In religion and folklore, hell is a location or state in the afterlife in which souls are subjected to punitive suffering, most often through torture, as punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as eternal destinations, the biggest examples of which are Christianity and Islam, whereas religions with reincarnation usually depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations, as is the case in the Indian religions. Religions typically locate hell in another dimension or under Earth's surface. Other afterlife destinations include heaven, paradise, purgatory, limbo, and the underworld.
Medieval illustration of hell in the Hortus deliciarum manuscript of Herrad of Landsberg (about 1180)
Hell – detail from a fresco in the medieval church of St Nicholas in Raduil, Bulgaria
Preserved colonial wall paintings of 1802 depicting Hell, by Tadeo Escalante, inside the Church of San Juan Bautista in Huaro, Peru
In this ~1275 BC Book of the Dead scene the dead scribe Hunefer's heart is weighed on the scale of Maat against the feather of truth, by the canine-headed Anubis. The ibis-headed Thoth, scribe of the gods, records the result. If his heart is lighter than the feather, Hunefer is allowed to pass into the afterlife. If not, he is eaten by the crocodile-headed Ammit.
The afterlife or life after death is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's stream of consciousness or identity continues to exist after the death of their physical body. The surviving essential aspect varies between belief systems; it may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, which carries with it one's personal identity.
A depiction of Idris visiting Heaven and Hell from an illuminated manuscript version of the Islamic text Stories of the Prophets (1577)
Georgin François, The 3 Roads to Eternity, 1825.
Judgment of the Dead in Duat
This detail scene from the Papyrus of Hunefer (ca. 1375 B.C.) shows Hunefer's heart being weighed on the scale of Maat against the feather of truth, by the jackal-headed Anubis. The ibis-headed Thoth, scribe of the gods, records the result. If his heart is lighter than the feather, Hunefer is allowed to pass into the afterlife. If not, he is eaten by the waiting Ammit. Vignettes such as these were a common illustration in Egyptian books of the dead.