Beliefs of the Afterlife in History
- The Mary Word
- Sep 15
- 7 min read
By Serena Wang and Sabrina Whenman
How do you feel about death? Across time, humans have always been aware of the cycle of life and when civilisations and communities began to form, so did theories about the afterlife. We’ll investigate some major historical beliefs, such as how your actions affected the result of your afterlife, and the concept of salvation and purgatory from a variety of mythologies and religions, specifically Egyptian, Norse and Greek mythology, as well as Christian Hell in the Divine Comedy.
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Death in ancient Egyptian mythology and beliefs was more of a journey, a process that changed over the course of ancient Egypt. Most of the information available was excavated from the tombs of the wealthy and royal, or writings of the Book of the Dead, a common funerary text used in the New Kingdom and onwards. Ancient Egyptians believed that death was west, similar to the setting sun, and that life and death were only parts of a larger process, also based upon the way the sun rotated. This is because the sun and its path was at the centre of their beliefs, with one of the most important gods being Ra, the god of creation, the sun, life, who was also the king of the land sky.
The first part of the process was death, and after this the deceased would be mummified. A core belief was that the body must remain intact after death, so that they could live on in the afterlife. Then, the deceased soul had to travel through the Duat, an invisible land of the dead that had a river flowing through it. It was believed that the mummified form of Auf Ra travelled along this river, and through its twelve provinces, which each represented the hours of each night. The soul would complete this journey, and then be reborn into the eternal day. Before Osirianism as a cult of the dead, this is where the Egyptian process of death would end, after Osirus became a God of judgement for the dead, this process became longer.
Then the soul must face the judgement of the dead. The first Judgement is standing before the 42 Divine Judges and reciting the correct words from The Book of the Dead. They would know these words because the body was buried with papyrus scrolls with these words, amulets and spells, or carvings with the words on their tomb. If this was done correctly the soul could proceed to the Weighing of the Heart. The Weighing of the Heart involved weighing the heart, which was believed to hold all actions of the deceased, against a feather of the Goddess Ma’at, who represented truth and justice. If the heart was heavier than the feather, then the soul would be fed to Ammit the ‘Devourer,’ a Goddess of divine retribution and be cast out into the eternal cosmos and darkness for the rest of eternity. If the heart was lighter than the feather, Osirus would welcome the soul into the afterlife.
There were many interpretations as to what this afterlife would be, but the most well-known place was the “Elysian Fields,” (Sekhet Hetepet) a land with many regions that took up a section of the Duat and was ruled by Osirus. One of these regions was the "Field of Reeds,” (Sekhet Aaru) which was where Osirus and his company lived, making it the most desirable place to go. There were many trials to get to the Field of Reeds, as well as other places.
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The Norse have many different beliefs of the afterlives, most of which have very little known about them, due to the loss of records and information. They have multiple afterlife locations; all presided over by a different God, and made for a different purpose. This meant that many of the Aesir and Vanir Gods, who have other more well-known domains, also share the domain of the dead. In the Norse afterlife there was never any torment or punishment; they simply existed in the Halls of the God or Goddess who ruled the realm that they ended up in.
The most well-known afterlife in Norse Mythology is Valhalla (Old Norse Valhöll ), ‘The Hall of the Fallen’, ruled by Odin and watched over by his Valkyries. Valhalla is where those who died heroic deaths in battle for Odin go to train to fight for Ragnarök, a prophesised event in Norse Mythology, a series of battles which would result in the end of the world. Valhalla, Odin, and Ragnarök are all often referenced in popular media such as the Marvel Thor and Loki movies and TV shows.
Despite Valhalla being the most well-known, the most common afterlife is Hel, not to be confused with Hell, the Christian concept influenced by and drawn from early Greco-Roman, Zoroastrian and Jewish ideas. The only similarity between Christian and Norse Hel/l is a similar Proto-Germanic root word haljō. Hel in Norse mythology is not eternal punishment, but rather a place where everyone who died of sickness, old age, and other regular deaths would go. It’s ruled by the Goddess Hel, a daughter of Loki, who was known for looking like a rotting corpse on one half of her body. Hel is often depicted as a place where the dead can participate in the same activities as the living, and join their dead friends and family forever. This is considered a fairly peaceful and uneventful afterlife, where they can spend their time at Hel’s table drinking mead and other common Viking activities.
