Inti vs Manco Cápac

The Sun, divine ancestor of the Inca kings and center of the state cult, worshipped in the gold-sheathed Coricancha of Cusco and at the June solstice festival of Inti Raymi.

In Betanzos's account the Sun is made by Viracocha at Tiwanaku, rising from the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca; in Inca royal ideology he is the father of the first Inca, Manco Cápac.

The Inca kings called themselves children of the Sun (*intip churin*), and Garcilaso de la Vega's version of the dynasty's origin has the Sun himself send his son Manco Cápac and daughter Mama Ocllo to Lake Titicaca to teach humanity. Sun worship was the most visible part of the imperial cult: the Sun owned lands and herds in every conquered province, and communities of chosen women (*acllacuna*) wove cloth and brewed maize beer for him.

The first Inca, founder of Cusco, presented by Garcilaso as a son of the Sun sent to Lake Titicaca with his sister-wife Mama Ocllo, and by Betanzos and Sarmiento as the leader of four brothers and four sisters who emerged from a cave at Pacaritambo.

Son of the Sun and brother-husband of Mama Ocllo in Garcilaso's version; the leader of the Ayar siblings who emerged from the cave of Tambo Toco at Pacaritambo in Betanzos's and Sarmiento's.

The chroniclers preserve two main accounts of Manco Cápac. Garcilaso de la Vega (1609) says the Sun, pitying humanity's savage state, placed his son and daughter in Lake Titicaca with a golden rod; they were to settle where it sank into the ground at a single thrust, which happened at Huanacauri above the valley of Cusco. Juan de Betanzos (1551) and Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1572) instead tell of four brothers, the Ayars, and four sisters who emerged from a cave called Tambo Toco at Pacaritambo, south of Cusco. On the journey one brother, Ayar Cachi, is tricked back into the cave and sealed in; another, Ayar Uchu, turns to stone on Huanacauri; and Manco, the survivor, founds Cusco.