Deity · Egyptian · c. 2600 BCE
Ma'at
Both a goddess and the principle of order itself — the feather against which every heart is weighed.
Well sourced
Less a goddess than the standard the world is measured against — order, truth and the balance of things — represented by a woman with an ostrich feather on her head, and by the feather alone in the scene that matters. At the weighing of the heart the feather goes in one pan and the heart in the other, and a heart heavier than truth is eaten. What makes her unusual in this corpus is that the abstraction came first and the personification second: the king is said to present ma'at to the gods, meaning that he keeps the order, which is a political claim made in the vocabulary of a goddess.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
No independent temple of consequence; a small shrine at Karnak. She is presented as an offering by the king to other gods, which is a stranger role than having a house.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
- First attested
- The Coffin Texts · c. 2100–1800 BCE
- Named there as
- Maat
- Rank
- Truth and Order
- Pantheon
- Egyptian
- Order
- Egyptian pantheon
- Base of operations
- No independent temple of consequence; a small shrine at Karnak. She is presented as an offering by the king to other gods, which is a stranger role than having a house.
- Era
- c. 2600 BCE
- Traditions
- Egyptian
- Placed in
- The Hall of Two Truths
Traits
- Domain
- Truth, cosmic order, justice, the balance
- Traditional form
- A woman with an ostrich feather, or the feather alone
Stats
Known connections
Chain of command
Identified with
3 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 3 offices attributed to Ma'at, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- martial1
- knowledge1
- material1
2 marks
Which marks is it attached to?
A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Ma'at, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 550 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Maat, Ma'at
Order as the thing the dead are measured by, in the layer of the funerary literature that first extends the afterlife beyond the king. The Book of the Dead's weighing scene is the settled form of an idea already doing this work on the coffins of officials.
Her feather is the standard of the weighing; the negative confession is addressed to her.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Ma'at?
Is Ma'at the same as Metatron?
What rank is Ma'at?
How else is Ma'at spelled?
What is Ma'at said to do?
How old is Ma'at?
Nearest in the corpus
If Ma'at is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Khepri
The Morning Sun · Egyptian
The sun at dawn, in the form of a scarab beetle rolling it up over the horizon — one of the three daily aspects of the sun, and a pun on the word for coming into being.
Anubis
Guide of the Dead · Egyptian
Embalmer and psychopomp, who leads the dead to the scales — the office Western tradition eventually gives to Michael and to Azrael.
Horus
Falcon King · Egyptian
Son of Osiris, who contends eighty years with Set for the throne. Every living pharaoh was understood to be his incarnation.
Isis
Great of Magic · Egyptian
The great magician who reassembles Osiris and tricks Ra into surrendering his secret name. Her cult eventually reached as far as Roman Britain.
Nephthys
Lady of the House · Egyptian
Set's wife who sides with her sister Isis against him, and mourns Osiris at the head of the bier.
Osiris
Lord of the Dead · Egyptian
Murdered by Set, reassembled by Isis, and installed as judge of the dead. He is the earliest fully developed dying-and-rising sovereign we have.
The books behind Ma'at
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Coffin Texts
Anonymous; painted on the coffins of officials and their families · c. 2100–1800 BCE · Middle Egyptian
Read The Coffin Texts in full ↗The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Anonymous; tr. E. A. Wallis Budge · c. 1550 BCE onward · Egyptian
Read The Egyptian Book of the Dead in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Hunefer · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.