Maat Goddess and The Blinding of Truth

The Blinding of Truth
Maat’s abstract nature did not lead easily to detailed stories in which she had, as did other gods, a role suggestive of human behavior. Her philosophical bearing had to be loftier than the common behavior of most gods. As a result she is often mentioned in myths, but she was not assigned major stories in which she was the central character. The lone exception proves the point. In the morality story of the conflict between Truth and Falsehood, the abstract qualities of Maat are prominent, but the character depicting them is male, not female. That a myth might use the other sex to depict Maat serves to demonstrate the abstract level at which the concept and the goddess were considered. The text, from about 1200 B.C., is badly damaged, but the story line is reasonably clear.

A section of the Egyptian Book of the Dead written on papyrus showing the "Weighing of the Heart" in the Duat using the feather of Maat as the measure in balance

One day many years ago Truth borrowed a valuable knife from his brother, Falsehood, but as accidents will happen, he lost it. He explained the mishap to his brother and offered to replace it with another of equal quality. Falsehood had always been jealous of his brother and saw this as an opportunity to revenge years of imagined injuries. He refused the replacement and praised the missing knife: “Its blade came from the copper of the Mountain of El, is handle from the woods of Koptos, its scabbard from the tomb o the god, and its belt from the herds of Kal.” Sensing he had the advantage, Falsehood pressed his claim before a court of nine gods. Truth had no choice but to confess he had lost the knife, and the court found in Falsehood’s favor. For punishment, he insisted that Truth’s eyes be blinded and that Truth be assigned to remain at falsehood’s door.

So they lived for many days, but Truth’s presence was a reminder to Falsehood of his own guilt. One day he called Truth’s two menservants aside and told them: “Abduct your lord and take him into the desert and cast him to the fierce lion that has many dangerous lionesses as mates, and they will devour him.” The two men took their master and escorted him out of town, but on the way he pleaded with them, “Don’t leave me to the lions in the desert. Give me bread and leave me in the hills where I may be found and cared for.” Out of loyalty, the men did as he asked and returned to Falsehood to say that his orders had been carried out exactly and his brother was no more.

Truth wandered in the hills for several days, but one morning a woman, traveling away from home, passed him and was fascinated by his beauty, surpassing that of any man she had ever known. On returning home she sent her servant to bring the handsome man to her house to serve as doorkeeper. Once cleaned up, his beauty overpowered her and that evening she summoned him to her chambers. They spent hours together in her bed and that night she became pregnant.

In due course she delivered a healthy son, who grew to be like no other boy in the land. In physical form he was more like a god than a mortal, and in scholarship he far excelled his schoolmates. Out of jealousy, however, they mocked him: “Whose son are you? You don’t have a father.”

So the boy went to his mother and asked about his father. She answered, “Do you see the blind doorkeeper? He is your father.” Full of compassion, the boy took the man into his own chambers and sat him in a chair and placed a footstool under his feet. He brought food and drink and then begged the man to tell his story.en the boy heard how Falsehood had unfairly treated Truth and had him blinded without cause, he was scarcely able to contain his anger.


The boy set out to avenge his father’s treatment. He took a wondererfully large ox of beautiful appearance, ten loaves of bread, a staff, and a sword. He traveled with his ox to Falsehood’s land and approached Falsehood’s herdsman. “I have traveled far and have far to go. Would you watch over my ox for me while 1 g0 t0 town?” When the herdsman asked what his pay would be, the boy gave him the bread, staff, and sword, and then disappeared.

Months went by, and one day Falsehood visited his fields. When he saw the magnificent ox, he told the herdsmen to prepare it for Falsehood’s table. The man objected and told his master that the ox was not his to kill. Falsehood replied, “See, all the rest of my cattle are for you to use. Give one of them to the owner.” So it was done as he commanded.

As soon as the boy heard, he came and demanded, “Where is my ox? I can’t see it among your herd.” The herdsmen told him he could take any of Falsehood’s cattle as replacement, but the trap was sprung. He, of course, refused and demanded that Falsehood be tried before the same court of gods that had sentenced his father. In front of the court the boy claimed that there was no ox as wonderful as his “Is there any ox as large as mine? If it should stand on the Island of Amun, the tip of its tail would lie upon the Papyrus Marshes, while its horns would stretch between the Eastern and Western Mountains, the Great River would be its spot for a bath, and it would give birth to sixty calves every day.”

The court heard the testimony and accused the boy: “What you say is false. We have never seen so large an ox.”

