Ammut (Ammit, Ahemait)
The dead devourer
Depiction: A goddess, Ammut was depicted with the head of a crocodile, the forequarters of a lion, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus.
Mythology: Ammut was a soul-eating monster. She witnessed the judgment of the dead in the "Hall of the Two Truths,” Maaty. Before souls could enter the afterlife they had to pass judgment by Osiris. As the king of the underworld, Osiris admitted only those souls who had lived good lives and who had received the proper burial rights under the protection of certain amulets and the recitation of certain words of power and divinity. To judge if a soul was worthy of entering the afterlife, the deceased’s heart was placed on one side of the Scales of Truth and a feather of Ma’at on the other side. If the heart, where the Egyptians believed the soul dwelled, was heavy with sins and out weighed Ma’at’s feather, Ammut ate the soul dooming it to eternal death. If the heart weighed equal to Ma’at’s feather the soul earned eternal life in the Duat, a fertile land.
