There, before the "Lords of truth and justice," the soul had to plead its cause, and there it had to repeat, with an amount of assurance and success which would depend upon its conduct in the light, that negative confession which we read in chapter cxxv. of the "_Book of the Dead_," which contains an epitome of Egyptian morality.[256] But those incorruptible judges were not guided solely by the testimony of the _ba_ in its own favour. They weighed its actions in a pair of scales and gave judgment according to their weight.[257] The impious soul was flogged, was delivered to storm and tempest, and, after centuries of suffering, underwent a second death, the death of annihilation. The just soul, on the other hand, had to conquer in many a combat before it was admitted to contemplate the supreme verities. During its transit across the infernal regions, hideous forms of evil sprang up before it and did their best to arrest its progress by terrifying threats. Thanks to the help of Osiris and of other soul-protecting gods, such as Anubis, it triumphed in the end over all obstacles, and, as the sun reappears each morning upon the eastern horizon, it arrived surely at last at those celestial dwellings where it became incorporated among the gods. [256] MASPERO gives a translation of it into French in his _Histoire Ancienne_, pp. 44 and 45. [257] This weighing of the actions of the deceased was represented in the illustrated specimens of the _Ritual of the Dead_ and upon the walls of the tombs, and perhaps upon those monuments decorated with Egyptian motives which were sprinkled by the Phœnicians over the whole basin of the Mediterranean. Coming under the eyes of the Greeks, it was modified by their lively imaginations into that ψυχοστασία, or _weighing of souls_, which we find in the Iliad (xxii. 208-212), where success in a combat between two heroes depends upon the result of that operation. (See ALFRED MAURY, _Revue archéologique_, 1844, pp. 235-249, 291-307; 1845, pp. 707-717, and DE WITTE, _ibidem_, 1844, pp. 647-656.) [Illustration: FIG. 184.--The weighing of actions. (From an illustrated _Ritual of the Dead_ in the British Museum.)]