• Quipu, [before 1600].

Collections:
Format:
  • Visual material
Date:
  • [before 1600].
Subject:
View in catalog:
Call number:
  • C0940 (Princeton Mesoamerican Manuscripts, no. 5)
  • Electronic Resource
Extent:
  • 1 item (a fifty-one strand Inca quipu) ; 78 x 101 cm.
Title sort:
  • Quipu, [before 1600].
Spatial:
  • Mexico
Relation:
  • Princeton Mesoamerican collection, [600s]-[1800s]
Source acquisition:
  • Gift of Gerard B. Lambert, ca. 1975.
Created:
  • 1600-01-01T00:00:00Z
Abstract:
  • The only known form of pre-Columbian "writing" in South America is the Incan quipu. Incan clerks, known as quipucamayo, were trained to record and translate these quipus as "memoranda or registers made from strands of cord, in which different knots and colors signify different things. It is incredible what they have comprehended in this way, for what books can say of histories, laws, ceremonies, and business accounts... is provided very precisely by the quipu," wrote a Spanish colonial observer. This 51-strand quipu is typical of surviving examples, which date from the 13th and 16th centuries.
Identifier:
  • ark:/88435/s7526g75v
Location:
  • HSVM C0940 (Princeton Mesoamerican Manuscripts, no. 5)
  • HSVM Electronic Resource
  • ELF1 C0940 (Princeton Mesoamerican Manuscripts, no. 5)
  • ELF1 Electronic Resource
Edm rights:
  • No Known Copyright
Range label:
  • Logical
Available online: