User:The Land/Weighing of the heart

The 'Weighing of the Heart was a ritual of judgement from the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. The Book of the Dead describes how, after death, a person would enter the Duat, or underworld, and deal with many challenges there. At some point in their journey through the Duat, the deceased would be led by the god Anubis into the 'Hall of the Two Ma'ats'. There he would recite the 'Negative Confession' in the presence of a number of divine judges, pleading his innocence of up to 42 sins. After this confession, the deceased's heart&mdash;representing their intellect and personality&mdash;would be weighed against the goddess Ma'at, representing truth and justice, and often represented by her symbol of a feather. If the scales balanced, this meant the deceased had led a good life. Anubis would take them to Osiris and they would find their place in the afterlife, becoming maa-kheru, meaning "vindicated" or "true of voice". If the heart was out of balance with Ma'at, then another fearsome beast called Ammit, the Devourer, stood ready to eat it and put the dead person's afterlife to an early and unpleasant end.

Judgement
If all the obstacles of the Duat could be negotiated, the deceased would be judged in the Weighing of the Heart ritual, depicted in Spell 125. The deceased was led by the god Anubis into the presence of Osiris. There, the dead person swore that he had not committed any one of a list of 42 sins, reciting a text known as the "Negative Confession". Then the dead person's heart was weighed on a pair of scales, against the goddess Ma'at, who embodied truth and justice. often Ma'at was represented by an ostrich feather (the hieroglyphic sign for her name). At this point, there was a risk that the deceased's heart would bear witness, owning up to sins committed in life; Spell 30B guarded against this eventuality. If the scales balanced, this meant the deceased had led a good life. Anubis would take them to Osiris and they would find their place in the afterlife, becoming maa-kheru, meaning "vindicated" or "true of voice". If the heart was out of balance with Ma'at, then another fearsome beast called Ammit, the Devourer, stood ready to eat it and put the dead person's afterlife to an early and unpleasant end.

Interpretation
This scene is remarkable not only for its vividness but as one of the only parts of the Book of the Dead with any explicit moral content. The judgement of the dead and the Negative Confession were a representation of the conventional moral code which governed Egyptian society. for every "I have not..." in the Negative Confession, it is possible to read an unexpressed "Thou shalt not". While the Ten Commandments of Judaeo-Christian ethics are rules of conduct laid down by divine revelation, the Negative Confession is more a divine enforcement of everyday morality. The wording of Spells 30B and 125 also suggests a pragmatic approach to morality; by preventing his heart from contradicting him with any inconvenient truths, it seems that the deceased could enter the afterlife even if his life had not been entirely pure. Views differ among Egyptologists about how far the Negative Confession represents a moral absolute, with ethical purity being necessary for progress to the Afterlife. Ogden Goelet says "without an exemplary and moral existence, there was no hope for a successful afterlife" ; Geraldine Pinch suggests that the Negative Confession is essentially similar to the spells protecting from demons, and that the success of the Weighing of the Heart depended on the mystical knowledge of the true names of the judges rather than on the deceased's moral behaviour.