Heaven Is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to "Religion" and Empire in Ancient China

Offers a new perspective on the relationship between religion and the creation of the first Chinese empires.

Heaven Is Empty offers a new comparative perspective on the role of the sacred in the formation of China's early empires (221 BCE–9 CE) and shows how the unification of the Central States was possible without a unitary and universalistic conception of religion. The cohesive function of the ancient Mediterranean cult of the divinized ruler was crucial for the legitimization of Rome's e...