In Chapter 1 I promised that I would return to the question of the logic of sins and punishments in the Apocalypse of Peter. We have seen that the text makes use of the image of the human body as an organizing principle, especially focusing on elements that penetrate boundaries. But why is the body in the afterlife described in such concrete, sensual terms, in the first instance? In this chapter, I will argue that such a detailed representation of the human body in the hell of the Apocalypse of Peter is intimately tied up with a particular moral theory rooted in earliest Christian tradition.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Am-duat

Ancient Egypt is well known for its elaborate concept of the afterlife, which included the idea of post-mortem judgment. The earliest source that describes the judgment scene is the Book of the Dead, a collection of texts that helped the deceased to deal with the dangers of the afterlife. Chapter 125 describes the judgment scene, presided by the deity Thoth, where the heart of the deceased is weighed against the feather of truth.