Judges souls at threshold of underworld
A motif · Behaviour · Thompson E752, The dead
2 figures carry it.
Nearby in Thompson's index
Motifs this bestiary also holds from E750 and below. The codes are the index's; the names and counts are ours.
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E752Soul theft by passing over a corpse 1 figure -
E754Weighs heart against a feather 1 figure
Carried by
Surma
In some interpretations, Surma is not merely a beast to be defeated but a test of worthiness, judging those who seek passage based on criteria known only to itself and the gods of the underworld.
Nehebkau
A being whose name is effectively a job description of that kind belongs to the machinery of the afterlife rather than to any narrative cycle, and that is roughly where the wider Egyptological literature places him: dangerous and primordial in the Pyramid Texts, subdued by Atum, and afterwards in attendance at the judgement of the dead.