Inti

Inti (in Imperial Quechua Apu Inti, “Lord Sun”, or Tayta Inti, “Father Sun”) is the sovereign solar deity, dynastic ancestor and tutelary patron of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu). In the Andean theology recorded by the colonial chroniclers Juan de Betanzos, Pedro Cieza de León and the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Inti was ordered by the creator deity Viracocha to rise from the waters of Lake Titicaca, receiving the mission to warm the world, fertilize the maize terraces and banish the primordial dusk. Regarded as the biological and spiritual progenitor of the first Inca ruler, Manco Cápac, and of his consort Mama Ocllo, the god conferred perpetual divine authority on the imperial line of the Sapa Incas, who ruled under the title Intip Churin (“Son of the Sun”). His central cult radiated from the Qorikancha (“Golden Enclosure”) in Cusco, whose walls of perfectly cut masonry were lined with massive sheets of beaten gold (the sacred sweat of the sun). At the June winter solstice of the Southern Hemisphere, the ruler and the nobility celebrated Inti Raymi, the great festival of solar rebirth in which the new fire was kindled by means of polished concave metal mirrors and distributed to all the shrines of the empire.

6 min read · Reviewed on September 28, 2026 · How we research

The golden solar disk, the rays, the imperial crown and the corn

Primary sources

• Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios Reales de los Incas. translation: Edition by Aurelio Miró Quesada, Biblioteca Ayacucho, Caracas, 1985.
• Juan de Betanzos, Suma y Narración de los Incas. translation: Edition by María del Carmen Martín Rubio, Ediciones Atlas, Madrid, 1987.

Studies

• Terence N. D'Altroy, The Incas. Blackwell Publishing, 2002.
• Brian S. Bauer, The Sacred Landscape of the Inca: The Cusco Ceque System. University of Texas Press, 1998.
• Gary Urton, Inca Myths. British Museum Press, 1999.