What is Ma’at in ancient Egypt?

Ma’at was the ancient Egyptian idea of truth, justice, balance and the right order of the world, and the goddess who embodied it. Kings ruled to uphold Ma’at against chaos, and every person was expected to live by it. The goddess is shown as a woman with an ostrich feather on her head. In the Book of the Dead, a person’s heart is weighed against her feather at the judgment after death, and the dead speak 42 declarations of innocence, now often called the 42 Laws of Ma’at.

What Ma’at meant in Egypt: Ma’at was the order set in place when the world was made, seen in the sunrise, the Nile’s yearly flood and fair dealing between people. Its opposite was isfet: disorder, lies and violence. The king’s first duty was to keep Ma’at.
The goddess and her feather: As a goddess, Ma’at was called the daughter of the sun god Ra. Her ostrich feather alone can write her name, and temple walls show kings offering the gods a small seated figure of her, a sign that order was kept.
The weighing of the heart: In the judgment scene of the Book of the Dead, the heart of the dead person is set on a pair of scales against the feather of Ma’at. Anubis checks the balance, Thoth writes down the result, and Ammit, the Devourer, waits to swallow a heart weighed down by wrongdoing. Those whose heart balances are called “true of voice” and go on to Osiris.
The 42 declarations: In spell 125 (chapter 125 in older books), in the Hall of the Two Truths, the dead address 42 judges one by one, with declarations such as “I have not uttered falsehood” and “I have not committed theft”, in E. A. Wallis Budge’s translation. These are declarations of innocence, not a law code: the name 42 Laws of Ma’at is modern, and so are the positive rewordings found online.
How Gerald Massey read Ma’at in 1907: Massey writes Ma’at, Maati and Mati, and calls the Hall of the Two Truths the hall of Mati. He reads the one word as law, truth, justice and right together: in the scales of Maati, what counts is the life and character of the dead. He places the hall of judgment in the sky, at the equinox, where day and night are balanced. And he argues that later traditions drew on it: the tablets of the law given to Moses repeat the tablets in the hall of Mati, Mati is the original of the Greek Themis, and the sayings behind the gospel of Matthew were sayings of Mati.
What scholars say now: Massey’s core account is close to today’s: Egyptologists also describe Ma’at as one idea joining truth, justice and the order of the world. His further claims are not accepted. Egyptologists do not read the judgment hall as a picture of the equinox. The declarations and the Ten Commandments are often compared as similar in theme, but scholars do not hold that one was copied from the other, and his links to Themis and to Matthew are not accepted.
In Massey’s words: “The religion of Egypt was based on maat, that is, on law, or more abstractly on truth and justice.” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book X, p. 679)
In the app: Today › 42 Days of Ma’at. In the app, 42 Days of Ma’at gives one declaration a day in E. A. Wallis Budge’s translation, with what it can mean in a life now, a question to carry and an intention.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

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