I just read an interesting account of “The Narrative of the Father Arsanis, King of Egypt, and how our Lord, to whom be Glory, raised him to Life” in Emmanouela Grypeou’s Talking Skulls: On Some Personal Accounts of Hell and Their Place in Apocalyptic Literature.
While wandering in the desert outside Judea Jesus comes across the skull of a virtuous Egyptian King and engages in a little necromancy:
The skull explains that he was a worshipper of idols made of gold and silver. The name of his god was the Bull. The skull further explains how this idol led men astray on account of Satan’s agency. Moreover, he describes how, as a king of Egypt, he was king over all the kings of the earth and possessed mythical wealth, being, however, merciful and generous with the needy. Upon hearing this, Jesus reassures him that the Father in Heaven will reward him.
Jesus asks about the fate of the soul on the day of death. The skull relates in quite some detail what happens at the moment when the breath is taken away from the soul, using well-known mythological motifs about the king Death and his frightening-looking angels. After that a scene of intermediary judgment takes place, when two angels with iron rods and long teeth come, open the grave with their teeth and question the dead about his god. If he answers that his god is the God in Heaven, then he is deemed as righteous, otherwise he is smitten by the angels with their rods downwards, until he reaches the seven chambers of Gehenna. The skull describes the tortures of the soul in the Gehenna. The seven chambers in the Gehenna are organized hierarchically, corresponding to various categories of sinners. The ruler of the Gehenna is an old man called Michael.
The various chambers also contain different torture equipment, such as scorpions and serpents, several kinds of fire punishment, hot spits of iron, darkness, blackness and weeping, and gnashing of the teeth. There is not a direct analogy of the sins to the tortures assigned to them. Moreover, the tortures are not described in much detail either.
The skull briefly describes also the contrasting world of the beati in heaven.
