SYM·0014 · Balance
Scales
the blindfold began as an insult
- Unicode
- U+2696 scales
- Meaning
- Weighing, and therefore judgement: two pans, and the truth is whichever way they tip.
- History
- Older than any court. Egyptian funerary texts weigh the heart of the dead against the feather of Maat, with the result determining everything that follows. Greek and Roman personifications carry the balance for the same reason. The blindfold is a late arrival and began as mockery — a fool binding the eyes of Justice in Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools, 1494 — and was absorbed within a century into the virtue it was drawn to ridicule.
- Variants
- With or without sword; with or without blindfold; pans level or tipped.
- Related
- ♎ Libra; § Section, the other mark of law.
- Appears
- Courts, law firms, regulators, and the reverse of coins.
- Evolution
- Weighing instrument → divine audit → civic virtue, wearing an accessory that started as a joke about it.
Sources · 3
- documented The weighing of the heart against the feather of Maat, Book of the Dead, spell 125.
- documented Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff, 1494 — the blindfolded Justice as satire, in the legal-iconography literature.
- documented The Unicode Standard, U+2696 SCALES.