Afterlife realms and judgment in myth: who decides where the dead go

The short answer

Traditions disagree on what decides where the dead go. Egypt and the Hindu texts sort souls by deeds, and each has a named judge. Norse and Aztec sources sort them mostly by how they died. Early Sumerian belief had no final judgment, and the dead fared better or worse according to their burial and the libations their descendants poured. Early Greek belief used kinship to gods and heroes as the way into Elysium before it widened to the righteous.

This page compares those systems and does not rate pairs of gods, so there are no strength marks here. Each row of the table states only what the cited reference page records, and the limits are noted where a page flags them.

Seven afterlife systems side by side

The table gives the tradition, the realms the pages name, what decides the destination and who, if anyone, judges.

How the systems differ

Greece: three regions and a change of rule

The Elysium entry calls it a Greek conception of the afterlife that developed over time and was initially separate from Hades. At first only mortals related to the gods or other heroes could cross the Styx. Later the entry widened to those chosen by the gods, the righteous and the heroic, who lived a blessed afterlife and could enjoy whatever they had enjoyed in life.

The sources place it differently. Homer puts it on the western edge of the Earth beside the stream of Oceanus and gives it to fair-haired Rhadamanthus as ruler. Hesiod calls it the Isles of the Blessed, where the earth yields fruit three times a year and Cronus rules. Pindar reduces it to a single island with shady parks and names Cronus as ruler.

The Asphodel Meadows are where most ordinary souls go, near the Land of Dreams in Homer. The entry says mediocre lives most likely end there, but that line is marked as needing a citation. Tartarus lies, in the Iliad's words, as far beneath Hades as heaven is above earth, and the Theogony says a bronze anvil falling from heaven would take nine days to reach earth and nine more to reach Tartarus.

It is a prison for the Titans and a dungeon for the wicked. Sisyphus rolls a boulder that always rolls back, Tantalus stands in receding water beneath fruit that lifts out of reach, and Ixion is bound to a spinning flaming wheel that stopped only when Orpheus played in the Underworld.

Egypt: the weighing of the heart

The Duat is a dark underground realm divided by twelve guarded gates that correspond to the hours of the night. The dead travel through its sections to be judged, and Ra's nightly journey through it revives them. At the judgment the deceased must address each of the 42 Assessors of Ma'at by name and recite sins they have not committed.

Anubis then weighs the heart against Ma'at's feather, which represents truth and justice. A heavier heart fails and is eaten by Ammit, and the page says this meant being denied existence after death, in contrast to the fiery torment of Abrahamic Hell. A lighter heart passes and may travel to Aaru, the Field of Reeds, a paradise where the virtuous live their former lives with loved ones, without pain or suffering.

Mesopotamia: burial and descendants

The Irkalla entry calls the Mesopotamian underworld a dark, dreary cavern deep below the ground, where the dead continue a transpositional version of life on earth. They eat only dry dust. Relatives pour libations through a clay pipe into the grave, and the dead with no descendants have nothing to drink and are believed to haunt the living. People without proper burial, such as the burned or those who died alone in the desert, were said to cease to exist.

Early Sumerian belief held that there was no final judgment and the dead were neither punished nor rewarded. Under the Third Dynasty of Ur treatment reportedly depended on the quality of burial, and Shamash Hymn 31 places the Anunnaki alongside Utu as judges of the dead, so the page records two accounts that conflict. Seven gates guard the realm, and the gatekeeper Neti takes one of Inanna's garments at each in her descent story.

Norse lands: the chosen dead

Valhalla is a hall in Asgard presided over by Odin. Those killed in battle become his adopted sons, the Einherjar, according to Gylfaginning. They fight daily, then ride home to Valhalla to drink, and they feast on the boar Sæhrímnir, which is cooked each day and whole again each night. Valkyries are sent by Odin to every battle, choose who will die and determine victory, and then serve drinks in the hall. Later sources add kings and political heroes, among them Eric Bloodaxe, Haakon I of Norway and King Vanlandi. The Einherjar prepare for Ragnarök through an eternal battle, and Grímnismál says 800 of them exit each door when they go to fight the Wolf.

Valhalla has company. Britannica's page on Freyja says she chooses one half of the heroes slain in battle for her hall in the Fólkvangar, while Odin takes the other half. Gylfaginning has Hel receive those who die of sickness or old age, as the page about underworld rulers sets out. No source read here describes a weighing of deeds.

The Mexica: the manner of death

Most people who die travel to Mictlan, which has nine levels, and the journey from the first to the ninth takes four years. Xolotl helps the dead on the way, past mountains that crash into each other, a windy field of flesh-scraping knives and a river of blood with jaguars and snakes. Other destinations depend on how a person died.

Warriors who fell in battle and those who died as sacrifices went east and accompanied the morning sun. Women who died in childbirth went west with the setting sun. People who drowned or died from causes tied to the rain god Tlaloc, such as certain diseases and lightning, went to Tlalocan, a paradise. Conduct in life does not appear as a criterion on that page.

Hindu texts: judgment, then rebirth

This section describes the texts as the Naraka page does. Yama's messengers, the Yamadutas, bring beings to his court, where he weighs virtues and vices and passes judgment, aided by Chitragupta, who records all deeds. Virtuous beings go to Svarga and sinners to one of the hells. Many scriptures describe 28 hells, though some Puranas say hundreds or thousands, and each is tied to specific offenses.

Some beings are spared his court, including generous donors, truth-speakers, war-heroes, people who die in holy places such as Kurukshetra, and those who attain moksha. The stay in Svarga or Naraka is generally temporary. After it ends, souls are reborn as lower or higher beings according to their merits. Hinduism regards hell as a domain from which a person can return after past crimes have been compensated, and it records one exception, Madhvacharya's belief in eternal damnation for a class of beings.

Japan: Yomi

The Izanami entry describes Yomi as the shadowy land of the dead. Izanami died giving birth to the fire deity Kagu-tsuchi. When Izanagi went to find her, she told him she had eaten the food of the underworld and could no longer return to the living. He lit his comb as a torch, saw her decayed body and fled, and sealed the Yomotsuhirasaka cavern with a boulder. She threatened to kill 1,000 living people each day, and he answered that he would give life to 1,500. The entry describes no sorting of souls, and it notes that the Kojiki dates to c. 712 AD while the Nihon Shoki of 720 AD differs, since Izanagi does not enter Yomi in it.

What the criteria add up to

Four criteria recur across the pages. Deeds decide in Egypt and in the Hindu texts, with a scale or a recorder in each. The manner of death decides among the Mexica and, in part, in Norse sources, where the slain are divided between Odin and Freyja. Burial and descendants decide in Mesopotamia. Kinship to the gods decided access to early Elysium. Egypt and Mesopotamia both record non-existence as an outcome: Ammit eats the failed heart, and the unburied are said to cease to exist. The Hindu texts, as the entry reports them, make every post-mortem state temporary.

The pages do not agree with each other on terms either. The entry on Egypt contrasts Ammit with the fiery torment of Abrahamic Hell, the page on Greece describes punishment in Tartarus, and the Mesopotamian page ties treatment to burial, not to conduct. Words like heaven and hell fit some of these realms badly, which is why the table uses each tradition's own names.

What this page does not claim

All pages read are Wikipedia reference pages, and the Britannica Freyja page for the Fólkvangar detail. The Book of the Dead, the Odyssey, the Eddas and the Puranas were read only through those pages. The Hindu and Japanese traditions are living religions, and the page reports their texts as the cited pages do. Britannica pages for most of the other realms were not read for this article, so a few details here rest on one page each.