Ekeko
Aymara · deity · mythic · Recorded classification
Ekeko is the Aymara god of abundance, prosperity and good luck, depicted as a small, smiling, hump-backed man laden with household provisions. His worship is traced by archaeologists to phallic hump-backed effigies of the Tiwanaku culture around Lake Titicaca, and several colonial and modern writers, following Bertonio, have identified him with the older deity Thunupa. Today he presides over the annual Alasitas fair of La Paz, where believers buy miniatures of the goods and fortunes they hope to obtain in the year ahead.
Domains
- abundance and prosperity
- household fortune
Powers
- to bestow abundance and good fortune on a household
Epithets
- EkhekhoAntonio Díaz Villamil, La leyenda del Ekako, in Leyendas de mi tierra (1929) (secondary)
Sources
- Ekeko (Aymara Iqiqu) is the Andean god of abundance and prosperity, a hump-backed household deity of pre-Inca Tiwanaku origin whose cult survives as the central figure of the Alasitas fair.: Carlos Ponce Sanginés, Tunupa y Ekako: estudio arqueológico acerca de las efigies precolombinas de dorso adunco (1969) (secondary); Ludovico Bertonio, Vocabulario de la lengua aymara (1612) (secondary)