The Judgement of the Dead by Osiris

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Illustration

Jan van der Crabben
by Trustees of the British Museum
published on 26 April 2012
The Judgement of the Dead by Osiris Download Full Size Image

The judgement of the dead in the presence of Osiris, from the Book of the Dead of Hunefer, from Thebes, Egypt, 19th Dynasty, c. 1275 BCE.

The scene reads from left to right. To the left, Anubis brings Hunefer into the judgement area. Anubis is also shown supervising the judgement scales. Hunefer's heart, represented as a pot, is being weighed against a feather, the symbol of Ma'at, the established order of things, in this context meaning 'what is right'. The ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was the seat of the emotions, the intellect, and the character, and thus represented the good or bad aspects of a person's life. If the heart did not balance with the feather, then the dead person was condemned to non-existence, and consumption by the ferocious 'devourer', the strange beast shown here, which is part-crocodile, part-lion, and part-hippopotamus.

However, as a papyrus devoted to ensuring Hunefer's continued existence in the afterlife is not likely to depict this outcome, he is shown to the right, brought into the presence of Osiris by his son Horus, having become 'true of voice' or 'justified'. This was a standard epithet applied to dead individuals in their texts. Osiris is shown seated under a canopy, with his sisters Isis and Nephthys. At the top, Hunefer is shown adoring a row of deities who supervise the judgement.

The British Museum, London.

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Cite This Work

APA Style

Museum, T. o. t. B. (2012, April 26). The Judgement of the Dead by Osiris. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/image/504/the-judgement-of-the-dead-by-osiris/

Chicago Style

Museum, Trustees of the British. "The Judgement of the Dead by Osiris." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified April 26, 2012. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/504/the-judgement-of-the-dead-by-osiris/.

MLA Style

Museum, Trustees of the British. "The Judgement of the Dead by Osiris." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 26 Apr 2012. Web. 20 Dec 2024.

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