“Maat: The Goddess of Justice” - A Brief Dossier. (Editing and Commentary) By: Rev. Jonathan Barlow Gee © July 30, 2020, Tallahassee, FL, USA. For: the Pythagorean Order of Death cc. The Horus-Maat Lodge (HML) Contents: Introduction: “When Did Justice Go Blind?” Main Thesis: “Maat: Egyptian Goddess of Justice (and Her 42 Assessors).” Conclusion: “The 42 Negative Confessions” For further research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assessors_of_Maat http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/The_Book_Of_The_DeadThe_Chapters_Of_Coming_Forth_By_Day-EA_Wallice_Budge-1898-598pgs-MYS.pdf Back-cover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Silence_(sculpture)
Introduction: “When Did Justice Go Blind?” Justice was not “born blind.” The anthropomorphic female deity symbolic of the fairly balanced scales and of “impartial justice” is as ancient as the Indus Valley civilization in the Indian sub-continent (3300 - 1300 BCE). From the earliest Rig Vedic writings (1700– 1100 BC), “Justice” was personified by the goddess “Durga.”
““Durga identified a principal and popular form of the Hindu Goddess. She is a goddess of war, a warrior goddess, whose mythology centers around combating evils and demonic forces that threaten peace, prosperity, and Dharma the power of good over evil. Durga is also a fierce form of the protective mother goddess, who unleashes her divine wrath against the wicked for the liberation of the oppressed, and entails destruction to empower creation. Durga is depicted in the Hindu pantheon as a goddess riding a lion or tiger, with many arms each carrying a weapon, often defeating Mahishasura (lit. buffalo demon). She is a central deity in Shaktism tradition of Hinduism, where she is equated with the concept of ultimate reality called Brahman. One of the most important texts of Shaktism is Devi Mahatmya, also known as Durgā Saptashatī or Chandi patha, which celebrates Durga as the goddess, declaring her as the supreme being and the creator of the universe. Estimated to have been composed between 400 and 600 CE, this text is considered by Shakta Hindus to be as important a scripture as the Bhagavad Gita.”” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga
Insofar as Hindu “Durga” predates Chaldean “Ishtar” and even Sumerian “Inanna,” this emblematic archetype of the divine female from the early Vedic Hindu pantheon maybe the first true “goddess of justice” on record - tasked with the role of regeneration and nourishment of “Brahma” as divine energy, aligning the wheel of time along its central axis and keeping in equal proportions the amounts of “good” and “evil” in the cosmos “Durga” was often likened to the female “Kali” (the great destroyer at the end of time) in Hinduism or to male “Vajra” (the spinner of the wheel of suffering) in Buddhism. Thus “Durga” also maybe the oldest version of the same spirit informing the premise of “Babalon” as the “Scarlet Woman” - consort of the “Great Beast” (666) - in the wizardry of 20th century AD Magus, Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947).
““Themis is an ancient Greek Titaness. She is described as "[the Lady] of good counsel", and is the personification of divine order, fairness, law, natural law, and custom. Her symbols are the Scales of Justice, tools used to remain balanced and pragmatic. Themis means "divine law" rather than human ordinance, literally "that which is put in place", from the Greek verb títhēmi (τίθημι), meaning "to put". the word was used by Homer in the 8th century BCE, to evoke the social order of the 10th- and 9th-century Greek Dark Ages: “Themis is untranslatable. A gift of the gods and a mark of civilized existence, sometimes it means right custom, proper procedure, social order, and sometimes merely the will of the gods (as revealed by an omen, for example) with little of the idea of right.” Themis occurred in Hesiod's Theogony as the first recorded appearance of Justice as a divine personage. Drawing not only on the socio-religious consciousness of his time but also on many of the earlier cult-religions, Hesiod described the forces of the universe as cosmic divinities. Hesiod portrayed temporal justice, Dike, as the daughter of Zeus and Themis. Dike executed the law of judgments and sentencing and, together with her mother Themis, she carried out the final decisions of Moirai. For Hesiod, Justice is at the center of religious and moral life who, independently of Zeus, is the embodiment of divine will. This personification of Dike stands in contrast to justice viewed as custom or law and as retribution or sentence. In the play Prometheus Bound, traditionally attributed to Aeschylus, Themis is the mother of Prometheus, and gave him foreknowledge of what was to come. Hesiod mentions Themis among the six sons and six daughters of Gaia and Uranus (Earth and Sky).””
