The Weighing of the Heart

The best-known Egyptian afterlife scene describes a hall, a set of scales and Anubis adjusting them. On one pan the heart of the dead; on the other the feather of Ma'at, the principle of order and truth. Thoth writes down the result. Ammit waits beside the beam for a heart that weighs too much. What makes the image last is its restraint — no torment, no interrogation, a balance read once in silence. In the Book of the Dead the dead person speaks to steady it, and Anubis simply attends to the instrument.