Mystical systems
Ma'at
Direct answer
Ma'at is both a goddess and an idea in ancient Egypt: truth, justice and the right order of things, pictured as a woman with an ostrich feather on her head.
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At a glance
- Also called
- Maat, feather of Maat, Egyptian goddess of truth
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Duat, Osiris, Last Judgment
Ma'at is both a goddess and an idea in ancient Egypt: truth, justice and the right order of things, pictured as a woman with an ostrich feather on her head.
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What does Ma'at mean?
Ma'at is the Egyptian word for the way things ought to be: truth in speech, fairness in judgement, and the steady order of the seasons, the river and the state. Its opposite is isfet, falsehood and disorder. The same word names a goddess, a daughter of the Sun god Ra, shown with a single ostrich feather.
Keeping ma'at was the first duty of a king, and temple walls show pharaohs offering a small figure of the goddess to the gods. For everyone else it was the measure applied at death: in the Hall of Two Truths the heart is set on a scale against her feather, and only a heart no heavier than the feather goes on.
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What sets Ma'at apart
Ma'at is unusual in being at once a goddess, a law of nature and a standard of conduct, with no line drawn between them: the flood coming on time and a judge refusing a bribe are the same order holding. She has almost no myths of her own. Her presence is in ritual, where the king offers her image to the gods each day, and at the scale, where her feather is the fixed weight against which a heart is tried.
- Emblem: a single ostrich feather, worn on the head or set on the scale
- Opposite: isfet: falsehood, injustice and things out of joint
- Parentage: daughter of the Sun god Ra
- At the judgement: Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead: forty-two denials before forty-two assessors
- Royal duty: the king presents a figure of her to the gods in temple reliefs
The story behind Ma'at
The idea is present in the Pyramid Texts of the third millennium BCE and runs through Egyptian wisdom writings such as the Instruction of Ptahhotep. Judges were called priests of Ma'at. The Book of the Dead, from about 1550 BCE, sets the scene of the scale and lists forty-two wrongs that the dead person declares they have not done, before forty-two assessors.
Why Ma'at matters
Ma'at shows a people for whom being good and keeping the world in order were a single thing, and who judged a life by its weight, not its rank.
How to read Ma'at
Egyptologists leave the word untranslated, since no single English word covers truth, justice and order at once.
Ma'at in practice: an example
Reading the declaration of innocence, a reader stops at a line about not having made anyone weep, and asks whether they could say it.
Where readings of Ma'at go wrong
The feather is a picture for examining one's own conduct. It is not a verdict on anyone, living or dead.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- Maat, feather of Maat, Egyptian goddess of truth, maat meaning
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What does Ma'at mean?
It means truth, justice and right order together. It names both an Egyptian goddess and the principle she stands for, which gods, kings and ordinary people were all expected to uphold.
Why is the heart weighed against the feather of Ma'at?
The Egyptians held the heart to be the seat of thought and memory, so it carried the record of a life. Set against the feather of truth, it showed whether that life had kept to right order.
What are the forty-two laws of Ma'at?
The phrase is modern. The source is Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead, in which the dead person denies forty-two wrongs before forty-two assessors. The lists vary from one papyrus to another.
