The Weighing of the Heart from the Papyrus of Ani

This scene depicts a central balance scale, with Anubis, the jackal-headed god, kneeling on the right to adjust the plumb bob. On the left side of the scale, a human figure stands in profile, while a heart sits in one pan and a feather in the other. Above the scale, hieroglyphic registers run horizontally, and in the upper left, a small human-headed bird (a ba) sits atop a shrine. The style mimics traditional Egyptian papyrus painting, characterized by earth tones, ochre backgrounds, and sharp, linear outlines.

This image represents a critical moment in the Egyptian funerary tradition, specifically the psychostasia or the weighing of the soul, which determines the deceased's fate in the afterlife as recorded in the Book of the Dead.