The weighing of souls (Ancient Greek : psychostasia) [1] is a religious motif in which a person's life is assessed by weighing their soul (or some other part of them) immediately before or after death in order to judge their fate. [2] This motif is most commonly seen in medieval Christianity. [3]
In Egypt, this concept of a judgement after death to determine the fate of the deceased is first seen in the Old Kingdom around 2400 B.C.E. It was first imagined as a weighing in the Coffin Texts during the Middle Kingdom (2160-1580 B.C.E.). The most well known form of the ceremony, where people's hearts are weighed on a scale against a feather, is found in the Book of the Dead during the New Kingdom (1580-1090 B.C.E). [2]
The Weighing of the Heart would take place in Duat (the Underworld), in which the dead were judged by Anubis, using a feather, representing Ma'at, the goddess of truth and justice responsible for maintaining order in the universe. The heart was the seat of the life-spirit ( ka ). Hearts heavier than the feather of Ma'at were rejected and eaten by Ammit, the Devourer of Souls.
Later, during the contest of Achilles and Hector in the Iliad , [4] Zeus, weary from the battle, hung up his golden scales and in them set twin Keres, "two fateful portions of death"; this, then, is known as the kerostasia. [5] [3] Plutarch reports that Aeschylus wrote a play with the title Psychostasia, in which the combatants were Achilles and Memnon. [6] This tradition was maintained among the vase painters. An early representation is found on a black-figure lekythos in the British Museum; [7] she observes "The Keres or ψυχαί are represented as miniature men; it is the lives rather than the fates that are weighed. So the notion shifts." In a psychostasia on an Athenian red-figure vase of about 460 BCE at the Louvre, the fates of Achilles and Memnon are in the balance held by Hermes. [8] Among later Greek writers the psychostasia was the prerogative of Minos, judge of the newly deceased in Hades.
The first known depiction of literal weighing of souls in Christianity is from the 2nd century Testament of Abraham . [10]
Archangel Michael is the one who is most commonly shown weighing the souls of people on scales on Judgement Day. [9] This depiction began to show up in early Christianity, but is not mentioned in the Bible. [9]
Demons are often depicted trying to interfere with the balance of the scales. [11]
In the literature of the Mandaeans, Abatur, an angelic being, has the responsibility of weighing the souls of the deceased to determine their worthiness, using a set of scales. [12]
In Greek mythology, Achilles or Achilleus was a hero of the Trojan War who was known as being the greatest of all the Greek warriors. The central character in Homer's Iliad, he was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, king of Phthia and famous Argonaut. Achilles was raised in Phthia along with his childhood companion Patroclus and received his education by the centaur Chiron. In the Iliad, he is presented as the commander of the mythical tribe of the Myrmidons.
Ajax or Aias is a Greek mythological hero, the son of King Telamon and Periboea, and the half-brother of Teucer. He plays an important role in the Trojan War, and is portrayed as a towering figure and a warrior of great courage in Homer's Iliad and in the Epic Cycle, a series of epic poems about the Trojan War, being second only to Achilles among Greek heroes of the war. He is also referred to as "Telamonian Ajax", "Greater Ajax", or "Ajax the Great", which distinguishes him from Ajax, son of Oileus, also known as Ajax the Lesser.
Anubis, also known as Inpu, Inpw, Jnpw, or Anpu in Ancient Egyptian, is the god of funerary rites, protector of graves, and guide to the underworld, in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head.
In Greek mythology, Phoenix was the son of king Amyntor. Because of a dispute with his father, Phoenix fled to Phthia, where he became king of the Dolopians, and tutor of the young Achilles, whom he accompanied to the Trojan War. After Achilles had in anger withdrawn from the war, Phoenix tried to persuade Achilles to return.
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Moirai —often known in English as the Fates—were the personifications of destiny. They were three sisters: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Their Roman equivalent is the Parcae.
In Greek mythology, the Keres were female death-spirits. They were the goddesses who personified violent death and who were drawn to bloody deaths on battlefields. Although they were present during death and dying, they did not have the power to kill. All they could do was wait and then feast on the dead. The Keres were daughters of Nyx, and as such the sisters of beings such as Moirai, who controlled the fate of souls, and Thanatos, the god of peaceful death. Some later authorities, such as Cicero, called them by a Latin name, Tenebrae, and named them daughters of Erebus and Nyx.
