Inti (the Inca sun)
Inti is the sun, the god the Incas worshipped above all others and the divine father of their kings. In the Coricancha, the sun temple at Cusco, he was shown as a huge gold figure with a round face and rays of fire.
Meaning
Garcilaso de la Vega wrote in his Royal Commentaries (1609) that the Incas adored the Sun “as the sole and universal God” who creates and sustains all things, and as the father of the first Inca. He described the image too: a figure of the Sun made of a plate of gold, with “a circular face and rays of fire issuing from it”, so large that it filled one whole side of the temple, whose four walls were covered from roof to floor with gold. The temple, Pedro de Cieza de León recorded, was called Inti-huasi, house of the Sun, and Curi-cancha, “the place of gold”; Garcilaso notes that it had become the church of Santo Domingo. In Peruvian schools today Inti is taught as one of the most important Andean deities, beside the apus of the mountains and Pachamama.
Origin and history
Cieza credits the Inca Yupanqui, son of Viracocha Inca, with enriching the temple to the state the Spanish found. Most of its treasure went to Cajamarca as part of Atahualpa’s ransom. The gold sun itself, Garcilaso writes, fell to the conquistador Mancio Serra de Leguisamo, whom he knew; Serra was a great gambler and lost it in a single night, which Garcilaso, following Father Acosta, gives as the origin of the saying “He plays away the Sun before dawn.”
The sun or the creator?
Garcilaso insists that the Incas worshipped no god but the Sun, “although there are not wanting persons who state the contrary”, and held in their hearts an unseen god, Pachacamac, to whom they built no temples. Cieza is one of those who say otherwise. In his account of the great harvest festival at Cusco, thanks went to Ticiviracocha, the creator, and also to the Sun and the Moon, and the highest place went to the figure of Ticiviracocha, held to be “the sovereign God, maker of all created things”. None of the three figures, he adds, was ever found.
Inti Raymi
The Incas’ greatest feast was the sun’s own, at the June solstice. It is staged again at Cusco every 24 June: see Inti Raymi.
The sun on Argentina’s emblems
The Sun of May on Argentina’s flag and coins goes back to 1813. The Museo Histórico Nacional, as Billiken reports it, explains that the Asamblea del Año XIII replaced the old Spanish arms with a new seal by Juan de Dios Rivera, bearing a rising sun of 32 rays, and that the sun struck on the first national coins of 1813 represents Inti, the chief Inca sun god.
Where you’ll see it today
whatdoesthissymbolmean.comFlag of ArgentinaArgentina’s flag has light blue, white and light blue horizontal stripes with a gold sun with a face in the middle, the Sun of May (Sol de Mayo), copied from the first Argentine coins of 1813. The 1944 flag decree explains its blue only as “light blue like the sky” and gives the colours no other meaning. whatdoesthissymbolmean.comFlag of PeruPeru’s flag is three vertical stripes, red, white and red. Plain, it is the Bandera Nacional, the national flag; with the national coat of arms in the centre it is the Pabellón Nacional, kept for state institutions. The draft regulation Peru’s Ministry of Defence published in 2025 gives red for the blood of those who fought for independence and white for the light of the Inca sun and the Andes.Read next
- Next in Andean and Inca symbolsInti Raymi (festival of the sun)The Inca festival of the sun, held at the June solstice in Cusco. Banned under Spanish rule, it was revived in 1944 and is staged every 24 June at the Coricancha, the main square and Sacsayhuamán.
- In Symbols across culturesSun godsSun gods include Helios in Greece, Ra in Egypt, Shamash in Mesopotamia, Surya in India and Tonatiuh among the Aztecs. The sun is not always male: Japan’s Amaterasu and the Norse Sól are sun goddesses.
See also
Quipu (khipu), Sun symbols, Sun Stone (the Aztec calendar stone), Nazca lines, Nazca hummingbird, Nazca monkey.
Sources
- First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, vol. I, by the Ynca Garcilasso de la Vega, Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales (Lisbon, 1609), translated by Clements R. Markham, Hakluyt Society, 1869 (Internet Archive full text), Hakluyt Society (Internet Archive), book III, chapter XX
- First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, vol. II, by the Ynca Garcilasso de la Vega, Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales (Lisbon, 1609), translated by Clements R. Markham, Hakluyt Society, 1871 (Internet Archive full text), Hakluyt Society (Internet Archive), book VI, chapter XX
- 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 XXVII; chapter XXX
- ¿Por qué el sol de la bandera argentina tiene cara?, Billiken (Editorial Atlántida), citing the Museo Histórico Nacional, Billiken, article text
- Cultura viva: pago a la tierra (Lectura N° 3, 3er grado de secundaria), Unidad de Gestión Educativa Local Chincheros (Apurímac), Peru’s state school system, June 2025, UGEL Chincheros (gob.pe), reading text
The same shape elsewhere
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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