94 Lima’s southern outskirts, may indeed represent the deity whose name is remembered in Quechua as Pachamama, the earth goddess, even though the figures do not immediately display any sort of recognizable feminine characteristics (fig. 12). This inconclusive depiction in weaving again diverges from clear representations found in related ceramic traditions, particularly erotic examples, which leave absolutely no question open as to gender. What apparently does occur in textile representations of deities is the above-discussed process of transition and metamorphosis, evident to an exacerbated degree in the case of the Chimú moon goddess Si (fig. 13), who is traditionally represented in a fully zoomorphic state combining aspects of various animals including the cayman and spotted jaguar. A more familiar example of this transitional state is found in Egyptian deities such as Hathor with her attributes of the ears and horns of a cow. Her female human form most often remains clear, although she is also occasionally depicted in fully bovine form (fig. 14) and even more abstractly as a pair of horns flanking a sun disk. Though obscure to us today, images of Peruvian deities certainly would have been easily recognizable to their intended viewers. Having reached some understanding of the questions relating to our ability to interpret human-type faces in Peruvian textiles, the stage is now set for a stylistic discussion of these visages. FIG. 12 (above): Detail of a painted mantle containing hundreds of depictions of the earth goddess Pachamama. Ychma/Pachacamac, southern Central Coast, Peru. AD 1000–1460. Cotton. 147.3 x 340.4 cm. Private collection. FIG. 13 (right): Detail of one of six images of the moon goddesses Si in the tapestry-woven border of a mantle. Chimu, North Coast, Peru. AD 1100–1460. Camelid wool. 203.2 x 25.4 cm. Private collection, Brooklyn. FIG. 14 (far right): Hathor in bovine form, from The Book of the Dead of Ani, sheet 37. Dynasty 19, c. 1250 BC. Paint and ink on papyrus. H: 42 cm. The British Museum, 1888,0515.1.37. Photo courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. FIG. 15 (right): Detail of a panel of white lacework. Chancay, Central Coast, Peru. AD 1100–1460. Camelid wool. 68.6 x 91.4 cm. Private collection, New York.
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