Egyptian Hell

What are the characteristics of the place of annihilation and destruction — the Egyptian hell? In the earliest periods for which we have records, the fate of the condemned was to walk upside-down, and this punishment in depicted in several texts and which seems to signify that the deceased is beneath the earth and separated forever from the sun, of Ra. In other texts the motionless, senseless body decays and passes away. Later texts are more descriptive and sketch a dark shadowy underground realm — not all that different from the Hebrew Sheol or Greek and Roman Hades. It is, needless to say, a dangerous place — a river divided into burning regions, which include sinister caves, a pool or lake of hell-fire, cauldrons or basins bubbling over fire, or pods full of flames.

In this region the enemies of Ra and those who have sinned against Osiris are delivered up to punishments. There are serpents and devouring demons who carry out the punishments. But the righteous also engage in destroying the condemned, who are seized and fettered to mooring posts or restrained on slaughtering blocks, where they are cut, scorched by branding irons, burned, decapitated and finally slaughtered, executed and destroyed. The result is that the condemned no longer exist.

Although the punishments themselves are not eternal — they do not continue unendingly — they are eternal in that they are irrevocable.