Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos

Religion in North America

by Kay Almere Read

This introduction to the imaginative world of the Mexica (or Aztec) explores sacrifice in the richly textured life of 16th-century Mexico. Kay Almere Read describes a universe in which every object was timed by a given lifespan and in which sacrifice was the mechanism by which time functioned. This book makes a convincing case for what sacrifice meant religiously and for how it came to be that human sacrifice of staggering proportions could be accepted, matter-of-factly, by the Mexica people.

Genres: History

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Edward Butler]

Inoffensive, but tedious and repetitive, offering few real insights despite having appeared quite promising at the outset.