Tumi (ceremonial knife)
A ceremonial knife with a half-moon blade from the north coast of ancient Peru. The gold tumis of the Sicán (Lambayeque) culture carry a god on the handle, often identified as Naylamp, the dynasty’s mythical founder. The Tumi de Oro was declared a pre-Columbian symbol of Peru in 1981.
Meaning
The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes tumis as ceremonial knives with semicircular blades, known on the Peruvian coast since the third century BC. In Moche art they appear in scenes of sacrifice, used to cut the throats of victims, and real tumis have been found in the tombs of high-ranking Moche and Sicán people. Many are made of gold, which is too soft for cutting, so the Met concludes their use was largely symbolic: they were shown in rituals as emblems of status and power and then buried with their owners. One tumi in the Met is an alloy of gold (59%), silver (35%) and copper (6%), and still bears the imprint of the cloth it was wrapped in before it went into the tomb.
Origin and history
Tumis were made long before the Sicán: the Met dates them on the coast to the third century BC, and they appear in Moche art. But the Met singles out the gold and silver tumis of the Middle Sicán period (AD 900 to 1100), with the faces of gods, as among the most characteristic works of that culture.
The best known is the Tumi de Oro. RPP reports that it was dug up by the looter Hipólito Granados at Íllimo in 1936, stands 42 centimetres high, and was declared a pre-Columbian symbol of Peru in 1981, a few months before it was stolen from the Museo de Arqueología y Antropología in Pueblo Libre.
The god on the handle
On many Sicán tumis the handle is a figure the Met calls the Sicán Lord, with a crescent headdress, comma-shaped eyes and pointed ears, and often interprets as Ñaymlap (Naylamp), the mythical founder of the Sicán dynasties described in a sixteenth-century Spanish chronicle. On another tumi in the Met, Naymlap wears a fan-shaped headdress and a mask with winged eyes, and small birds on the figure allude to his power to fly, which his origin myth gives him. RPP calls him “la gran ave del mar”, the great bird of the sea.
Where you’ll see it
RPP lists the tumi as the emblem of the Universidad Nacional Pedro Ruiz Gallo and the logo of the chamber of commerce of Lambayeque.
Read next
- Next in Andean and Inca symbolsInti (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.
- The same shape in Celtic symbolsCeltic knotA pattern of bands woven over and under one another with no loose ends: the interlace of early medieval art in Ireland and Britain, best known from the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels. Its makers left no record of what, if anything, the knots meant. Readings such as eternity and unending love are modern.
See also
Gateway of the Sun (the Staff God), Nazca lines, Nazca hummingbird, Nazca monkey, Nazca spider, Inti Raymi (festival of the sun).
Sources
- Tumi (knife), Lambayeque (Sicán), 900–1100 CE, accession 1974.271.60, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record (Internet Archive copy, April 2026), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, catalogue text
- Tumi (knife), Lambayeque (Sicán), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record (Internet Archive copy, April 2026), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, catalogue text
- Ancient Andean Metalworking (900–1532 CE), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History essay (Internet Archive copy, June 2026), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sicán section
- El Tumi de Oro y la Máscara Sicán valen un Perú, RPP Noticias (Lima), RPP Noticias, article text
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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