Florentine Codex, Book 3: Mictlan and the fate of the dead

Record summary

Book 3 of the Florentine Codex records Nahua traditions concerning origins, the birth of the gods, and the destinations of the dead, including the difficult journey toward Mictlan. It preserves accounts of divine beings, ritual obligations, and postmortem geography that can be compared with other underworld traditions in the Americas. The work was produced through Bernardino de Sahagún’s project with Nahua collaborators after the conquest. Its paired-language format, editorial structure, Christian questioning, and variation among informants complicate claims about a single uniform Aztec belief system.