Ma'at (mꜣꜥt, Cosmic Order)

Definition

Ma'at (Egyptian mꜣꜥt, transliterated maꜣt) is the Egyptian principle, and goddess, of cosmic order, truth, justice, and balance — the right arrangement of the world that the gods set in place at creation and that the king is bound to keep. In its calendrical and astronomical side, Ma'at is the order that timekeeping serves: watching the sky, running the festivals, keeping the civil year sound — each is a sacred act of upholding Ma'at. The goddess is shown as a woman wearing a single ostrich feather, the hieroglyph that writes her name.

In Tradition

Belmonte and Lull read Ma'at as the principle of cosmic order that makes Egyptian astronomy a religious duty rather than a secular science: keeping time and keeping the calendar are obligations the king owes to Ma'at. They cite the classical report that Egyptian kings swore at coronation never to tamper with the calendar, holding the year (rnpt) and cosmic order (mꜣꜥt) in agreement — and argue, against Parker, that a second, redundant lunar calendar would have offended Ma'at.

In Practice

Ma'at is the key that explains why Egyptian sky-watching cannot be cut loose from religion. The priest watching the decans, the keeper of the festival calendar, the architect aligning a temple all act to uphold Ma'at: a sky correctly observed and a calendar correctly kept are the cosmic order made visible. Belmonte and Lull use the coronation-oath tradition — the king bound never to disturb the civil calendar — as evidence in their reconstruction of Egyptian calendrics, reading the long Sothic drift of the 365-day civil year as a structure deliberately preserved rather than corrected, because changing it would offend Ma'at. The two goddesses Ma'at and Renpet (the year) appear together in a relief at the temple of Sethy I at Abydos, pairing cosmic order with the calendar year in a single image. Ma'at also governs the judgment of the dead, where the heart is weighed against her feather — tying calendrical order to moral order within one cosmology.

Historical Origin

Ma'at is attested across the whole of recorded Egyptian religion, from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts onward, both as deity and as abstract principle. The Sethy I relief at Abydos pairing Ma'at and Renpet is a 19th-Dynasty New Kingdom primary attestation. The coronation calendar-oath tradition is reported by the 1st-century-BCE Roman grammarian Nigidius Figulus. Modern treatment: Belmonte and Lull, Astronomy of Ancient Egypt (2018); the concept is also standard in general works such as Wilkinson's Complete Gods and Goddesses.

Etymology

Origin: Egyptian. Meaning: mꜣꜥt — "that which is straight / right / true"; cosmic order, truth, justice.

Further Reading

• Juan Antonio Belmonte & José Lull, Astronomy of Ancient Egypt
• Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt