Weighing of souls

[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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.