Gods of death

Gods of death include Hades and Thanatos in Greece, Anubis and Osiris in Egypt, Yama in India (and, as Emma-ō, in Japanese Buddhism), Mictlantecuhtli among the Aztecs, the skeletal god A of the Maya codices, and Nergal in Mesopotamia. Some are death itself; more are kings of the dead.

Symbols across cultures. Also called death god, god of death, god of the dead, god of the underworld, gods of death.

Meaning

Two different jobs hide under “god of death”. One is death in person: the Greek Thanatos, “the personification of death” in Britannica’s words, who comes to carry people off when their time is up. The other is the ruler of the dead, which is what most of these gods are: Hades, who ruled “over the dead” with Persephone; Osiris, the king of the dead in Egypt (J. Bruce Long, Encyclopedia of Religion, 1987); Yama, judge of the dead in India; Mictlantecuhtli, lord of the Aztec underworld, Mictlan. A third kind guides the dead on their way: Anubis, whose later title was “conductor of souls”. As Emma-ō, Yama judges the dead in Japanese Buddhism.

Origin and history

In Hesiod’s Theogony Death and Sleep are brothers, children of Night. Sleep “roams peacefully over the earth … and is kindly to men”; Death “has a heart of iron, and his spirit within him is pitiless as bronze: whomsoever of men he has once seized he holds fast”. Hades is a different god: the underworld fell to him by lot when the sons of Cronus divided the world, and Britannica notes that although he oversaw the punishment of the wicked he did not judge or torture them himself, which was left to the Furies. Hesiod puts a fearful hound in front of his halls, the dog later called Cerberus. His Greek page is Hades.

Egypt had two lords of the dead in turn. Anubis, a jackal or a jackal-headed man, held first place “as lord of the dead” in the Early Dynastic period and the Old Kingdom, and was later overshadowed by Osiris (Britannica). Anubis was said to have invented embalming on Osiris’s own body. Osiris was murdered by his brother Seth and brought back by Isis (Long), and from about 2000 BCE Egyptians believed that every man, and not only the dead king, became Osiris at death (Britannica).

Yama, in Britannica’s summary of the Vedas, is “the first man who died, blazing the path of mortality down which all humans have since followed”. W. J. Wilkins, writing in 1882, calls him “the judge of men and king of the unseen world”, son of the Sun. In the Vedas he is a cheerful king of the ancestors; in later texts he is the just judge, Dharmaraja, who weighs the good and evil deeds of the dead, riding a buffalo with a noose and a mace, his two four-eyed dogs at his gate.

The Aztec Mictlantecuhtli, “Lord of Hades” in Lewis Spence’s 1913 translation of the name, ruled Mictlan with his wife Mictecacihuatl. Britannica describes the four-year journey the dead made through its nine levels, if their manner of death had not sent them to one of the paradises. His own page is Mictlantecuhtli.

In Mesopotamia, Nergal was death of a particular kind: “inflicted death”, in Yağmur Heffron’s phrase, for he was also the god of plague and of war. From the second millennium BCE he ruled the underworld with the goddess Ereshkigal.

The weighing of the heart

In Egyptian belief the dead were judged. E. A. Wallis Budge describes the scene in which the scribe Ani and his wife enter the Hall of Maati: the heart, “symbolic of the conscience, is to be weighed in the Balance against the feather, emblematic of Right and Truth”, while “the god Anubis, jackal-headed, examines the pointer” of the scales. The feather is the feather of Ma’at. Yama’s later role as judge, weighing good and evil deeds, is a separate idea in a separate tradition; Britannica’s article on him points out that the Vedic Yama did not punish sins at all.

Death gods with skull faces

Mesoamerican death gods are the ones drawn as skeletons. Britannica describes Mictlantecuhtli as “usually portrayed with a skull face”, and the death god of the Maya codices, whom Paul Schellhas labelled god A in 1904, has “an exposed, bony spine, truncated nose and grinning teeth”. Schellhas noted that the Aztecs had a male and a female death deity, while the Maya codices show the death god as female only once, in the Dresden Codex. Britannica names the Maya god Ah Puch, patron of the day sign Cimi, “Death”: the day sign Kimi.

Yama in Japan

Yama travelled with Buddhism into Tibet, China and Japan, where, Britannica writes, he guards the abode of the dead in a smaller role. In Japan he is Emma-ō, overlord of hell, who judges the souls of men while his sister judges the souls of women; he is shown with a fierce face, a Chinese judge’s cap and a mace.

Sources

Underworld (Encyclopedia of Religion), J. Bruce Long (1987), “Underworld”, Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsay Jones (Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), on Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, introduction; Egypt; Mesopotamia
Hades (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Hades”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 1 October 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
Thanatos (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Thanatos”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 25 May 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White), Hesiod, Theogony; Shield of Heracles; The Homeric Hymns, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb Classical Library, 1914), Project Gutenberg eBook #348, Project Gutenberg, Theogony, ll. 758–774
Anubis (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Anubis”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 30 August 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
Osiris (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Osiris”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 9 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. 2 (E. A. Wallis Budge), E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, or Studies in Egyptian Mythology, vol. 2 (1904), Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, pp. 143–144, “Osiris, judge of the dead”
Yama (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Yama”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 3 July 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Purāṇic (W. J. Wilkins), W. J. Wilkins, Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Purāṇic (Thacker, Spink & Co., 1882), Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, “Yama”
Emma-ō (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Emma-ō”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 31 March 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
Mictlantecuhtli (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Mictlantecuhtli”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 23 March 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
The Myths of Mexico & Peru (Lewis Spence), Lewis Spence, The Myths of Mexico & Peru (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company), Project Gutenberg, ch. II, “Mictlantecutli”
Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts (Paul Schellhas), Paul Schellhas, Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts, Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, vol. 4, no. 1 (2nd edition, 1904), Project Gutenberg eBook #18013, Project Gutenberg, A. The Death-God
Ah Puch (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Ah Puch”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 17 November 2025), Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry (pre-Columbian civilizations: the gods)
Nergal (god) (Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses), Yağmur Heffron, “Nergal (god)”, Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy (2019), Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses (Oracc, University of Pennsylvania Museum), functions; myth

The same shape elsewhere

Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or squares and rectangles.

Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research

Added October 10, 2026.

Report a problem