There is very little known about Folkvang (Old Norse Fólkvangr), and the activities of the dead who stay there. Its name means ‘The Field of Warriors’ or ‘The Field of the People’. It’s ruled by Freyja, a Goddess of love, war, and certain types of magic. It’s assumed that it was similar to Valhalla where warriors could train and spend their time, but instead of being ruled by Odin, an Aesir God, it was ruled by Freyja, a Vanir Goddess.
There were also other miscellaneous afterlives for various types of deaths that were less well known, even in their time. The Vikings who followed and worshiped Norse Mythology were seafarers (as you see commonly in media with Viking ships and such) so they had an afterlife or a place for those who died at sea. They were taken to the underwater home of the giantess/Jötunn Ran, who is an embodiment of dangers at sea, and was known to bring sailors down to her with nets. This only appears in a few sources, and wasn’t followed by all worshipers of Norse Mythology.
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In Ancient Greece, they were polytheists, believing in multiple gods. One of which, Hermes, was believed to be responsible for transport, delivering messages, and also to deliver the soul of the dead to the entrance of the underworld.
The Ancient Greeks had similar practices of leaving items for the dead to take to the afterlife, such as the practice of putting a coin inside their mouth or to bury them with food and drink. The coin served as payment to Charon, the ferryman of the River Styx. To cross into the afterlife, it was believed to require crossing the River Styx, a river that was believed to be poisonous or to dissolve vessels that did not contain the hoof of a horse or donkey. If the dead had no coin to pay Charon with, they would be subject to wandering the shores of the River Styx for 100 years.
There were three main areas of the afterlife – The Asphodel Meadows, for those who lived as good people, Elysium, for those who died bravely in battle, and Tartarus, for the wicked. The entire area, called the Underworld, was under the jurisdiction of Hades, and the dead were judged by three kings, Aeacus, Minos and Rhadamanthys. However, if any of the dead were forgotten by the living, they were sentenced to the darkest parts of Tartarus, no matter if they were morally good or evil. In this way, the Greeks were encouraged to remember the dead, as to save them from Tartarus.
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The Christian belief of hell has roots from the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri. His poem described the afterlife in circles, layers that went further up or down, depending on where you were sent after death. There were three key areas to the afterlife in his writing, being paradise, purgatory and hell. Inferno was the hell, but as a whole, the Divine Comedy is written about both heaven and hell, as well as purgatory. Notably, each world had nine layers, with some having subdivisions of different kinds of people.
In Inferno, layers of hell are described to share names with some of the seven deadly sins, ranked by the severity of the sin. The first layer, ‘Limbo,’ held righteous non-Christians who may not have heard of Christ, or were morally good. Dante notes that this area holds philosophers such as Homer and Socrates. The next layer was for the lustful, adulterers who were sentenced to be blown by whirlwinds, and would never find peace. The gluttonous, people who overindulged were condemned to lay in the slush of icy rain for eternity, and the greedy, who hoarded or spent lavishly, jousted with each other with heavy weapons.
There are two sections to the layer of ‘Anger,’ for the wrathful or the sullen, respectively convicted to fight each other on the surface of the River Styx, or to repeatedly drown under the surface. Heretics were punished by being in flaming tombs on the circle after ‘Anger.’
In the layer of ‘Violence,’ the land is split into three rings; the outer ring, which held murderers and held them under boiling blood and fire; the middle ring for people who had committed suicide, and turned them into trees, to be eternally attacked by harpies; and the inner ring, for blasphemers and sodomites, who were sentenced to an infinite desert with burning sand and rain. The fraudulent were held in the next layer, and the land was divided into ten stone ditches, each holding a separate type of sinner, such as scammers, seducers, or false prophets.
The last layer, ‘Treachery,’ is divided into four areas of an icy lake, each represented by a sinner who depicts the sin. The first section of ‘Caina’ is named after Cain, who was written in the Bible to have killed his brother, Abel. The second, ‘Antenora’, was named after Anthenor of Troy. ‘Ptolomaea’ is named after Ptolomy, and the fourth section was named ‘Judecca’, after Judas Iscariot.
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We hope you learnt something new from this article, and maybe gained some interest for the afterlife. Definitely let us know if you did, we would both be super happy, and we’d love to chat to you about it! We’re wishing our Year 12s the best of luck for HSCs, and much thanks to each of the members of the Mary Word who are graduating this term. Thanks so much for reading!
References:
Egyptian
Hamlyn History, Mythology, Veronica Ions
The illustrated guide to Egyptian Mythology, Lewis Spence
Note: Much of the information in these sources is from the ‘The Book of the Dead’ which was an Ancient Egyptian funerary text.
Norse
Hamlyn History, Mythology, Veronica Ions
Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
Ancient Greek
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