The ancient Egyptians believed that there was both heaven and hell. Hell was under the Earth, called the Duat. It was a place of evil and peril with poisonous snakes, lakes of fire and demons.

If you were to get past this terrible place you had to have spells written on the coffin. People also learned the contents of the 'Book of the Dead', a kind of passport through the underworld. You needed to recite the correct spells to get through the Duat. These spells were in the Book of the Dead.

The greatest danger of all was to fail the test where your heart was weighed against the feather of the goddess Ma'at. The heart of the deceased carried a record of all the past deeds of the person.

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