PARIS.-The Musée de Quai Branly opens the exhibit Paracas: Undiscovered Treasures from Ancient Peru through July 20. The exhibition brings together the largest series of "Paracas" textiles ever shown outside Peru: for the first time in France, it presents some of the textiles exhumed in the Wari Kayan necropolis and introduces the visitor to a selection of pieces from this unique treasure. From December 2004 to November 2006, they have been restored in the context of an international scientific collaboration with Peru with contributions from the Musée du quai Branly.

The museum is therefore particularly proud to present textiles which Peru only exceptionally lends for exhibitions abroad, because of their great aesthetic and scientific value and their extreme fragility.

The Paracas culture was an important Andean society between approximately 750 BCE and 100 CE that developed in the Paracas Peninsula, located in what today is the Paracas District of the Pisco Province in the Ica Region. Most of our information about the lives of the Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside Paracas necropolis, first investigated by the Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello in the 1920s. The necropolis of Wari Kayan consisted of multitudes of large subterranean burial chambers, with an average capacity of about forty mummies. It is theorized that each large chamber would be owned by a specific family or clan, who would place their dead ancestors in the burial over the course of many generations. Each mummy was bound with cord to hold it in place, and then wrapped in many layers of incredibly intricate, ornate, and finely woven textiles. These textiles are now known as some of the finest ever produced in the history of Pre-Columbian Andean societies, and are the primary works of art by which Paracas is known. They had extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management.