The Popol Vuh
← all texts · Mesoamerican · compiled 16th c.; pre-Columbian tradition
What this is
The sacred book of the Kʼicheʼ Maya — the creation of the world, the failed attempts to make humanity, and the adventures of the Hero Twins in the underworld of Xibalba. The greatest surviving Mesoamerican myth.
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Companion reading path
What to read alongside it, and why.
The Enūma Eliš (Babylonian Creation)
Mesopotamian
Compare a New World creation-and-combat myth with the Old World's.
Hesiod — Theogony
Greek
Another full cosmogony, for cross-cultural reading of how worlds begin.