In Greek mythology, Thanatos was the personification of death. He was a minor figure in Greek mythology, often referred to but rarely appearing in person.
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Iris is a daughter of the gods Thaumas and Electra, the personification of the rainbow and messenger of the gods, a servant to the Olympians and especially Queen Hera.
Ammit was an ancient Egyptian goddess with the forequarters of a lion, the hindquarters of a hippopotamus, and the head of a crocodile—the three largest "man-eating" animals known to ancient Egyptians. In ancient Egyptian religion, Ammit played an important role during the funerary ritual, the Judgment of the Dead.
Maat or Maʽat comprised the ancient Egyptian concepts of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. Ma'at was also the goddess who personified these concepts, and regulated the stars, seasons, and the actions of mortals and the deities who had brought order from chaos at the moment of creation. Her ideological opposite was Isfet, meaning injustice, chaos, violence or to do evil.
In Greek mythology, Memnon (; Ancient Greek: Μέμνων, lit. the Steadfast or Resolute one, was a king of Aethiopia and son of Tithonus and Eos. Memnon was celebrated for both his exceptional physical beauty and his remarkable strength: "Whole throngs of foes fierce-hearted Memnon slew."" ; [Eurypylos] was the handsomest I ever saw after divine Memnon.. According to later traditions Memnon was black.
The Posthomerica is an epic poem in Greek hexameter verse by Quintus of Smyrna. Probably written in the 3rd century AD, it tells the story of the Trojan War, between the death of Hector and the fall of Ilium (Troy). The poem is an abridgement of the events described in the epic poems Aethiopis and Iliou Persis by Arctinus of Miletus, and the Little Iliad by Lesches, all now-lost poems of the Epic Cycle.
In Greek mythology, the Greek underworld, or Hades, is a distinct realm where an individual goes after death. The earliest idea of afterlife in Greek myth is that, at the moment of death, an individual's essence (psyche) is separated from the corpse and transported to the underworld. In early mythology the dead were indiscriminately grouped together and led a shadowy post-existence; however, in later mythology elements of post-mortem judgment began to emerge with good and bad people being separated.
Douris or Duris was an ancient Athenian red-figure vase-painter and potter active c. 500 to 460 BCE.
The Fates are a common motif in European polytheism, most frequently represented as a trio of goddesses. The Fates shape the destiny of each human, often expressed in textile metaphors such as spinning fibers into yarn, or weaving threads on a loom. The trio are generally conceived of as sisters and are often given the names Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, which are the names of the Moirai, the version of the Fates who appear in Greek mythology. These divine figures are often artistically depicted as beautiful maidens with consideration to their serious responsibility: the life of mortals. Poets, on the other hand, typically express the Fates as ugly and unwavering, representing the gravity of their role within the mythological and human worlds.
In Greek mythology, Ganymede or Ganymedes is a divine hero whose homeland was Troy. Homer describes Ganymede as the most handsome of mortals and tells the story of how he was abducted by the gods to serve as Zeus's cup-bearer in Olympus.
[Ganymedes] was the loveliest born of the race of mortals, and therefore
the gods caught him away to themselves, to be Zeus' wine-pourer,
for the sake of his beauty, so he might be among the immortals.
The Iliad is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Odyssey, the poem is divided into 24 books and was written in dactylic hexameter. It contains 15,693 lines in its most widely accepted version. Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the siege's final weeks. In particular, it depicts a fierce quarrel between King Agamemnon and a celebrated warrior, Achilles. It is a central part of the Epic Cycle. The Iliad is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature.
A bident is a two-pronged implement resembling a pitchfork. In Greek mythology, the bident is a weapon associated with Hades (Pluto), the ruler of the underworld.
In Greek mythology, Eurypylus ("Broadgate") was the son of Telephus, king of Mysia. He was a great warrior, who led a Mysian contingent that fought alongside the Trojans against the Greeks in the Trojan War. He killed Machaon, and was himself killed by Achilles' son Neoptolemus.
The Assessors of Maat were 42 minor ancient Egyptian deities of the Maat charged with judging the souls of the dead in the afterlife by joining the judgment of Osiris in the Weighing of the Heart.
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