Ma'at: Ancient Egypt's Idea of Truth, Justice and Cosmic Order

In a famous scene painted on ancient Egyptian papyrus, a man's heart is placed on one side of a set of scales. On the other side lies a single ostrich feather. The jackal-headed god Anubis watches the balance, the ibis-headed god Thoth records the result, and a crocodile-headed monster waits nearby. If the heart is heavier than the feather — weighed down by wrongdoing — the monster devours it. If it balances, the man passes into eternal life. The feather represents ma'at, one of the most important ideas in the history of African thought.

What was ma'at?

Ma'at (often written maat) is hard to translate with a single word. It combined the ideas of:

• Truth — speaking and acting honestly.
• Justice — fairness in judgement and in how people are treated.
• Order — the right arrangement of the world, from the movement of the sun to the life of society.
• Balance and harmony — everything in its proper place.

For the ancient Egyptians, ma'at was the order of creation itself. At the beginning of time, the gods had established ma'at and pushed back isfet — chaos, violence and falsehood. But the order was not permanent. It had to be maintained, every day, by gods and humans alike.

The goddess Ma'at

Ma'at was also personified as a goddess, shown as a woman wearing an ostrich feather on her head. She was the daughter of the sun god Ra and was said to accompany him on his daily journey across the sky. Judges in ancient Egypt were sometimes described as "priests of Ma'at."

The king's duty

Maintaining ma'at was the most important duty of the pharaoh. Egyptian kings were often shown offering a small figure of Ma'at to the gods — a symbol that the king upheld the order of the world. A good ruler fed the people, built temples, defended the borders, and judged fairly. Disorder, famine and injustice were signs that ma'at was failing.

Ma'at in everyday life

Ma'at was not only for kings and priests. It guided ordinary behaviour. Ancient Egyptian "wisdom literature" — collections of advice from fathers to sons, such as the Instruction of Ptahhotep — urged readers to be honest, generous, humble, fair to the poor, and careful with their words. Living according to ma'at meant living in harmony with others and with the universe.

The judgement of the heart

Ma'at also shaped Egyptian ideas of the afterlife. Texts from the Book of the Dead describe the deceased entering the Hall of the Two Truths (or Two Ma'ats) and declaring before a panel of gods that they had not committed a long list of wrongs — sometimes called the "negative confession":

• I have not stolen.
• I have not killed.
• I have not lied.
• I have not caused anyone to go hungry.
• I have not taken milk from the mouths of children.

Then came the weighing of the heart against the feather of Ma'at.

An African idea

Ancient Egypt was an African civilisation, and its ideas belong to Africa's intellectual heritage. Egypt had long connections with its southern neighbour, the kingdom of Kush, whose rulers adopted many Egyptian religious ideas and even ruled Egypt as pharaohs. Some modern African and African-American thinkers have drawn on ma'at as an ethical model, and scholars continue to debate how Egyptian ideas related to those of other African societies.

Why it matters

Ma'at is one of humanity's oldest attempts to say that justice is not just a human rule but part of the structure of the universe — and that every person, from the king to the farmer, is responsible for keeping the world in balance. Its central image is unforgettable: a human heart on the scales, weighed against a feather.

Further reading

• Jan Assmann, The Mind of Egypt (Metropolitan Books, 2002)
• Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. I (University of California Press, 1973)
• British Museum — The Book of the Dead and the judgement of the dead