Probably there is no person who would never have heard of hell, a place where terrifying punishment awaits sinners. Christian ideas of hell are very common and are quite familiar even to people far from religion, but what does the entrance to it look like?
One of the most common ideas about the entrance to hell is the so-called hell's mouth and mouth of hell, which are very popular both in Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
It should be noted that often Satan himself was portrayed as eating the damned, but this is a completely separate image.
Engraving depicting hell and Satan after Dante Alighieri.
The iconography of the mouth is based on biblical texts about the future fate of sinners.
In particular, on the 140th psalm of the 19 kathisma of the Psalter, as well as on the 14th verse of the 5th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, which says about the immensely opened mouth of the underworld.
Although there are a number of other apocalyptic texts.
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The idea of the entrance to hell as the gaping mouth of a huge monster has been known since the Middle Ages. For the first time this image appeared in Anglo-Saxon art around 800 and by the XII-XIII century spread throughout Europe, remaining an extremely common plot in images based on the Last Judgment and the Descent into Hell.
It is noteworthy that the image of the hell's mouth was extremely popular not only in the visual arts.
Fragment of an illustration from "Interpretation of the Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian", XIX century.
Medieval theaters often had special props and even mechanical devices with which they vividly reproduced the entrance to hell in order to frighten the viewer.
As a rule, at such performances based on biblical motives, scenes were played out about the misadventures of the souls of sinners and the victorious descent of Christ into hell (when He smashed the gates of hell, preached His sermon there and freed many imprisoned souls, leading all the Old Testament righteous and Adam and Eve out of hell).
But is the idea of entering hell really purely Christian in origin?
Despite the biblical motives of the mouth of hell, the plot itself, obviously, was borrowed from the German-Scandinavian legends about the death of the gods and the whole world. In particular, the prophecy about Ragnarok speaks of a monstrous wolf, Fenrir, with a huge mouth.
It is believed that the supreme god Odin will fight with Fenrir, but he will be killed by him, after which Odin's son Vidar will avenge his father and break the wolf's mouth (but this will not save him from the end of the world).
In favor of the Scandinavian origin of the mouths of hell, the striking coincidence of the time of their appearance with the Christianization of the Scandinavians speaks, which is absolutely not surprising given how often the Church resorted to combining pagan mythological motives with biblical subjects.