Ammit

Ammit is the other outcome. The weighing of the heart is one of the most reproduced images in Egyptian art and it is usually shown going well — the heart balances the feather, Thoth writes it down, the deceased is led in to Osiris. Ammit is what the picture is for: she is drawn in every version, sitting beside the balance, built out of the three animals an Egyptian had most reason to fear, and if the heart is heavy she eats it. There is no hell in this system and no sentence to serve. Being eaten is simply the end of you, permanently, which is why the Book of the Dead spends so much of its length on spells to prevent it.

Domains

• judgement

Powers

• to end a person entirely by eating the heart

Relations

• subordinate to: OsirisAttached to the judgement hall over which Osiris presides, with Anubis at the balance and Thoth recording; she is the outcome, not a judge.Book of the Dead, spell 125: the judgement hall of Osiris, with the balance, the assessors and the devourer. (primary)

Sources

• Ammit is the Egyptian devourer of the dead, a composite of crocodile, lion and hippopotamus, who waits beside the scales in the judgement hall and eats the hearts that fail the weighing.: Book of the Dead, spell 125. (primary); Reference treatments of Ammit and of the weighing of the heart. (secondary)