Maat The goddess of justice and laws |The Egyptian Gods – the symbol of the order of the universe, the king and society in the civilization of ancient Egypt, and what are the 42 laws of Maat followed by the dead during his trial in the nether world, the court of the dead of the Pharaohs, which pharaonic legends were associated with it and more about the Pharaonic civilization.
What does the word Maat mean in the Pharaonic civilization?
To the Pharaohs, the word Maat means truth or justice, which governs the order of the universe, as it was drawn on the walls of Egyptian Tombs and Egyptian Temples with a deity carrying a feather on her head.
The role of the ruling king was to preserve the laws of Maat on earth and implement them among the common people, as the king was the representative of the God Horus on earth.
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Maat The goddess of justice
Maat is the symbol of justice and the first laws in ancient Egypt, and it simply means the balance that includes the universe, earth, man and society, it is synonymous with justice, honesty and integrity, but it is not used as an alternative, it means harmony, balance and stability in the system, it is the opposite of chaos in anything.
The pharaohs depicted her as a goddess with an ostrich feather on her head (the feather here was the symbol of justice and was placed in the balance of justice after death, which in the hand of Osiris and placed before her the heart of the dead, indicating that her conscience knows the evil things of goodness).
The goddess Maat held the key of life (Ankh) in one hand and held the scepter in the middle of it as a sign of balance.
It was attributed control of the seasons and the movement of planets and stars, and the name of Egypt in the past was (the land of the Nile and prosperity).
Facts about Maat The goddess of justice:
- Maat organized the movement of the stars and the actions of humans on Earth.
- It eliminated the chaos, violence and injustice caused by human beings.
- The organization of justice between the gods themselves.
When did she appear?
The cult of Maat emerged with the unification of the northern and southern regions at the beginning of the ancient era of the state, and this was considered the beginning of balance, justice, the emergence of the state and justice and was the symbol of it.
Maat was envied for being the daughter of Ra and a woman who had left (sun and moon) and that she followed her father in the solar boat when they sailed from noon the first time. This is the light that Ra brought to the world, where the world was created by putting it in the place of cosmic matter before creation.
Maat is the symbol of Egyptian civilization, if you will, because it represents all aspects of this civilization and is in a state of creativity and balance and based on justice and law, the judiciary was considered (priests of Maat).
It was natural not to have a particular temple because she is harmony that is spread in everything and she is “the most important pillar of moral perfection in a world of sin, and so one of the pharaohs talked about her (this is my bread and I drink from her peers), this is affirmed by the general public that they need more common support and helped that they need the rest of the gods. after death to be influenced by her through pharaohs, priests and laws on earth, all judges were her priests.
The 42 laws of Maat The goddess of justice:
There are 42 laws that the deceased reads defending himself during his trial in the nether world and he must be honest to survive the torment, and they refer to the deep moral controls in the Egyptian religion and the whole of social life, and these laws, we can call them the negative confession because they begin with I did not …, which is as follows in the papyrus of Ani:
- I didn’t kill, I didn’t incite anyone to kill.
- I did not commit adultery or rape.
- I didn’t take revenge on myself, and I wasn’t angry for revenge.
- I did not cause terrorism.
- I did not assault anyone, and I did not cause pain to anyone.
- I did not cause misery.
- I didn’t do any harm to a human or animals.
- I didn’t shed tears (from others).
- I have neither oppressed the people nor acted with the intention of evil.
- I didn’t steal or take those things that don’t belong to me.
- I didn’t get more food from my country than my fair share.
- I did not damage crops, fields, or trees.
- I did not deprive anyone of what was due to him.
- I have never made a false witness;
- I didn’t lie, and I didn’t make a mistake to hurt anyone else.
- I did not use enthusiastic words to provoke conflict.
- I did not speak or act in a deceptive way to hurt the other.
- I did not speak with contempt against others.
- . I have never spied on anyone.
- I did not ignore the truth or the right words.
- I did not judge anyone in haste or cruelty.
- I did not violate the holy places.
- I did not make a mistake to a worker or a prisoner.
- I wasn’t angry for no good reason.
- I did not block the flow of running water.
- I didn’t waste the current pain.
- I didn’t pollute the water or the land.
- I did not betray God’s name in vain.
- I have never despised or irritated the gods.
- I did not steal from God.
- I didn’t give too many gifts, no less than what was due.
- I did not violate the rights of neighbours.
- I didn’t steal from the dead; I didn’t disdain them.
- I remembered and noticed what was referred to in the holy days.
- I did not retain the offerings to the gods.
- I did not interfere in the sacred rites.
- I have not slaughtered with the intention of evil any sacred animal.
- I did not act cunningly or rudely.
- I was not unduly proud and did not act arrogantly.
- I didn’t enlarge it and I went beyond what was right.
- I have not neglected my daily obligations.
- I obeyed the law and did not commit treason.
