Weight (impression)

[jurisprudent]

To Layne Staley
(Rest in Peace)

In the Ancient Egyptian mythology, the dead person has to go through a trial.

He walks to a tribunal - a row of deities chaired by god Osiris, sitting on his magnificent throne, and his scribbler next to him, meticulously writing down the case of each deceased.

The man is standing in front of the scales, a massive construction guarded by god Anubis, with a head of a jackal and a body of a human. He takes out the heart of the deceased, this still pulsating piece of flesh and blood, alive and fiercely beating.

“What is on the other side?”, asks the dead person, and Anubis puts a feather – big, large, white – on the other side of the scales.

Anubis points to a an exit emitting bright, blinding whitish light – this is the road to salvation, he says, and the deceased looks to that faraway beacon, full of hope and repentance. Beyond are the pastures of green, the rivers of gold, the mountains of serenity and peace. Only if the heart passes the test and turns to be lighter than the feather.

Then Anubis directs the dead man to a monster standing nearby – with a head of a crocodile, the body of a lion and the legs of a hippopotamus. “This is the devourer”, says Anubis, “he may eat your heart if it fails.”

“What then?”

“You will cease to exist. You will become nothing. No trace of you. As if you have not been born at all.”

The deceased looks to his skin, getting pale, to his flesh that feels so weak, on the point of transcending, and then stares to the tribunal of gods - frowning, examining him. Wild horror creeps up his spine, twists his entire composition. Anubis places his heart on the scale. The deceased shouts out:

“Wait! Wait!” he looks to the monster, waiting to devour his heart, moving nervously to and fro with a hungry and cruel look. “Wait! My heart is so small, too small against the feather!”

Anubis, looking at the scales, shaking his jackal head, replies:

“It’s the weight of your heart that matters, not the size.”

The deceased is standing, in front of the panel of gods, the monster on the left, the bright exit on the right, and the scales are trembling, confusingly rising up and falling down, about to show the balance between a heart and a feather.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhAClpx7LXI&feature=search

[jurisprudent]

Feedback on this piece will be greatly valuable.

[Alexmiotti]

Loved the last line

[jurisprudent]

Thank you.

[hillwalker]

It's a well-written article on one aspect of the lore of ancient Egypt rather than a story as such. If your intention was to create a story here then we need a little less teling and more showing. Also having it written in the present tense - it reads almost like a proposal for a screenplay.

I do like the idea of a man's worth measured by the weight of his heart and the way the piece concludes.

[jurisprudent]

Just a few notes.

This is an impression - the idea is to make not a story with a plot but a scene, a picture, an image - and I can link this with the screenplay allusion. Yes, it is normal to seem like a screenplay or a picture. It conveys a certain idea that could have been developed in a plot but it is instilled in the details and the background of the scene.

The idea comes from the song I have put in the beginning (the link). There is the line "the weight of my heart, not the size". I imagined how a heart is being weighed in the context of a mythological situation and it says the same as the song - the "weight" of the heart is the real abilities, skills, experience, talent, ideas, etc. of a person, irrespective of age, gender, origin, race, etc. And the "judgement day" is to be stripped from all masks and face the truth for your person, good or bad.