recalled. The offending virgin was to be buried alive, her
lover was to be strangled, and the town or village in which he resided
was to be utterly destroyed an