This amazing religious iconography, in which the sexual act meets the sacred, is unique in Precolumbian art and specific to Mochica mythology.

It represents sacrificial acts, predominantly of a sexual nature between animals and/or anthropomorphous figures.

The Mochica craftsmen moulded these non-reproductive rites into their pottery, using stylized sexual attributes as the leitmotifs of an iconography that served a ritual purpose. The boldness of the graphic motifs reflect the strength of their beliefs.


Steve Bourget offers certain insights to help interpret this sexual imagery which, far from expressing the Moche's daily lives, refers in fact to a political and religious ideology that is characteristic of their society. This ideology attaches great importance to the reproduction of the governing authority in order to ensure the proper evolution of society of the universe as a whole.