The frontispiece you are looking at is the Heart-Weighing scene from the Papyrus of Hunefer (British Museum, c. 1275 BCE). Osiris sits enthroned at the western end of his hall; before him, Anubis weighs the heart of the deceased against the feather of Ma’at while Thoth records the verdict, and the composite-monster Ammit waits to devour any heart that fails the test. This is the foundational ethical image of ancient Egyptian religion — the moment in which a life is judged not by ritual purity alone but by whether it has lived in accordance with ma’at, the cosmic order of truth and justice. Ptah-Hotep’s maxims, written more than a thousand years earlier, were the practical manual for arranging a heart that could pass this weighing.