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themis In the Greek pantheon, as “Themis,” the archetype of the Vedic-Hindu “Durga” remained manifest, though was already seen as less irrationally violent and warring than Durga or her manifold masks as “Kali” or “Vajra.” Instead, the idea of “justice” was split between “universal justice” (as Dike, the daughter) and “social justice” (as Themis, her mother) and the ideal acquired the balanced scales from the Egyptian Book of the Dead - which we will delve into deeper later - as a symbol for “impartiality” and “honesty.” Already the premise of this “great destroyer” goddess was being “defanged.” It remained for the Roman iteration of this archetype, some 2000 years before now, for the ideal to be wedded to this symbol and divorced from her sword. ““Lady Justice (Latin: Iustitia) is an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems. Her attributes are a blindfold, a beam balance, and a sword. She often appears as a pair with Prudentia, who holds a mirror and a snake. Lady Justice originates from the personification of Justice in Ancient Roman art known as Iustitia or Justitia. The origin of Lady Justice was Iustitia, the goddess of Justice within Roman mythology. Iustitia was introduced by emperor Augustus, and was thus not a very old deity in the Roman pantheon. Justice was one of the virtues celebrated by emperor Augustus in his clipeus virtutis, and a temple of Iustitia was established in Rome on 8 January 13 BC by emperor Tiberius. Since the 16th century, Lady Justice has often been depicted wearing a blindfold. The blindfold represents impartiality, the ideal that justice should be applied without regard to wealth, power, or other status. The earliest Roman coins depicted Justitia with the sword in one hand and the scale in the other, but with her eyes uncovered. Earlier representations of a blindfolded woman began appearing in 13th century, Europe. As part of the duo "Ecclesia et Synagoga" the blindfolded Synagoga adorned Gothic cathedrals as architectural sculpture and can be found in illustrations of religious manuscripts from that period. This iconography of the blindfolded woman was emphasized when Synagoga's blindfold occasionally was depicted as a coiled serpent. Another early representation of a blindfolded woman is found in a 14th-century prayer book where a blindfolded woman, Torah, is shown with her spouse.”” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice Because in the “Ecclesia et Synagoga” (an unflattering depiction of the Christian Church and the Hebrew Temple), the “Synagogue” is shown as being blind-folded, this event being the origin for the “Justice is blind” motif maybe a sore subject to some even now, some 400 years later. So let us now ask, “Why was Justice blinded?” As “Themis,” the Greek incarnation of this goddess’s form, could impart - to her son, Prometheus clairvoyance of future events, so too could “Justice” once see the whole of time as a single moment. This legend secured her ties to the founding of the Oracle at Delphi, but more significantly signals to any fool why Justice would have to be blinded: for in fact, she is not blind at all, but sees all. So it was decided relatively early on in the modern era that, for the plan of those unworthily invoking the all-seeing “eye of providence” atop an unfinished pyramid to succeed, true justice must be symbolically blinded. And so it was.
Main Thesis: “Maat: Egyptian Goddess of Justice (and Her 42 Assessors).” In the next section, we will be looking at the Egyptian goddess personifying “Justice,” named “Maat,” whom - having evolved in the Nile river region of Africa after the goddess “Durga” had appeared in the Indus River valley but before the goddess “Themis” had appeared in the literature and theology of the Greeks - personified this archetype at a peak point of cultural expression. Integral to the soul’s safe passage into the afterlife along the Duat (Egyptian River Styx), the ritual “weighing of the heart” was presided over by Maat and her 42 demigod “assessors” corresponding to the nomes of the Nile.
““Maat refers to the ancient Egyptian concepts of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. Maat was also the goddess who personified these concepts, and regulated the stars, seasons, and the actions of mortals and the deities who had brought order from chaos at the moment of creation. Her ideological opposite was Isfet (Egyptian jzft), meaning injustice, chaos, violence or to do evil. The earliest surviving records indicating that Maat is the norm for nature and society, in this world and the next, were recorded during the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the earliest substantial surviving examples being found in the Pyramid Texts of Unas (ca. 2375 BCE and 2345 BCE). After her role in creation and continuously preventing the universe from returning to chaos, her primary role in ancient Egyptian religion dealt with the Weighing of the Heart that took place in the Duat. Her feather was the measure that determined whether the souls (considered to reside in the heart) of the departed would reach the paradise of the afterlife successfully. In the Duat, the Egyptian underworld, the hearts of the dead were said to be weighed against her single "Feather of Maat", symbolically representing the concept of Maat, in the Hall of Two Truths. This is why hearts were left in Egyptian mummies while their other organs were removed, as the heart (called "ib") was seen as part of the Egyptian soul. If the heart was found to be lighter or equal in