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The Egyptian Book of the Dead of Qenna is a papyrus document housed at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden. One of several thousand papyri containing material drawn from Book of the Dead funerary texts, Qenna uniquely includes a passage that describes a deceased person’s activity in an afterlife location it calls the “house of hearts.”While the house of hearts is mentioned in at least two tomb inscriptions, Qenna treats it in more detail. The passage appears as an addendum within Spell 151 of the Book of the Dead:
"You will enter the house of hearts, the place which is full of hearts. You will take the one that is yours and put it in its place, without your hand being hindered. Your foot will not be stopped from walking. You will not walk upside down. You will walk upright."
In the typical presentation, Spell 151 centers on care of the mummy and its accessories by Anubis and other gods, especially the four sons of Horus. The format is to have each god or entity involved say something which is quoted by columns of hieroglyphic text next to a small illustration of that entity. Anubis himself does not speak, but is shown standing over the mummy, which lies on a bier. Canopic jars containing the decedent’s viscera are underneath the bier. The goddess Isis, four gods known as the sons of Horus, and the ba [a "personality," or, literally, "what is immanent" of the deceased are among those with speaking parts in this spell.The importance of the decedent’s heart is shown by the custom of leaving it in situ during the embalming process. Evidence of the need to protect internal organs from harm even after removal is abundant in the use of canopic jars to preserve them. The heart, not placed in a jar, benefited from its own magical utterances, for example where Book of the Dead Spell 27 says,
A role for Isis in the proceedings is attested in the Coffin Texts at Spell 148: