is the name given by Egyptologists to forty-two judges, who, each in the Hall of Judgment, interrogate the soul of the deceased respecting different crimes which he may have committed, from which crimes he is able to absolve himself by repeating the so-called negative confession of ch. 125 of the Ritual of the Dead. The deceased is then, in turn, declared by the assessors to be justified; and after undergoing various transformations he passes into the highest heaven of the spiritual world.