The religious moral order came from Maat’s teachings and her constant presence in the balance of the moral world, and Thot played the other role, as well as those warnings that the sages say and say (the Book of the Dead) warning of demons and evil spirits.
The texts also did well to depict injustice, its effectiveness, justice, and those who realize it in an image loving the soul and the heart, and in multiple analogies, the old Egyptian man had the virtue of preceding it.
As examples that compared integrity and justice to balance, this is the first mention of the use of these words for such meanings and their taking of parts of balance and their comparison with parts of the human body such as the lips and heart (mind and consciousness) as a basis for the investigation of honesty and adherence to justice, which was used and expressed by the celestial religions later, while demonstrating the maturity of the ancient Egyptian man’s thought and consciousness in terms of access to those important moral and behavioral values in his life and expression.
The order and justice of the universe, the king and society
The ancient Egyptians called the word “ma’a” about the essence of order and justice for the universe, the king, society, and the individual, and summed up the deep spiritual philosophy of morality, values, justice, and idealism.
We learn the king as well as any profession. This is the hard lesson of revolutions. This shows that the best way to establish order is to adhere to the universal norm established by the Creator himself: the Maat norm, an expression that we translate as “justice” or “truth”, for lack of a better translation.
But its meaning is more complete: thanks to it, the world fulfills its functions, because it keeps everything in place, from the forces of nature to the rituals that human beings must erect for the gods. The essence of the king’s duties, if he really wants to maintain balance, is to look for people to work under them and to enforce them.
Do justice and it will last on earth.
Calm those who sob.
Invincible widow
Do not throw a human being out of his father’s property.
Do not hurt the grown-ups in their property.
Avoid being punished falsely.
She didn’t love anybody, but she was loved:
While Maat was incarnated in the gods of honesty and justice (Maat), she is far from being treated as a female goddess, daughter of a shepherd and wife of Thot, she is the basis of Egyptian civilization and the hidden and deep dimension of Egyptian civilization.
According to Jean-Luclan, Maat has long emerged as the basic concept of Egyptian thought, and modern scholars have considered it a synonym (of truth and justice), and modernists have put it in a purely cosmic perspective.
According to their opinion, the pharaonic world is based on the exchange of commonalities between the gods on the one hand and the pharaohs on the other hand as the greatest mediator in the chaos of the disorder of the cosmic elements, the common comes to restore the norms in all systems of creation, where the poles of the universe and the encounter were associated with similar constants.
Temples erected for Maat The goddess of justice
- King Amenhotep III built a special temple for The Magnificent in the Karnak complex in Luxor.
- Temples were built in Memphis and Deir El Medina.
- Courts used the Maat temple in the Karnak complex to punish Pharaonic Tombs robbers during the reign of King Ramses IX.
The concept of civilization for the ancient Egyptians
(De Tawath, Maat and Osiris to the sages of ancient Egypt)
There was no detailed idea of civilization (as a term and meaning) among the ancient Egyptians, but we find that the most important manifestations of this idea are embodied in two complete and overlapping systems founded by the God of civilization and sophistication (Thot) and the goddess of justice, of wisdom and balance (Maat), and in the coherence of these two systems, a function that kings embodied in maintaining this spiritual and material balance in a striking way.
It adheres to the balance of the visible and absent universe and emits and preserves the law of balance, but it embodies this balance with written texts, general principles and manifestations of civilization that come from the essence of Maat.
While the manifestations of civilization in ancient Egypt (Thot) were embodied by politics, society, economy, science, literature, religion and the arts in their vast form and through their individual and collective flags, the ancient sages of Egypt, most of whom we have mentioned, embodied the essence of this civilization (Maat) and gave the moral aspect, which is important to any major civilization, its true meaning and, by its wisdom, formed that balance of anxiety that God wanted to preserve and maintain in this moment of balance.
The law of the old Egyptian woman:
The important and exceptional status of women in ancient Egyptian society had nothing to do with the societies of the first ancient civilizations, and even advanced civilizations such as the Greek civilization. The Maat social law stipulated that those who despised or enslaved women opposed the age of society and nature.
Therefore, women have become heirs to the throne and whoever chooses them as husband becomes the ruler or pharaoh, so that they preserve the royal blood from being lost and make it continue through time in strong compact strains of kings and queens, through which the throne is inherited and it owns houses, of land and real estate, has a diploma at the court, has exercised most of the professions of men and has acquired the highest positions and professions.
The moral order embodied in the teachings of The Goddess of Justice gave Egyptian life a kind of social balance that the regime contributed to its moral rigor and was pushed by the Egyptian sages. The Egyptians knew consciousness through the heart, and therefore weighed the hearts of the dead in the world of the afterlife and placed against it a feather (Maat) that is, justice and morality, all of which are symbolic signs of the interdependence of morality with consciousness, heart and cosmic order.
Author & Writer Maat The goddess of justice: Tamer Ahmed Abd elfatah Yousif
References Maat The goddess of justice: The Book of Egyptian Civilization
