WAS THE NOTION OF PURGATORY KNOWN IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS FUNERARY BELIEFS?

In search for understanding the ancient Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife, most modern Egyptologists tend to focus on either the search for heaven and its variety of bliss or the search for hell and its many types of torments, but they have not searched for purgatory. Hence, this paper deals with a hypothesis that sinners and evildoers were purified in the underworld by being punished in areas of torment for some time until they got rid of their sins and mistakes; afterwards, they went to eternal the bliss that was known in ancient Egypt, and which is echoed in the ideas that we find in the Old Testament, Catholic denominations, and Islamic beliefs. Did the ancient Egyptians really believe in purification of the souls of sinners before they departed from the areas of torment to the eternal life of bliss? Did textual sources specify a certain place for the purgatory? Were its concept, conditions for entry, types, and duration clearly defined in the sources? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]