The Sun God Who Legitimized an Empire

Inti's cult held a political significance within the Inca Empire considerably more direct and load-bearing than most other deities discussed in this atlas, since the Inca ruling dynasty claimed direct descent from Inti himself, making worship of the sun god inseparable from the ideological justification for Inca imperial rule and the specific legitimacy of its ruling family, a fusion of religious devotion and dynastic political claim that scholars of Andean religion treat as central to understanding why Inti-focused state ceremony, including this prayer and the major annual festival Inti Raymi, received such prominent official state support and elaboration compared to more locally or regionally focused Andean deities and shrines, called huacas, that continued to be venerated by specific communities across the empire alongside official Inti worship. This prayer's petition for the sun's continued light, warmth and support for the Inca state and its agricultural cycle accordingly functions on two levels simultaneously, as genuine religious devotion to a powerful cosmic deity and as an implicit affirmation of the political order that deity was understood to specifically favor and sustain.