c. 1550 BCE onward, Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead
The weighing of the heart
A heart on one pan, a feather on the other, and forty-two judges who each have to be addressed by name.
The dead person is led into the Hall of Two Truths. Anubis adjusts the balance. On one pan is the heart, which the Egyptians took to be the seat of thought, memory and character, and which was left in the body during mummification for this reason. On the other is the feather of Maat, cosmic order.
The dead person then makes what is misleadingly called the negative confession: a recitation to forty-two judges, each addressed by name and by place, denying a specific offence to each. I have not stolen. I have not killed. I have not caused anyone to weep. I have not held back the water at its season. I have not blocked a god at his procession.
Thoth records the verdict. If the heart balances, the dead person is declared true of voice and led by Horus to Osiris, to enter the fields of the blessed. If it does not, Ammit, waiting beside the scales, eats the heart, and the person simply ceases to exist.
O my heart which I had from my mother, do not stand up against me as a witness.
Where it comes from
The Book of the Dead
About this sourceSpell 125, from c. 1550 BCE. The Papyrus of Ani is the best-known illustrated version.
What the story was for
Worth noticing what the punishment is. There is no hell, no torment and no eternal suffering: the worst outcome available is annihilation. Worth noticing too that the text is a spell rather than an examination. Spell 30B is an instruction to the heart itself, engraved on a scarab amulet placed over it, telling it not to testify against its owner. The Egyptians appear to have seen no tension between a moral judgement and a magical device for passing it, and that combination is one of the most revealing things in the whole corpus.
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