QUICK FACTS
Name: Mummy mask with wig
What it is: A carved wooden mask
Where it is from: Peru
When it was made: Circa 1000 to 1450
This wooden mask, adorned with human hair and a textile headband, once decorated an Andean mummy nearly a thousand years ago. Crafted by an artist of the Chancay culture, the object was also coated in red cinnabar, a mercury-based pigment.
The Chancay were a pre-Inca society inhabiting the central coast of Peru during the Late Intermediate Period (1000 to 1450). A widespread funerary practice involved wrapping the deceased in layered textiles, plant matter, and animal hides to form a bundled package. These bundles were interred in pits alongside offerings such as tools, food, and figurines. Because bodies were typically bound in a fetal posture, the exact position of the head within the finished bundle was often ambiguous.
According to The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, which houses the mask, fabricated “false heads” of textile or wood were occasionally attached to Chancay funerary bundles to provide a focal point for ancestor veneration.
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The mask is approximately life-sized, measuring 12 by 8 inches (30.5 by 20.3 centimeters). Chancay funerary masks were not intended as realistic portraits; rather, they employed stylized elements such as diamond-shaped eyes, a triangular nose, and a small U-shaped mouth. Microscopic analysis conducted by The Walters Art Museum in 2017 confirmed the wig was very likely made from human hair.
The Chancay maker painted the mask with cinnabar, a toxic brick-red mercury sulfide. This substance was commonly used in Andean burial rites, where the color symbolized purification and remembrance. The mask was probably not displayed on the exterior of the bundle, as textile impressions preserved in the cinnabar suggest it was wrapped in additional cloth, per the museum.
Although less famous than the Inca, recent study of Chancay ceramics and the tattoos on their mummified ancestors shows they were a sophisticated culture with notable artistic skill.
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