Gateway of the Sun (the Staff God)

A doorway cut from a single block of andesite at Tiwanaku, near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, carved above the opening with a god holding a staff in each hand. Who the figure is remains open: Britannica lists a sun god, a thunder god and Viracocha among the readings.

Andean and Inca symbols. Also called gate of the sun, puerta del sol, staff god, tiwanaku gate of the sun.

Meaning

The Gateway of the Sun stands in the Kalasasaya, a large rectangular open temple at Tiwanaku. UNESCO describes it as a single slab of andesite cut to form a doorway, with a carved frieze above: a central deity standing on a stepped platform, wearing an elaborate headdress and holding a staff in each hand, flanked by rows of bird-headed figures, with a row of human faces along the bottom. Britannica calls the central figure the Doorway God and the smaller figures “angels or winged messengers”. UNESCO notes that the whole frieze has been read as an agricultural calendar. Tiwanaku’s culture had vanished by 1200, and Britannica reports the speculation that its builders were the ancestors of the Aymara of highland Bolivia today.

Origin and history

Tiwanaku, Britannica says, was once a busy city, the capital of one of the greatest and longest-lived civilizations of the ancient world. It dates much of the site, including its major buildings, to between about AD 200 and 600, and UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List in 2000.

The Spanish chronicler Pedro de Cieza de León, who travelled in Peru between 1532 and 1550, walked the ruins. Among them he saw “many doorways, with their jambs, lintels, and thresholds, all of one stone”, and could not understand with what tools they had been made. He believed Tiwanaku to be the most ancient ruin in Peru, and recorded that the Indians he met said the Incas had built their great buildings at Cusco on its plan.

Is it Viracocha?

The figure has no name in any record from the people who carved it. Britannica’s article on Viracocha suggests that the creator god may be the “weeping god” carved at Tiwanaku, while its article on Tiwanaku lists a sun god and a thunder god as other readings. Two sixteenth-century Spanish writers tie Viracocha to the place: Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa recorded in 1572 that Viracocha went to Tiwanaku and there “sculptured and designed on a great piece of stone” all the nations he meant to create, and Cieza wrote that the great blocks at Tiwanaku were held to date from Ticiviracocha’s time.

Sources

Tiwanaku: Spiritual and Political Centre of the Tiwanaku Culture, UNESCO World Heritage List, property 567 (inscribed 2000; Internet Archive copy), UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Description
Tiwanaku, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Introduction; image caption
Viracocha, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Introduction
The Travels of Pedro de Cieza de León, A.D. 1532–50, contained in the first part of his Chronicle of Peru, Pedro de Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú, part 1 (1553), translated by Clements R. Markham, Hakluyt Society, 1864 (Project Gutenberg), Hakluyt Society (Project Gutenberg edition), chapter CV
The Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru, by Pedro de Cieza de León, Pedro de Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú, part 2 (written about 1550), translated by Clements R. Markham, Hakluyt Society, 1883 (Project Gutenberg), Hakluyt Society (Project Gutenberg edition), chapter V
History of the Incas, by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Historia de los Incas (1572), translated by Clements R. Markham, Hakluyt Society, 1907 (Project Gutenberg), Hakluyt Society (Project Gutenberg edition), chapter VII

The same shape elsewhere

Browse symbols formed from lines or squares and rectangles.

Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research

Added October 9, 2026.

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