Pre-Columbian, South Coast Peru, Nazca, ca. 100 BCE to 500 CE. A wonderful redware terracotta pan flute with perforations for suspension. The instrument presents a long and slender form with five different openings for pitches. The pipes form one wide piece and taper to a pointed tip with two suspension holes drilled through the center. The pan flute still functions and produces different pitches. Such panpipes were regarded as critical for a shaman who acted as an intermediary between the earthly and celestial realms. A lovely example with a rich red hue and nice burnishing marks. Size: 3.125" L x .5" W x 10" H (7.9 cm x 1.3 cm x 25.4 cm); 10.875" H (27.6 cm) on included custom stand.

The people who lived in the ancient Andes had a strong tradition of music and dance; the Spanish, encountering the Inca, described flutes, panpipes, trumpets, drums, and rattles. Ceramic instruments from the Nazca time period often have dramatic symbolic motifs, many of them religious in nature, indicating a link between music and the gods. Panpipes were a crucial part of Nazca ritual, played alongside clay trumpets, drums, and rattles. For example, there are vessels with drawings of musicians/shamans playing this style of instrument, surrounded by cacti (representing hallucinogenic drugs made from the San Pedro cactus), obviously in a ritual procession.

Provenance: ex-Bohmer collection, Huerth, Germany, acquired from Dr. Geoffrey Smith, Del Mar, California, USA before 2000

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#161096

Restoration to upper right corner on the mouthpiece opening with a loss and chip on the opening. Chips and nicks to the rest of mouth rims. Nice burnishing marks. Still produces sound.