shadows and hearts were consumed forthwith. The Judgment of Osiris
took place near Abydos, probably at midnight, and a decree of swift
annihilation was passed by him on the damned. Their heads were cut
off by the headsman of Osiris, who was called Shesmu, and their
bodies dismembered and destroyed in pits of fire. There was no
eternal punishment for men, for the wicked were annihilated quickly
and completely; but inasmuch as Osiris sat in judgment and doomed the
wicked to destruction daily, the infliction of punishment never ceased.



CHAPTER VII

The Judgment of Osiris.

The oldest religious texts suggest that the Egyptians always associated
the Last Judgment with the weighing of the heart in a pair of scales,
and in the illustrated papyri of the Book of the Dead great prominence
is always given to the vignettes in which this weighing is being
carried out. The heart, ab, was taken as the symbol of all the
emotions, desires, and passions, both good and evil, and out of it
proceeded the issues of life. It was intimately connected with the ka,
i.e., the double or personality of a man, and several short spells
in the Book PER-T EM HRU were composed to ensure its preservation
(Chapters XXVI-XXXB*). The great Chapter of the Judgment of Osiris,
the CXXVth, is divided into three parts, which are sometimes (as
in the Papyrus of Ani) prefaced by a Hymn to Osiris. The first part
contains the following, which was said by the deceased when he entered
the Hall of Maati, in which Osiris sat in judgment: