When an Aztec died, the first question the living asked was not what kind of person they had been but how they had died. The answer determined everything: where they would spend eternity, how their body should be prepared, what their family needed …
No other ancient culture made the manner of your death the primary condition of your afterlife. Not what you believed, not how you lived, not whether you were kind to your neighbors — but specifically whether you died with a weapon in your hand on …
When an ancient Egyptian died, the real work was only beginning. The body had to be mummified to preserve it for eventual reunion with the soul. The tomb had to be stocked with food, clothing, tools, and sometimes boats. The walls had to be covered…
The Greek afterlife did not promise salvation, and it did not threaten damnation as its default condition. It promised a grey bureaucracy. When you died, a messenger god conducted your soul to the edge of a river, where a bad-tempered old ferryman …
The Aztec universe had already been destroyed three times before the flood came. In the first age, giants were devoured by jaguars. In the second, the wind shattered the sky and the survivors fled into the treetops and became monkeys. In the third,…
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