Welcome to Gaia! ::

Maat, the goddess of truth

Well, I am going to tell you about Maat, a very special goddess in the Egyptian faith.

I got to know Maat kinda early in my Egyptian studies, because she appeared in the death-book at the judgment of the dead. I thought she was cute and saw her as a noble but a bit shy goddess and started to like her. But I was very annoyed once, because none of my books had something particular to say about her! It was just the same repeating information. So I had to use internet, which I don’t prefer. I hope this information is correct and once again: I’m sorry for my grammar. I’ve really tried to make it read-able.

Maat was the goddess of truth, justice, order and balance, and sometimes describe more of a concept than a goddess. You could say she was the truth and order personified. She is depicted as a tall woman wearing a crown surmounted by a huge ostrich feather, a symbol of the principles she represent, but sometimes she could even have wings. Some people see her as a female counterpart to Toth, the wise moon god. (In one story she was Toth’s wife and had eight kids with him!)

This is one of her names with hieroglyphics, but she can also be represented by a single feather.


The Greeks counterpart of Maat is Themis, a Titan goddess, early bride of Zeus and his prime counselor. The word Themis is translated as “divine” or “law” and she were represented as a woman with a scale (or in some versions, wearing a blindfold and a sword).

She is a very ancient goddess, because you can find her with Ra in the first moment of the world. She was known as a daughter of Ra (a least in the 18th dynasty) and many people thought she had the greatest roll of all gods and goddess. Because she was the one who keep the order and harmony in this world, made the stars shine, the Nile flow and the mankind think. If she didn’t exist the whole universe would become chaos again!
It is also said that she travels in Ra’s solar boat and direct its course.

It seems to be very rare with temples dedicated to her, but at least there is one small temple that can be seen in the area of Montu at Karnak who was committed to her. The temple seems to have been built by Hatshepsut, but reconstructed by Thuthmose 3.

Maat means literally "truth" and one of the pharaoh’s significant duties was to uphold “Maat” which means to keep order and justice in the Egypt, and it was common that pharaohs took the title “Beloved of Maat,” to emphasizing their focus on justice and truth.”
The vizier who controlled the Egyptian law was considered (kind of naturally) to be the priest of Maat.

Maat is probably most known in the myth about the judgment in “the hall of two truths” or “the hall of Maat”. When an Egyptian died, his soul was guide by the god Anubis (Yinepu) to the duat, the underworld, where his heart were weight against Maats feather. If the heart were heavier than the feather, it proved that the person had lived against Maat, which means you have done something bad like, killed, cheated, and lying or anything against Maat. If that’s so, your heart will be throwing as a treat for the lion-like Ammit (Ammut) and you will never be able to enter the kingdom of Osiris. But if your heart weights the same as the feather of Maat, you can join the other good people in the West-world! ^^
To prevent the heart to disclose any bad things, the Egyptians putted charms in the coverings of the mummy. But before your hearts weight you had to tell the 42 gods in the hall that you are innocent to all crimes (there are one crime to each god).

The judgment of the dead, I believe everyone have seen this before?


Maat, the cosmically order, what would we be without you? What would we be if you didn’t exist? The answer is simple: We wouldn’t be at all!

I watched a programme not so long ago on the Book of the Dead. It was very interesting!

With the heart being weighed against Maat's feather it confused me. If it was heavier then the feather your life ended, if it weighed the same then you lived eternal life in the Land of the Reeds but what happens if your heart was lighter then the feather?

When the person had to say to the 42 Gods that he was innocent of all crimes he had to be innocent to all 42, even if he commited some sort of sin like stealing, he had to say that he didn't do it, so basically he was lying which is a crime in those times.

The picture you supplied is an extract from the Book of the Dead and it looks very familiar.

Thanks for the information on her, great stuff to read. Your English is superb!!

That is a very good question, and one which is glossed over in most treatments of the subject. I've only heard one person address this, and that was Tamara Siuda. She gave a brief mention of this issue on the History Channel special where she was interviewed in her capacity as an egyptologist (not as a modern spiritual leader), so I have confidence that what she has said on the matter is drawn from ancient sources rather than a modern speculation. According to Hemet, then, it is just as troublesome for your heart to be too light as it is for it to be too heavy- and both will lead to the same outcome: being devoured by Am-mit. The heart will be too heavy if it is weighed down with sin and the knowledge of one's own wrongdoing. However, it will be too light if one never took the laws of Ma'at seriously to begin with- if one was completely carefree, to the point of being irresponsible or thoughtless about one's choices or actions. Ma'at is a weighty subject, and therefore it is necessary to maintain a certain amount of consideration for Her laws and their importance - without fretting so much that you eat your own heart out or weigh it down with long lists of sins. This would give you the gravity which was necessary in order to balance against Her feather. No more, and no less.



