page_title: Lady Justice
section_title: Depiction
hierarchical_section_title: Lady Justice / Depiction
caption_attribution_description: English: "This is an excellent example of one of the many fine vignettes (illustrations) from the Book of the Dead of Hunefer. The scene reads from left to right. To the left, Anubis brings Hunefer into the judgement area. Anubis is also shown supervizing&#32;&#91;sic&#93; the judgement scales. Hunefer's heart, represented as a pot, is being weighed against a feather, the symbol of Maat, the established order of things, in this context meaning 'what is right'. The ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was the seat of the emotions, the intellect and the character, and thus represented the good or bad aspects of a person's life. If the heart did not balance with the feather, then the dead person was condemned to non-existence, and consumption by the ferocious 'devourer', the strange beast shown here which is part-crocodile, part-lion, and part-hippopotamus. However, as a papyrus devoted to ensuring Hunefer's continued existence in the Afterlife is not likely to depict this outcome, he is shown to the right, brought into the presence of Osiris by his son Horus, having become 'true of voice' or 'justified'. This was a standard epithet applied to dead individuals in their texts. Osiris is shown seated under a canopy, with his sisters Isis and Nephthys. At the top, Hunefer is shown adoring a row of deities who supervise the judgement." A more detailed explanation of the scene can be found in the public domain The Book of the Dead, by E. A. Wallis Budge.[1]
context_page_description: Lady Justice is an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems. Her attributes are a blindfold, a beam balance, and a sword. She often appears as a pair with Prudentia, who holds a mirror and a snake.
  Lady Justice originates from the personification of Justice in Ancient Roman art known as Iustitia or Justitia after Latin: Iustitia, who is equivalent to the Greek goddesses Themis and Dike.
context_section_description: The personification of justice balancing the scales dates back to the goddess Maat, and later Isis, of ancient Egypt. The Hellenic deities Themis and Dike were later goddesses of justice. Themis was the embodiment of divine order, law, and custom, in her aspect as the personification of the divine rightness of law.
caption: The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead depicts a scene in which a deceased person's heart is weighed against the feather of truth.
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