Maat: right order in a religious setting

Maat in two Egyptian objects

The museum descriptions used here explain the Egyptian term maat through the ideas of order, truth and justice. On a large kneeling statue of Hatshepsut, an inscription presents her as offering maat to the god Amun. The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates the statue to about 1473–1458 BCE and uses those ideas to explain the offering. In this setting, right order belongs to a relationship between a ruler and a god. [1]

A much later object, dated 664–30 BCE, may depict the goddess Maat. The museum associates her with the order of the cosmos, the ordered world, and with offerings to other gods. The question mark in its title, “Maat?”, matters: the identification is uncertain. [2]

What these objects do not establish

Both objects are later than the composition dates proposed in our reading of the Teaching of Ptahhotep, and they come from different periods and served different purposes. They cannot settle the teaching’s date, and they cannot tell us what every Egyptian believed or how every ritual worked. Nor can we assume that a single English word captures every use of maat.

What these examples can do is keep the religious setting in view when we read about justice and right order. They give us two specific objects to consider, with different dates and an uncertain identification. A fuller account would need other periods, social settings, practices and interpretations; this entry offers a small window into that history.

Sources

[1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Large Kneeling Statue of Hatshepsut, object 29.3.1, description and object details, for the statue, its date and the museum’s explanation of maat.

[2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Maat?, object 29.6.2, description and object details, for the later object and its uncertain identification. This entry draws on the museum’s catalogue descriptions and does not reproduce the objects’ images.