Then the boy had his victim. He asked the court, “Is there a knife with a copper blade from the mountain of El, wooden handle from Koptos, scabbard from the god’s tomb, and belt from the herds of Kal?” The boy accused Falsehood, “Judge between Truth and Falsehood. I am Truth’s son and have come to avenge his wrong.”

Falsehood was quick to deny wronging his brother: “By Amun and by the king, if Truth be found alive, I should be blinded U* both eyes and set as doorkeeper at his house.”

The boy immediately produced his father and the court saw truth in what he said. Falsehood was sentenced to the most severe punishment, given one hundred blows and five open wounds, blinded in both eyes, and set as doorman at Truth’s house.

And so the boy avenged his father and Truth triumphed over Falsehood.

Many of the vignettes in the Book of the Dead show Maat’s important role during the trial of the dead, but there are other places that still today contain depictions of her. From Abu Simbel to the Valley of the Kings, she can be found in wall paintings and carvings; she is easily identified by the feather, usually on her head but sometimes held in her hand. She may also be found in the Egyptian Museum in numerous forms and depictions.

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Thoth God and Maat Goddess

Thoth and Maat
Even though they were not related in a family or triad, Thoth and Maat were often considered jointly, and together they provide us with valuable insights into Egyptian mythology. Both represented qualities of the intellect (wisdom and truth), but there were major differences in the ways the two were though of. Maat-truth and justice was not nearly as well developed myth-logically (that is, as a character in stories) as was Thoth wisdom.

Thoth and Maat

The former, a feminine personification, was ethereal and abstract whereas the latter was depicted in concrete and specific images. The view of Maat was philosophical and theoretical while the concept of Thoth was personal and practical. The contrasts, however, should not be taken too far: Thoth, however personal and visual his representation, did represent an important intellectual concept, and Maat, however abstract her qualities, was depicted as a concrete figure who was at times involved in the myths of other gods. Both god and goddess represented human and divine qualities necessary for a satisfactory life and for passage through the underworld. They were placed as a pair in the solar boat to set its course, providing guidance for Ra and his companions during their passage through the sky.

Even though they had important roles in the mythologies of Memphis, Heliopolis, and Thebes, Thoth and Maat were not normally made close “blood” relatives of the divine families in those cities. When the priests there created family trees for their gods, these two were placed out on a limb. They did, though, important supporting roles in the stories evolved at the major c centers. Thoth, in particular, figured in many myths from the Delta to the far south and was called at one time “the mightiest of the gods,” for reasons that we shall see. His own cult center, Hermopolis, was not dominant politically and this may explain why its mythology remained local and why Thoth never became chief god of all Egypt.

In stories from around Egypt, we have uncovered numerous versions of the creation of the world and of the gods and humans who populate it, but one of the most unusual and interesting came from the unlikely village of Hermopolis, a town of no political importance. Thoth’s cult center was in this small town in Middle Egypt near the present city of Minia. Priests there espoused a mythology at an early date, and evidence of its influence can be found in the Pyramid Texts. No surviving document or monument sets it out as a system; most references to Hermopolis occur in documents late enough to show influence from the more politically important religious centers. The outline of the original Hermopolitan mythology, nevertheless, can be discovered, and is now thought to be a mythical explanation of the ebbing of the Nile flood, which left behind it mounds of earth teeming with life.

While other versions of the creation tended to tell stories of distinct events involving gods with distinct characters, the view of creation at Hermopolis was more abstract, though not entirely so. This mythology described the work of four elements that arose from the chaos and gave shape to it. The elements were given names, but not the elaborate personalities of Ra, Ptah, and Atum, the major gods in other creation myths. Even the characteristics that the elements represented were abstract.

An early papyrus has preserved the celebration by an ancient Poet of the first stages in this creation myth:

Salutations to you, you Five Great Gods,
Who come out of the City of Eight?
You who are not yet in heaven,
You who are not yet upon earth,
You who are not yet illuminated by the sun.

The poem tells how, on the Island of Flame, the primeval hill similar to one on which Ra arose, the four gods came into being at the same time; they were seen as some sort of force that existed between heaven and earth. At first there were four male elements and an unnamed leader (the “Five Great Gods”), but once Thoth developed a national role, he was thought of as leader and this became his creation story. Each element brought with him his female component, giving the total of eight elements. The group included Nun, the god of the primeval ocean already seen in the mythology of Heliopolis, and his consort Nunet; Heh, the god of the immeasurable, who with his consort, Heket, was responsible for raising the sun; Kek, the god of darkness, and his consort, Keket, gave the world the darkness of night so that the sun would have a place to shine; and Amun, the god of mystery, the hidden, and nothingness, who with his consort, Amunet, brought the air that breathed life into everything.

