Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos (Religion in North America) - Hardcover

Read, Kay Almere

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253334004 ISBN 13: 9780253334008

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1998

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This introduction to the Mexica (or Aztec) cosmos explores sacrifice as both the foundation for and an ethical response to existence in the richly textured world of sixteenth-century Mexico. Drawing on archaeological remains, sculptures, pictorial and calendrical codices, and original translations of Nahuatl poetry and folktales, Kay Almere Read describes a world in which every being was allotted a specific lifetime and where sacrifice was the mechanism by which time functioned. This book presents a convincing interpretation of what sacrifice meant in the religious life of the Mexica people - and how human sacrifice of staggering proportions could be accepted.

About the Author:

Kay Read is associate professor of comparative religions in the Religious Studies Department at DePaul University. She is the author of a number of articles on pre-Conquest religious traditions and is currently working on both a book on Mexica rulership and ethics and an encyclopedia of mesoamerican mythology.

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0253334004
• ISBN 13: 9780253334008
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336