"What dreams my come in sleep..." (Shakespear, Hamlet)
The kind of dream is reserved for supervised nichtmares, which, unlinke Hamlet, delve into the abyssal realm of death fantasies while still alive. And risen from the realm of the dead is this prince of hell, wearing a crown, adorned in royal purple, with a grinning skull peering out of the darkness. But he is a prince after all, holding in his bony hands the feather of Maat, the Egyptian goddness of truth, justice and cosmis world order. If Maat placed her feather on the scales, with the heart of the deceased on the opposite side, and it remained balanced, then the deceased had passed the "test"and could transition into the enlightened place of Duat, the afterlife - otherwise, forever swallowed by the ever-lurking monster Ammit. Yet, as playfully, amost teasingly as the prince of death holds the pen, he might also be pointing out (to quot Shakespear again) the we are made of the stuff that dreams are made of, and that everything earthly is nothing, a juggling that is whimsically moved back and forth by every breeze and ultimately, like a breeze, fades away.