The four males were depicted as frogs and the females as serpents swimming around in the mud and slime of chaos, the primeval nothingness from which everything sprang. The Pyramid Texts said that “the Waters spoke to Infinity, Nothingness, Nowhere, and Darkness”-meaning that Nun spoke to his four male companions, and the creation began. Eventually the eight elements came together and out of their union came the primeval egg that could not be seen because it existed before there was light. Out of the egg came the light of the sun, which the eight raised up into the sky.

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Maat Goddess of Truth and Justice

Maat Egyptian Goddess Facts
Maat was perhaps the least mythological of the Egyptian gods because she was the visual form given to a philosophical concept. Her physical form was a woman carrying the ankh and scepter, and she was most readily identified by the feather she wore on her head. No one knows for sure the origin of her association with the feather, usually described as an ostrich feather, but somehow the ethereal qualities of the feather seem well suited to a goddess of her characteristics. It has been suggested that the feather became her symbol because it is equally balanced along each side of the quill, suggesting the fine judgment required of a goddess who sat to judge truth in the trial of the dead.

Maat Egyptian Goddess

The philosophical quality that the goddess represented was also known as Maat and our loose translation is “truth,” but no single word will suffice to explain all that was indicated by the concept. Maat was the key to the Egyptian view of ethical behavior for humans while alive and of divine behavior in the judging of souls after death. As Siegfried Morenz has further explained: “Maat is right order in nature and society, as established by the act of creation, and hence means, according to the context, what is right, what is correct, law, order, justice, and truth. Maat was a guide to the correct attitude one should take to others.

In its simplest form, Maat was represented as an early hieroglyphic made up of intersecting straight lines, which stood for the king’s throne, suggesting that his decisions rested on Maat.

The name probably translated originally as “that which is straight.” The nineteenth-century American romantic Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay “Nature” that one of the uses of nature is to provide metaphors for moral behavior. This is just what seems to have happened with Maat. Straightness, which is a physical, geometric term, was perceived as symbolic of moral rectitude and then made visible in the hieroglyphic symbol used to indicate the concept. Straightness implies order, and the presence of Maat stamped order on chaos at the moment of creation.

As Morenz suggested, when looking at ancient religions, one is always justified in asking whether belief in the gods carried implications for human moral and ethical behavior. In Egyptian religion and politics the answer for the concept of Maat was clearly yes; Maat reflected an attitude that order in law was influenced by truth and justice, and that respect for order, truth, and justice was required of those in positions of authority. In later periods, Egyptian judges hearing a case were expected to carry the feather as a sign of their dedication to the eternal principles of the concept. An ancient text proclaims of Maat: “Its good and its worth was to be lasting. It has not been disturbed since the day of its creation, whereas he who transgresses its ordinances is punished. Maat, then, represented, as E. A. Wallis Budge wrote, “the highest conception of physical and moral law and order known to the Egyptians.”

It was to embody this concept that the goddess Maat was conceived. She was the personification of truth and justice, but she was given only minimal human characteristics. She was more o^ a metaphor for this important quality than a “flesh and blood figure, as most other gods were. Her mythology says that she was supposed to have been the daughter of Ra and to have risen with him from the primeval waters at the moment of creation.

In other words, the moral concepts Maat represented were as primordial as Ra and the waters from which he created himself; and throughout Egyptian mythology her father was associated with her in order to explain his fairness. In the Coffin Texts there was a brief, curious myth that brought the two together. Ra was old and tired and asked Nun for advice. Nun told the chief god that he should bring Maat close to him and kiss her in order to gain renewed life and vitality. It was the Book of the Dead that said that Maat and Thoth stood beside Horus in Ra’s solar boat and set the course each day and that Ra “lives by Maat, the beautiful.” Budge thought this meant that Ra “lives by unchanging and eternal law and order.”

In her mythology Maat also played an important role in the underworld. During the trial of the deceased soul, Maat was Ways Present. In some drawings her feather sat on top of the ales to guarantee fairness, and the heart of the deceased was ways weighed on the balance against the feather. If the heart were found to balance perfectly with truth and justice-being neither too heavy nor too light for it the dead person was judged to

have passed the first test and to be nearing immortality. Then the deceased progressed to the Hall of Maat, or the Hall of Judgment in which he or she had to give forty-two denials of sin and identify the magical names of the various parts of the door. Maat supervised these activities and, if the deceased completed these tasks correctly, she certified that the soul was ready for admittance into the presence of Osiris for final acceptance.

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