oes
to show that each soul was dealt with individually, and was either
permitted to pass into the kingdom of Osiris and of the blessed, or was
destroyed straightway. Certain passages in the texts seem to suggest the
idea of the existence of a place for departed spirits wherein the souls
condemned in the judgment might dwell, but it must be remembered that it
was the enemies of R[=a], the Sun-god, that inhabited this region; and
it is impossible to imagine that the divine powers who presided over the
judgment would permit the souls of the wicked to live after they had
been condemned and to become enemies of those who were pure and blessed.
On the other hand, if we attach any importance to the ideas of the Copts
upon this subject, and consider that they represent ancient beliefs
which they derived from the Egyptians traditionally, it must be admitted
that the Egyptian underworld contained some region wherein the souls of
the wicked were punished for an indefinite period. The Coptic lives of
saints and martyrs are full of allusions to the sufferings of the
damned, but whether the descriptions of these are due to imaginings of
the mind of the Christian Egyptian or to the bias of the scribe's
opinions cannot always be said. When we consider that the Coptic hell
was little more than a modified form of the ancient Egyptian Amenti, or
Amentet, it is difficult to believe that it was the name of the Egyptian
underworld only which was borrowed, and that the ideas and beliefs
concerning it which were held by the ancient Egyptians were not at the
same time absorbed. Some Christian writers are most minute in their
classification of the wicked in hell, as we may see from the following
extract from the life of Pisentios, [Footnote: Ed. Amelineau, Paris,
1887, p. 144 f.] Bishop of Keft, in the VIIth century of our era. The
holy man had taken refuge in a tomb wherein a number of mummies had been
piled up, and when he had read the list of the names of the people who
had been buried there he gave it to his disciple to replace. Then he
addressed his disciple and admonished him to do the work of God with
diligence, and warned him that every man must become even as were the
mummies which lay before them. "And some," said he, "whose sins have
been many are now in Amenti, others are in the outer darkness, others
are in pits and ditches filled with fire, and others are in the river of
fire: upon these last no one hath bestowed rest. And others, li