Goodness – shawnomancy

This is the fourth in a series. The story so far:

Before we talk about the bad guys, let’s talk a bit about the force they oppose: ma’at¹.

Ma’at

An old catchphrase attributed to Superman is “truth, justice, and the American way.” Well, ma’at can be described very simply as “truth, justice, and the Egyptian way.” No, seriously: The word is sometimes translated “truth”, sometimes “justice”, and it can always be described as “the way the Egyptians believed things ought to be.”

There’s a goddess named Ma’at; she’s the personification of this concept, much like the blindfolded woman with a pair of scales represents Justice in Western symbolism.

In fact, if you’ve ever seen the picture of a dead person being judged in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, you’ve seen Anubis operating a pair of scales. One pan of the scales contains the dead person’s heart, and the other contains a feather. The feather represents ma’at.

Ma’at is a lot of things, though. It’s the way things are supposed to work.

People are supposed to follow laws. That’s ma’at.
But the rulers who make those laws, and the police who enforce them, are supposed to be benevolent to the people they govern. That’s also ma’at.
The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. That’s ma’at.
Importantly, that sunrise happens every day. That’s ma’at. Very very very bad if it didn’t.

In general, any example of “things are going like they should” is ma’at.

A different culture

But there’s a lot of cultural variation to this concept. There are things the Egyptians thought were just fine and proper which most people in Western civilization would not be thrilled about.

One example that gets mentioned a lot is incest among royalty. Brother-sister marriage in ancient Egypt isn’t extremely common among non-royal people², but with royalty it was a different story. (Isn’t it always?) It’s the whole notion of the royal family being special and separate – who else could possibly be worthy of marrying the king’s sister than the king himself?³

And the gods themselves, of course, set the example here. Shu and Tefnut, the children of Atum-Re, were brother and sister, and husband and wife. And their two children, Geb and Nut, did likewise; and their four children (two sons, and two daughters) likewise intermarried.

But the broadest strokes of Egyptian morality were like those of most civilized cultures in human history. Just looking at the Ten Commandments as an example many Westerners are familiar with, there’s a lot of overlap.⁴

So there you have it: ma’at. Truth, Justice, and the Egyptian Way. The Way Things Ought To Be. Next post, we’ll talk about the opposite, and give entropy an Egyptian name.

Notes

The way this is usually pronounced in English is rather like “ma ought”. Don’t get too hung up on how the Egyptians themselves pronounced it, but it’s likely that around King Tut’s time, it was pronounced “moo ahh” (yes, the “-t”, though still written in the hieroglyphs, was probably silent by then, like the “-e” in so many English words).
There’s a lot of debate among Egyptologists over the years as to how typical sibling marriage was among commoners. It’s pretty much indisputable that it happened, but the question is how often did it happen. For our purposes, it’s safe to say it wasn’t the norm but it probably wasn’t forbidden either. And again, it got more typical as you rose the social ladder. Even if you weren’t royalty, if you were a fairly rich man with a son and a daughter, you might want them to marry each other so all the family wealth would remain, well, in the family. You wouldn’t have to pay a dowry to some other family.
In medieval and early modern Europe, this problem was solved by marrying royalty from other countries, but the Egyptians frankly considered foreigners to be beneath them to a great degree. An Egyptian king or nobleman might well have a foreign concubine, or even wife, but the thought of allowing an Egyptian princess to go to an “inferior” country and allowing an “inferior” man to marry her was, for much of Egyptian history, intolerable.
If you’re curious about the likely Egyptian view of the Ten Commandments, see the table below. In my opinion, they would basically agree with seven of them.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me	Not really. Although the Egyptians often spoke of one of the gods being supreme, exactly which god was supreme varied by period and locality, and it was never the kind of jealous monotheism of the Abrahamic faiths.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image	No, no, no. The Egyptians loved their “graven images”. Even at its most monotheist (under Akhenaten), Ancient Egypt favored having images of the gods.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain	Pretty much yes. Although the Egyptians didn’t worship the god of the Hebrews, they considered blasphemy against their gods, or breaking oaths made in the name of their gods, to be very bad.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy	Not really. The Egyptians certainly had holy and festival days, but nothing so frequent and rest-focused as the Sabbath.
Honor thy father and thy mother	Yes. The Egyptians made clear that respect for one’s parents was a great virtue.
Thou shalt not kill (murder)	Yes. Murder was absolutely forbidden in Egypt (although as with the Hebrews, killing people in war, or the death penalty for crimes, was okay).
Thou shalt not commit adultery	Yes. There’s a lot of debate about how common polygamy was in ancient Egypt (outside of royalty, of course), and there’s a lot of debate about whether premarital sex was acceptable, it’s clear that the Egyptians did not want married women having sex with anyone but their husbands, and generally frowned upon married men having sex with anyone but their wives (again, for royalty, this was a bit more flexible …)
Thou shalt not steal	Yes. Very clear and very simple. Theft was forbidden.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor	Yes. Giving false testimony was forbidden. In fact lying in general was considered sinful.
Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor’s	Yes. As with most interpretations of Judaism, there’d be nothing wrong with saying “Wow, I wish I had a nice house like that guy has; I should see if I can work hard or get a better job or otherwise legally get one.” But desiring that specific house, or chariot, or any other possession, or spouse, to the point where it could cause hatred or inspire theft or murder … definitely a bad thing.