THE REGISTER OF PRIOR ARRANGEMENTS

Matthew has Christ hand Peter "the keys of the kingdom of heaven", meaning the authority to bind and to loose. Authority is difficult to paint. Keys are not — and so within a few centuries the metaphor had hardened into hardware: two of them, gold and silver, crossed, on the arms of the papacy and in the hand of every painted Peter since. It is the clearest case in the record of an abstraction becoming an object because an object could be held up.

A key that opens a gate is the oldest form this product takes. Ours is cut from brass and there are two of them.

How we know Scriptural, then pictorial — the keys are named in Matthew and drawn as objects ever after.

A single low-denomination coin, placed in the mouth or on the eyes before burial: the fare for Charon, who rowed the dead across the Styx and would not row them for nothing. The sum was deliberately trivial. It was never about the value — it was about having brought the correct thing. Virgil has the unpaid dead waiting a hundred years on the near bank, watching the boat go without them.

The fare was small and the consequence of arriving without it was not. That has not changed; only the amount has.

How we know Excavated. Coins are found in the mouths and on the eyes of the dead across the Greek and Roman world.

In the Hall of Two Truths the heart was set on a balance against a single ostrich feather, the feather of Ma’at: truth, order, the way things are supposed to be. Lighter or equal and you went on to the Field of Reeds. Heavier and Ammit ate the heart, and you did not go anywhere at all — not punished, simply ended. It is the only assessment in this register that could not be bought, which is precisely why so much was spent trying.

Every other entry here exists because people preferred a purchase to an assessment. So does this one.

How we know Textual and pictorial — the weighing is painted into funerary papyri and tomb walls in enormous numbers.

Initiates of the Orphic mysteries — the ones who could afford initiation — went into the ground with a leaf of gold foil no bigger than a stamp, inscribed in tiny letters. The text is a set of directions: which spring to avoid, which to drink from, and the exact words to say when stopped. "I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven." They were buried holding the answers, written out, in gold, because gold does not rot and the answers had to survive the journey.

A crib sheet in precious metal, bought in advance by somebody who intended to be asked questions. This is the direct ancestor of the thing on this page.

How we know Excavated. Inscribed gold foil found in graves in southern Italy, Crete, Thessaly and elsewhere.

The road to Helheim was said to run for a very long way over jagged stone and thorn. The dead were therefore bound into a stout pair of leather shoes at the funeral — hel-shoes — because the family could not walk the road for them and would not send them barefoot. It is the only entry in this register where the object is not a payment or a document. It is equipment.

Not everything bought for the journey was a bribe. Some of it was simply the correct kit, purchased by people who loved you.

How we know Folklore and saga, thinly attested. The custom appears in Gísla saga and in later Scandinavian collections; it is not securely established from graves. Treat it as a story people told rather than a practice we can prove.

Six coins, placed in the casket or in a pouch worn at the neck: the toll for crossing the Sanzu River. Arrive without them and the tradition is specific about what follows — the hag Datsueba takes your clothes, hangs them on a branch, and the depth to which the branch bends is the weight of what you did. The sum is exact. Not an offering, not a gesture: six.

A named price, payable in advance, with a stated consequence for arriving short. The oldest business model in this register.

How we know Living custom. Printed paper coins are used today where real ones once were.

Every other object here was bought for the person who would carry it. These were bought for somebody else. A curse was scratched into thin lead, folded, pierced with an iron nail and dropped into a fresh grave or a deep well — a grave being the nearest available postbox to the gods below. The requests are mostly small and extremely human: that a rival lose a lawsuit, that a chariot team lose a race, that a particular person stop being loved by another particular person.

The one entry that is not an upgrade. It is the opposite transaction, and it is included because the record would be dishonest without it.

How we know Excavated in quantity. Well over a thousand survive, from Athens to Roman Britain.

During the witch trials the Black Book was treated as a real object with a real location: a heavy ledger carried by the Devil or his agent, in which a person signed — in blood, by preference — and thereby transferred ownership of their soul. Prosecutors asked where it was kept. People confessed to having signed it. It is the only item in this register that never existed, and it is also the one that killed the most people.

A contract for the soul, executed in writing, witnessed and filed. We are not the first to put this in a ledger. We are the first to publish ours.

How we know Believed, not found. No such book exists; what exists is trial testimony describing one, much of it obtained under torture.