Maat is the God of Truth and Justice, the wife of Thoth, and fifth child of Ra.

Appearance

Maat has brown skin and dark eyes, with dark green or gray marks around her eyes.^[1][2][3] She typically wears a long black sheath dress with a wide opening over her chest. Around her waist is a thin golden belt with a blue gem in the center.^[1] She wears a three-layered golden usekh or wesekh with a line of pale orange in the middle. She wears a double-layer armband with a line of black and a line of gold on each lower arm. Her lower lip is painted gold, and her eyelids are dark green. She wears a thin black circlet with a large black dot in the center of her forehead. She has long black hair, and typically wears her tall white ostrich feather of truth tied at the back, over/with a long black ribbon. Her nails are painted black. She wears a golden cuff on each wrist. She has a black tattoo marking along each of her middle fingers overtop her hands, down the center, in the shape of diamonds.^[4] Sometimes she wears a translucent cape on her back, attached to the front of her dress and falling around her arms.

Personality

Maat is often stern and focused, and often stands up to other powerful gods, like Ra and Seth.^[5] Ra considers her a stickler for the rules.

She is very physically affectionate towards Thoth.

Life

Thoth courts Maat, and even gets practice with Nut to help his efforts. Maat removes his heart to question him about it. But eventually, they marry.^[6]

After hundreds of years of Seth's rule, Maat joins Thoth, Isis, Horus, Nut, Geb, and Anubis in confronting Seth over the throne in Heliopolis.^[1] Maat declares that Seth seized the throne by murdering Osiris, making his position unjustly gained, and that the stability of the Ennead has collapsed and the natural order of death has been disturbed. She presents a list of his crimes, and orders him to stand trial before the court of the Ennead. Thoth notes that Maat won't take sides until the trial is decided.^[6]

Maat calls the court to session.^[4] After Seth grows too unruly, she lectures him for being so disrespectful to the court. After Osiris appears and offers to testify, Maat welcomes him, noting the gods welcome his testimony.^[2]

With Osiris' heart on the scale, he claims Horus as his son, and that he was resurrected in the Nile.^[5] Ra insists that Osiris talk about what happened the night Osiris was killed. When Ra continues to ask Osiris questions, and Isis insists that answering such things would be distressing for Osiris, Maat tells Ra to stop to stop interrogating a witness for her own amusement.

When Seth grows more unruly and uses his abilities to become a giant made out of sand, and states that he will judge all the gods, Horus proposes besting Seth in combat for the throne.^[7] Maat becomes furious and upset about the disrespect to the law of the gods. Osiris appears at her side and asks if she has the ability to control Seth, which Maat appears to lack. Osiris suggests she allow Horus to deal with the trial. After a time, Maat transports herself, Seth, and Horus to a seemingly other realm, where Seth and Horus appear in the baskets of a giant set of Maat's scales. Maat decrees that they will have a trial against each other, where the best of three matches wins, with the matches picked at random by the Ennead. The winner will be acknowledged as the rightful king of Egypt, and no one will object to his sovereignty.^[7][3]

At the first match, Maat draws the event from a vase: underwater breath-holding.^[3] When Seth defeats Horus, Maat reluctantly declares him the victor of the first match.^[8]

At the second match, Maat draws the event from a vase again: stone boat racing.^[9]

Skills

Maat has the ability to remove the abilities of other gods.

Maat's scales, when her ostrich feather and the heart of a person are on them, can discover if the heart's owner is telling the truth.

As a goddess, Maat should have the ability to give birth to gods.

Maat notes that her jurisdiction is limited: since "Duat is where the souls of the judged go", she does "not have the right to judge Osiris who is the ruler of Duat."^[10]

Relationships

"Foreign God"/"FG"

Maat seemingly has a low opinion of Foreign God, and will do the bare minimum needed to get him to leave Egypt.

Horus

Isis

Osiris

Ra

Ra calls her a 'stickler' for the rules.

Thoth

Maat and Thoth are very close, and love each other. Thoth notes that he can't live without her.^[6]

Quotations

Trivia

• Maat appears as a giant statue in Heliopolis, and in some of the wall art.^[4]
• Maat's rulings often have flexibility in them. For instance, during the first match, the contest was who could hold their breath the longest, but there were no rules against Seth and Horus fighting each other, which is how Seth triumphs.^[11] The second match also doesn't stop the pair from fighting each other while racing. Nor does it stop Horus from using a wooden boat made to look like stone, so long as Maat doesn't discover the truth.
• It's possible that Maat and Thoth's potential daughter, Seshat, is in ENNEAD, given the appearance of one character with Seshat's seven-pointed emblem crown in a few panels.^[12]

Mythology

"Although she was often personified, Maat (Ma’at) is perhaps best understood as an idea, rather than a goddess, but she was central to conceptions of the universe, balance, and divine order in Ancient Egypt.

The name Ma’at is generally translated as “that which is straight” or “truth” but also implies “order”, “balance” and “justice”. Thus Ma’at personified perfect order and harmony. She came into being when Ra rose from the waters of Nun (Chaos) and so she was often described as a daughter of Ra. She was sometimes considered to be the wife of Thoth because he was a god of wisdom. The ancient Egyptians believed that the universe was ordered and rational. The rising and setting of the sun, the flooding of the Nile, and the predicable course of the stars in the sky reassured them that there was permanence to existence which was central to the nature of all things. However, the forces of chaos were always present and threatened the balance of Maat. Each person was duty bound to preserve and defend Maat and the Pharaoh was perceived as the guardian of Maat. Without Ma’at, Nun would reclaim the universe and chaos would reign supreme.

. . . Maat transcended specific ethical rules (which differed according to different times and different peoples) and instead focused on the natural order of things. That being said, certain actions were clearly against Maat as they increased the effect of chaos and had a purely negative effect on the world.

Each Egyptian’s soul was judged in the Hall of Maat (depicted in the book of the dead and book five of the book of gates) when they died. Their heart (conscience) was weighed against the feather of Ma’at (an ostrich feather) on scales which represented balance and justice. If their heart was heavier than the feather because they had failed to live a balanced life by the principles of Ma’at their heart was either thrown into a lake of fire or devoured by a fearsome deity known as Ammit. If, however, the heart balanced with the feather of Ma’at they would pass the test and gain eternal life. At certain times it was Osiris who sat as judge in the ritual, and many other deities were involved in the ceremony, but the scales always represented Maat."^[13]

"Seshat (Sesha, Sesheta or Safekh-Aubi) was a goddess of reading, writing, arithmetic, and architecture who was seen as either the female aspect of Thoth, his daughter, or his wife."^[14]

References