Yep, that's true.^_^ And there's another side to it as well! The 42 so-called Negative Confessions were more than a recitation of 42 laws- in fact, they varied a bit from tomb to tomb. They were a magical text, taking advantage of the power of the written and spoken word in order to purify the soul of the mistakes he had made in life. After all, all people make mistakes- I doubt that any single one of us could go down even the most popular version of the 42 and honestly say that we had never made any of the mistakes on the list. Frequently, this magical text would be customized to intentionally list some very specific mistake which the owner had at one point committed, in order to purge his or her soul of that guilt which would weigh him or her down when the heart was placed upon the scales. This is why I prefer the more recent name for this text, which is "The 42 Declarations of Purity." The weighing of the heart, then, took place to evaluate the effectiveness of these purifications- which I doubt would have been sufficient if the person was not truly good of heart, one who gave an honest attempt to live by the laws of Ma'at. If the soul was not, at heart, good and true... then all those incantations would be no more than lies, and the soul would fail the test. cool

As for Ma'at and temples- my understanding was that, as the embodiment of Divine Order and appropriate relationships, She was served in every temple simply by virtue of the fact that it was ma'at for the people to have the kinds of relationships with the gods which the temples facilitated. I didn't know that She had any chapels of Her own, so that is very interesting! I would love to look that one up for more information!

*nods* I've heard that last from KO as well. From what I have read of the judgement scene, the heart is thrown to Am-mit and the kA (who is in attendance) is also devoured. No mention is made of the bA, and this is ambiguous. It could be that, since the Egyptians believed that all parts of the human body/mind/soul were necessary to its continued survival after death, the destruction of any one (or two) parts of the soul was enough to assume annihilation as the natural fate for the rest.

From my understanding, the heart is not so much the personality of a person but the center for a person's thoughts and emotions (kind of like how we view the brain today). The kA was an energetic double of the body- responsible for containing the vital energy needed to keep the body alive, and keeping it in contact with all the various parts of the body. According to KO, it is also the part of the body which houses the personality- though I have not asked them about their source on this and I have not found it anywhere on my own.

The fact that the bA is not mentioned, however, does leave the situation open so that the possibility of reincarnation remains. The only possible allusion to this philosophy which I have encountered was one of the titles of a certain king (whose name escapes me now) which included something along the lines of "He of repeated births." On the surface, this could possibly be a reference to reincarnation- though it could also be a reference to the king as the latest representative of a line of incarnations of the kingly kA... and would therefore be a peculiar kind of reincarnation which would only involve the king (or at least, the kingly kA).

For my part, I'm rather fond of the philosophy of reincarnation- it seems to make a good deal of sense to me, and I don't discount it as a possibility... though I couldn't credibly say that the Egyptians would have agreed with me. wink From what I understand, this is the stance which Tamara Siuda takes as well- reincarnation as a personal belief, despite the fact that it does not seem likely from the religious records.



That would be difficult! I think that being as pure as Ma'at would be pure enough for me. 3nodding However, in this case it does not appear to be a situation of the heart being purer, but simply being lighter.^_^ It will be lighter than the feather of Ma'at if a grasp of- and respect for- the importance of Ma'at is not contained in the heart. 3nodding Being lighter than the feather is not a good outcome- if it was considered desirable, we can be sure we'd see scenes of the weighing of the heart where that was the outcome... particularly of the kings, who were deified after their deaths and were always considered to be more or less super-humans. Also, quite a few of them seem to have been quite impressed with their own glory and would have insisted on having themselves depicted with the ultimate passing grade if this were the case. The Egyptians were also a very careful lot, and would probably have preferred to depict a "lighter than ma'at" verdict if that had been considered at all desirable, in order to leave themselves a little margin for error. They were the masters of hedging their bets. wink However, we never see this outcome depicted or prayed for by anyone... and given the Egyptian's view of law and appropriate responses in the rest of their culture, it would make more sense to interpret their scenes, spells, wisdom literature, and prayers as requesting the verdict which is always depicted: a balance of the scale of Ma'at- no more, and no less.

In the Hall of Truths, the feather was considered the purest sorce of truth and therefore was the object the heart was weighed against. If the heart was lighter the soul would be escorted to Asar for final judgment and normally was then sent to "Paradise". If the heart was equal to the feather Anubis would make a judgment call--seeing as he was the Surpreme Judge--as to where the soul would go: to Asar or to the Dogs of Hell. The Dogs of Hell is said to have been the final destination for sinning souls and souls whose hearts were heaver than the feather. Some don't believe in the Dogs, however they were the demons today's Christians believe in. The Dogs were said to consume their victims and vomit them back up, somewhat like Amanthras, and this process was said to last for eternity.

What are the redeemable qualities? What good would you have to do to be reincarnated?

Reincarnation is a modern Pagan introduction to Kemetic religion- there is little to no evidence for a belief in reincarnation from ancient Egypt. The best we can get is to say that it wasn't specifically said that it couldn't happen, and every now and then we get something which is ambiguous enough that we may be able to find a loophole for it. But an actual ancient Egyptian doctrine of reincarnation is unlikely. Sorry! 3nodding