In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, 42 assessors usually judged the deceased during the Negative Confession.
The Negative Confession, also called the Declaration of Innocence, was a series of statements in which the deceased claimed not to have committed particular offenses. The declarations were addressed to a group of divine judges associated with the judgment of the dead. The traditional number of assessors was 42, corresponding to the 42 nomes, or administrative districts, of ancient Egypt.
The deceased did not simply answer questions from Anubis. Anubis was commonly shown supervising the weighing of the heart, while Osiris presided over the judgment and Thoth recorded its result. The 42 assessors formed part of the wider tribunal before which the deceased demonstrated moral purity.
The wording of the declarations varies between manuscripts. They should not be treated as a single fixed creed, because Egyptian funerary texts developed over many centuries and individual copies contain different selections and arrangements.