Kommentar: This introduction to the Mexica (or Aztec) cosmos explores sacrifice as both the foundation for and an ethical response to existence in the richly textures world of sixteenth-century Mexico. Drawing on archeological remains, sculptures, pictorial and calendrical codices, and original translations of Nahuatl poetry and folktales, Read describes a world in which every being wwas allotted a specific lifetime and where sacrifice was the machanism by which time functioned.