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Towards the end of the third millennium B.C., new funerary texts appeared, with greater emphasis on the
afterlife and helping the deceased find their way in the afterworld. Known as the Coffin Texts because they
were inscribed inside the coffins of Middle Kingdom high officials, they consist of over 1,000 spells (prayers
for protection and empowerment) highlighting life beneath the earth in the kingdom of Osiris, in which the
deceased worked in the Fields of Offerings and of Rushes. A new feature included the judgement of the dead
as a way of attaining new life. The deceased were taken before Osiris and their hearts were weighed on a
scale, against a feather representing Maat, the goddess of truth and justice. Those who were good passed
through to the new life as transfigured spirits. Those who were judged as wicked, were tossed to the goddess
Amemet, "the swallower", who was portrayed as having the rear of a hippopotamus, the fore of a lion and the
head of a crocodile.
