Kingdom of Cusco

The Kingdom of Cusco was a small Andean polity centred on the city of Cusco, traditionally founded in the twelfth century by the Incas. For its first centuries it was one of several competing chiefdoms in the southern Peruvian highlands, and its early rulers are known largely through later Inca oral histories. The kingdom expanded through a combination of warfare, marriage alliances and the assimilation of neighbouring peoples. The decisive turning point came in 1438, when Pachacuti defeated the Chanka and reorganised the state, initiating the rapid conquests that turned Cusco into the Inca Empire. By then the kingdom had already developed the administrative, military and religious institutions that would sustain the empire, including the sun cult of Inti and the mummification of deceased rulers. The Inca Empire that succeeded it stretched along the Andes from present-day Colombia to Chile until the Spanish conquest of 1533. Cusco remained the empire's ceremonial capital and the symbol of Inca legitimacy.