Lords of Sipan: A Tale of Pre-Inca Tombs, Archaeology, and Crime

In February 1987, archaeologist and museum curator Dr. Walter Alva was asked to examine a collection of strange artifacts found in the home of a poor grave robber on Peru's remote north coast. The subsequent police inquiry traced the cache to an ancient pyramid at Sipan, where looters had plundered a royal tomb of a little known civilization called the Moche. This ransacking of the New World's richest archaeological discovery would set off an undercover investigation that would send shock waves through the international art world, culminating in the most comprehensive seizure of pre-Columbian antiquities in U.S. and European history. It would also trigger the excavation of the greatest archaeological discovery since Howard Carter opened Tutankhamun's tomb. In the kind of chase usually reserved for fictional crime thrillers, Alva and his intrepid team of excavators would put down their shovels and pick-up guns, confronting the looters and ultimately winning their support and cooperation. The pyramid at Sipan, they would discover, was not the burial place of a single Moche lord, but a Valley of the Kings of ancient Peru.