Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos

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.

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.