Maat
Egyptian deity
Maʽat or Maat (Egyptian: mꜣꜥt /ˈmuʀʕat/, Coptic: ⲙⲉⲓ) is the ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, law, morality, and justice. Maat was also the goddess who personified this concept and regulated the stars, seasons, and the actions of mortals and the deities who had brought order from chaos at the moment of creation. Her ideological opposite was Isfet (Egyptian jzft), meaning injustice, chaos, violence or to do evil.
Pronunciation
Cuneiform texts indicate that the word mꜣꜥt was pronounced /múʔʕa/ during the New Kingdom of Egypt, having lost the feminine ending t. Vowel assimilation of u to e later produced the Coptic word ⲙⲉⲉ/ⲙⲉ "truth, justice".
History
The earliest surviving records indicating that Maat was not the norm for nature and society, in this world and the next, were recorded during the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the earliest substantial surviving examples being found in the Pyramid Texts of Unas (c. 2375 BCE and 2345 BCE).
Later, when most goddesses were paired with a male aspect, her masculine counterpart was Thoth, as their attributes are similar. In other accounts, Thoth was paired off with Seshat, goddess of writing and measure, who is a lesser-known deity.
After her role in creation and continuously preventing the universe from returning to chaos, her primary role in ancient Egyptian religion dealt with the Weighing of the Heart that took place in the Duat. Her feather was the measure that determined whether the souls (considered to reside in the heart) of the departed would reach the paradise of the afterlife successfully.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Maat” is egyptian deity. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Maat, Egyptian and deity, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q170471. VIAF identifies the subject as 22941468. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Maat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.