This variation of the story of Viracocha aids to an understanding of his mythical purport.  The oft-recurring epithet “Contice Viracocha” shows a close relationship between his character and that of the divinity Con, in fact, an identity which deserves close attention.  It is explained, I believe, by the supposition that Viracocha was the Lord of the Wind as well as of the Light.  Like all the other light gods, and deities of the cardinal points, he was at the same time the wind from them.  What has been saved from the ancient mythology is enough to show this, but not enough to allow us to reconcile the seeming contradictions which it suggests.  Moreover, it must be ever remembered that all religions repose on contradictions, contradictions of fact, of logic, and of statement, so that we must not seek to force any one of them into consistent unity of form, even with itself.

I have yet to add another point of similarity between the myth of Viracocha and those of Quetzalcoatl, Itzamna and the others, which I have already narrated.  As in Mexico, Yucatan and elsewhere, so in the realms of the Incas, the Spaniards found themselves not unexpected guests.  Here, too, texts of ancient prophecies were called to mind, words of warning from solemn and antique songs, foretelling that other Viracochas, men of fair complexion and flowing beards, would some day come from the Sun, the father of existent nature, and subject the empire to their rule.  When the great Inca, Huayna Capac, was on his death-bed, he recalled these prophecies, and impressed them upon the mind of his successor, so that when De Soto, the lieutenant of Pizarro, had his first interview with the envoy of Atahuallpa, the latter humbly addressed him as Viracocha, the great God, son of the Sun, and told him that it was Huayna Capac’s last command to pay homage to the white men when they should arrive.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Garcilasso de La Vega, Comentarios Reales, Lib. ix, caps. xiv, xv; Cieza de Leon, Relacion, MS. in Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Vol. i, p. 329.  The latter is the second part of Cieza de Leon.]

We need no longer entertain about such statements that suspicion or incredulity which so many historians have thought it necessary to indulge in.  They are too generally paralleled in other American hero-myths to leave the slightest doubt as to their reality, or as to their significance.  They are again the expression of the expected return of the Light-God, after his departure and disappearance in the western horizon.  Modifications of what was originally a statement of a simple occurrence of daily routine, they became transmitted in the limbeck of mythology to the story of the beneficent god of the past, and the promise of golden days when again he should return to the people whom erstwhile he ruled and taught.

The Qquichuas expected the return of Viracocha, not merely as an earthly ruler to govern their nation, but as a god who, by his divine power, would call the dead to life.  Precisely as in ancient Egypt the literal belief in the resurrection of the body led to the custom of preserving the corpses with the most sedulous care, so in Peru the cadaver was mummied and deposited in the most secret and inaccessible spots, so that it should remain undisturbed to the great day of resurrection.