Sections of Hell in Ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptian mentality was characterized by endless philosophical ideas. The foundations of the sources of these philosophical ideas were born from the natural phenomena in ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptian found the phenomenon of the Nile flooding and then its recession and the drought that affected the country and its positive and negative impact on crops. He also found the phenomenon of sunset at night and its interpretation was its death. The explanation for the sunrise in the morning was its revival after death. Also, in ancient Egyptian mythology, the god (Osiris) was resurrected after his death. All of this naturally had an impact on the ancient Egyptian mentality and its reality on ancient Egyptian society in particular. The concept of death and resurrection that emerged in the ancient Egyptian mentality explained that there is another life after death and this life settles in a world that separates his material world. The life after death that the ancient Egyptian believed in was settled in the underworld. What concerns us here is the section in which the guilty were punished after their trial in the court of the god (Osiris) in the underworld. It is known that criminals and outlaws in the material world were punished and held accountable according to the decisions of the court that were conducted inside or outside the temples. Among these decisions were execution, flogging, imprisonment, and others. The ancient Egyptians worked to apply them to the underworld by recording the texts of (Coffins), the Book of the Dead, the Book of (Amudat), and the Book of (Caves). He included in these books a topographical division of the underworld, the most important of which is the section of Hell, which in turn divided it into many sections, including lakes of fire, islands of flame, and hills, as well as the presence of fiery pits and fiery furnaces. These sections related to Hell played an actual role in punishing the guilty for what they committed in their earthly lives. Because of the breadth of the subject, the areas of hell in the underworld, we have chosen for this research the section (Fire Pits, Fire Furnaces), and other places that were used for torture, as this subject carries the utmost importance to know what is going on in the ancient Egyptian mentality and the extent of the religious and philosophical intellectual level that he reached to uncover the mystery of life after death, and his awareness of the topography of this hidden world and his attempt to match it with his material world, and to put forward different ideas for punishing sinners in the material world and seeking to apply it in the underworld.