Colombia: Bogota Gold Museum

In my last post, with the 15 pictures of looters of pre-Colombian graves in Colombia, I mentioned how many of the best stolen pieces end up in the pre-Columbian collection of Bogota’s Gold Museum. At least in 1979, at the time I was photographing the looters at work. Hereafter are eight of the pictures I took at the museum that year.

Funeral chamber of a pre-Columbian cacique.

Funerary mask and other gold ornaments that followed a cacique to his grave.

Tumaco gold mask.

Calima gold mask.

Tolima breast plates.

Muisca raft carrying a new cacique, coated with gold dust, and lesser chiefs to the middle of Lake Guatavita. There they unloaded gold and emeralds into the lake and El Dorado, the Gilded One, ritually washed the gold dust off his body in it.

Gloomy lake Guatavita. In a vain effort to drain the lake and get hold of its legendary treasures, greed-crazed conquistadors during the Spanish conquest carved out the gap in the far shore.

The Gold Museum makes you enter its last room, behind heavy steel doors, in total darkness, the better to overwhelm your eyes and mind when the lights slowly come up. The room’s walls are lined with 12 showcases like this one, each crammed with more gold loot than the next.

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