Dying to Rule: Sex and Power in Moche Society – 2007
Copulation with animals
Sexual activity between women and animals and between humans with animal features is also depicted during the journey to the World of the Ancestors. In general, this involved non-reproductive sexual activity such as anal copulation between a half-human, half-animal couple, or a woman masturbating a pelican. One exception shows vaginal copulation between a woman and a man with bat-like features. This image can be explained in this context by the fact that the bat is a nocturnal, flying mammal, a transitional being par excellence that moves between the realm of death and the otherworld and participates actively in funerary rituals. It therefore has the same symbolic power to generate life through fertile copulation as the deities that inhabit the World of the Ancestors.