The Forty-Two Judges (Article) -- Ancient History Encyclopedia

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The Forty-Two Judges

The Forty-Two Judges were the divine beings of the Egyptian after-life who presided over the Hall of Truth where the great god Osiris judged the dead. The soul of the deceased was called upon to render up confession of deeds done while in life and to have the heart weighed in the balance of the scales of justice against the white feather of Ma’at, of truth and harmonious balance. If the deceased person’s heart were lighter than the feather, they were admitted to eternal life in the Field of Reeds; if the heart were found heavier than the feather it was thrown to the floor where it was eaten by the monster Amemait (part lion, part hippopotamus and part crocodile) and the soul of the person would then cease to exist.

Although Osiris was the principal judge of the dead, the Forty-Two Judges sat in council with him to determine the worthiness of the soul to enjoy continued existence. They represented the forty-two provinces of Upper and Lower Egypt, and each judge was responsible for considering a particular aspect of the deceased’s conscience. Of these, there were nine great judges, Ra (in his other form of Atum) Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Isis, Nephthys, Horus, and Hathor. Of the other judges, they were depicted as awe-inspiring and terrible beings bearing names such as Crusher of Bones, Eater of Entrails, Double Lion, Stinking Face and Eater of Shades, among others (Bunson).

Once the Negative Confession had been made by the soul of the deceased (in which the soul recited those good things done and the bad things avoided in life, aided by the spells in the Egyptian Book of the Dead) and the heart had been weighed in the balance, the Forty-Two Judges met in conference with Osiris, presided over by the god of wisdom, Thoth, to render final judgement. If the soul were considered worthy then, by some accounts, it was directed out of the hall to the creature known as Hraf-haf (meaning He-Who-Looks-Behind-Him) who was an ill-tempered and insulting ferryman whom the deceased had to find some way to be kind and cordial to in order to be rowed to the shores of the Field of Reeds and eternal life. Having passed through the Hall of Truth and, finally, proven themselves worthy through kindness to the un-kind Hraf-Haf, souls would, at last, find peace.

Written by Joshua J. Mark, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license on 18 January 2012.

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References

Margaret Bunson. The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Random House, NY, 1991.
R.O. Faulkner. The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. British Museum Publications, London, 1972.
Salima Ikram. Death and Burial in Ancient Egypt. Pearson Education, Ltd, London, 2003.