Aqen, a rarely mentioned deity in the Book of the Dead.Anubis, guardian of the dead, mummification, and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion.Osiris Sub-Sahara Africa Igbo Īfroasiatic Middle East Canaanite However, in practice this manifests in different rituals and traditions and varies according to a number of factors including geography, politics, traditions, and the influence of other religions. In monotheistic religions, the one god governs both life and death (as well as everything else). A single religion/mythology may have death gods of more than one gender existing at the same time and they may be envisioned as a married couple ruling over the afterlife together, as with the Aztecs, Greeks, and Romans. The inclusion of such a "departmental" deity of death in a religion's pantheon is not necessarily the same thing as the glorification of death.Ī death deity has a good chance of being either male or female, unlike some functions that seem to steer towards one gender in particular, such as fertility and earth deities being female and storm deities being male. Hades from Greek mythology is an especially common target. The deity in question may be good, evil, or neutral and simply doing their job, in sharp contrast to a lot of modern portrayals of death deities as all being inherently evil just because death is feared.
This deity may actually take the life of humans or, more commonly, simply rule over the afterlife in that particular belief system (a single religion may have separate deities performing both tasks). In polytheistic religions which have a complex system of deities governing various natural phenomena and aspects of human life, it is common to have a deity who is assigned the function of presiding over death.
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