Ereshkigal vs Mictecacihuatl

Queen of the Underworld and sister of Inanna. Ereshkigal rules the land of no return with absolute authority, from which no one, god or mortal, escapes unchanged.

When the cosmos was divided among the gods, Ereshkigal received the underworld as her domain. Abducted to the underworld in her youth (or given it as a dowry), she became its eternal queen. She was wed to Gugalanna, the Bull of Heaven, and later to the war god Nergal.

Ereshkigal is the absolute ruler of the underworld (Kur or Irkalla), a vast realm beneath the earth where the dead dwell in eternal twilight. Unlike later concepts of hell, the Mesopotamian underworld was not a place of punishment but simply the inevitable destination of all mortals. Ereshkigal reigns there with cold, implacable authority.

Queen of Mictlan, the Aztec underworld, ruling alongside her husband Mictlantecuhtli over the ninth and deepest level of the land of the dead. Mictecacihuatl presided over the bones of the deceased and the festivals honoring the dead within the Aztec calendar.

Mictecacihuatl rules Mictlan, the ninth and deepest level of the Aztec underworld, alongside her husband Mictlantecuhtli. According to Sahagun's Florentine Codex, most souls who died ordinary deaths journeyed for four years through Mictlan's upper levels before reaching her and her husband's realm, where she presided over the bones of the dead.

Mictecacihuatl is the queen of Mictlan, the deepest and final level of the nine-layered Aztec underworld, ruling jointly with her husband Mictlantecuhtli. Spanish friar Bernardino de Sahagun's *Florentine Codex*, compiled from Nahua informants in the 16th century, describes the pair as the great lord and lady presiding over the land of the dead, to whom the souls of most people who died ordinary deaths would eventually travel after a difficult four-year journey through Mictlan's other levels.