Maat

NOTE: Please also refer to this update of this post, if you have the time. Thanks!

In previous blog posts, I've neglected to mention a critical part of the philosophy of the Old Kingdom - Maat.

There are two main different 'incarnations' of Maat:

1- Maat as a goddess in the Egyptian pantheon (see above picture)

2 - Maat as the Order of the universe

The first incarnation doesn't hold much special meaning to our discussion of oral knowledge, beyond being an extra deity among many. The second, however, is a clear philosophical aspect invented during the Old Kingdom, reflected in their recorded traditions.

Maat was basically the order side of the archetypal order/chaos struggle. It was often reflected in those traditions that were eventually recorded non-verbally (thus giving us access to them) - one of the earliest references to Maat is found in the Pyramid Texts of Unas. Here, Maat is used in the context of social and global order: The deceased Pharaoh is called the "Guardian of Maat" (Utterance 260, line 319), an important concept to their time. Maat was not only the divine force of Order, it was also the authority behind the Pharoah's decrees and kingship - as the Guardian of Maat, it was his job to maintain that order.

Maat was the idea of justice behind the law, but the Government decided on specific punishments and enforced them through the court system. Maat was more of a set of human ideals, of fairness to others and the maintaining of equality among people.Perhaps because of this concept of equality, women in ancient Egypt had virtually equal legal rights with the men (source).

Interestingly, this brings to mind another discussion we had in the comments of one of my earlier posts, where Jenna asked if the Pharaohs used their 'divine' status to influence the people. One site that I found suggests that this may have been the case - Maat, they believe, represented not only the grand Order of things, but also the societal order of the Kingdom - the keeping of things in the way they had always been, the maintaining of the current government, and so on.

this sounds ominously like a method of keeping the lower class people in line through their philosophy and religion, for if they disobeyed the decrees of the Pharaoh, they disobeyed not only his words but the very order of the universe.

So the Pharaoh was even more to be feared through this concept. And they made use of the idea, certainly, especially as recorded in some Pyramid texts, where certain phrases are seen that proclaim how the Pharaoh upheld justice among the people.

So, although Maat as a social and cosmic idea has many good aspects, and has been compared to aspects of Confucianism and Taoism, it may have also been twisted by the Pharaohs to make their decrees the will of the universe, while treating dissension from the normal way of things as a dangerous anomaly in the Ordered fabric of society and the world.

I've never though of Order as a dictatorial method, but perhaps it's possible. I'm interested to know if anyone else thinks this idea is plausible?

If you'd like to read more specifically about Maat and how the concept translated into realities, go here (I used this site as a source earlier as well).

This week's translation of "The old kingdom of Egypt" (found in the post labels) is brought to you by Germany.

COMING SOON - An update to this post, containing content from my interview with an actual Egyptologist. If all goes well, I'll just post that whenever I can, most likely within a couple days.