weight to the feather of Maat, the deceased had led a virtuous life and would go on to Aaru. Osiris came to be seen as the guardian of the gates of Aaru after he became part of the Egyptian pantheon and displaced Anubis in the Ogdoad tradition. A heart which was unworthy was devoured by the goddess Ammit and its owner condemned to remain in the Duat. While the heart was weighed the deceased recited the 42 Negative Confessions as the Assessors of Maat looked on. These often served to guide the deceased through the afterlife, and the most famous one is the Book of the Dead or Papyrus of Ani (known to the ancient Egyptians as The Book of Coming Forth by Day). The lines of these texts are often collectively called the "Forty-Two Declarations of Purity". The Assessors of Maat are the 42 deities listed in the Papyrus of Nebseni, to whom the deceased make the Negative Confession in the Papyrus of Ani. They represent the 42 united nomes of Egypt. “” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maat ““The very long Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead lists names and provenances (either geographical or atmospheric) of the Assessors of Maat. A declaration of innocence
corresponds to each deity: it is pronounced by the dead himself, to avoid being damned for specific "sins" that each of the 42 Judges is in charge of punishing. The deceased was accompanied in the presence of Osiris by the psychopomp god Anubis — where he would have declared that he was guilty of none of the "42 sins" against justice and truth by reciting a text known as "Negative confessions". The heart (ib / jb) of the deceased was then weighed on a two-plate scale: a plate for the heart, the other for the feather of Maat. Maat, in whose name the 42 judges who flanked Osiris acted, was the deification of truth, justice, rectitude and order of the cosmos and was often symbolized by an ostrich feather (the hieroglyphic sign of her name). If the heart and the feather were equal, then the deities were convinced of the rectitude of the deceased, who could therefore access eternal life becoming mꜣꜥ-ḫrw (Egyptological pronunciation: Maa Kheru), which means "vindicated / justified", literally "true of voice" ("blessed" in a broad sense). But, if the heart was heavier than Maat's feather, then a terrifying monster named ꜥmmt "the Devourer" ("Ammit") devoured it by destroying the soul of the deceased. The psychostasia episode is remarkable not only for its symbolic and even dramatic vivacity, but also because it is one of the few parts of the Book of the Dead with moral connotations. The judgment by Osiris and by the other 42 judicial deities, and the "Negative Confessions" themselves, depict the ethics and morality of the Egyptians. These 42 declarations of innocence were interpreted by some as possible historical precedents of the Ten Commandments but, while the Ten Commandments of JudeoChristian ethics consist of norms attributed to a divine revelation, the "Negative confessions" seem rather as divine transpositions (each corresponding to one of the 42 judging deities) of daily morality.”” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assessors_of_Maat
Conclusion: “The 42 Negative Confessions” [From the Papyrus of Nebseni (Brit. Mus. No. 9,900, sheet 30).] ““Vignette: The Hall of the double Maati, that is to say the Hall of the goddess Isis and Nephthys who symbolize Right and Truth; herein are seated or stand 42 gods, to each of whom the deceased must address a prescribed negative statement. At each end is 1/2 of a folding door, one having the name of NEB-MAAT-HERI-TEP-RETUI-F and the other of NEB-PEHTI-QESU-MENMENET. On the center of the roof, which has a cornice of uraei, typifying divinity, and feathers, symbolic of Maat, is a seated deity, painted bluish-green, with hands extended, the right over the Eye of Horus, and the left over a pool. At the end of the Hall are four small vignettes, in which are depicted: 1. The Maati goddesses, each seated upon a throne and holding a scepter in her right hand, the emblem of life in her left. 2. The deceased, arrayed in white, standing before the god Osiris with both hands raised in adoration. 3. A balance with the heart, symbolizing the conscience of the deceased, in one scale, and the feather, emblematic of Right and Truth, in the other. The god Anubis is testing the tongue of the balance, and close by stands the monster Ammet. Thoth, ibis-headed, [is] seated upon the pylon-shaped pedestal, painting [with] a large feather of Maat.”” http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/The_Book_Of_The_DeadThe_Chapters_Of_Coming_Forth_By_Day-EA_Wallice_Budge-1898-598pgs-MYS.pdf The scribe, Nebseni, triumphant, saith: 01. To the Assessor of Maat called “Far-Strider” from Heliopolis I turn and say:
“I have not committed sin.” 02. To the Assessor of Maat called “Fire-Embracer” from Kheraha I turn and say: “I have not committed robbery with violence.” 03. To the Assessor of Maat called “Nosey” from Hermopolis I turn and say: “I have not stolen.” 04. To the Assessor of Maat called “Swallower of Shades” from the cavern I turn and say: “I have not slain men and women.” 05. To the Assessor of Maat called “Dangerous One” from Giza I turn and say: “I have not stolen grain.” 06. To the Assessor of Maat called “Double Lion” from the sky I turn and say: “I have not purloined offerings.” 07. To the Assessor of Maat called “Fiery Eyes” from Letopolis I turn and say: “I have not stolen the property of the gods.” 08. To the Assessor of Maat called “Flame” from came forth backwards I turn and say: “I have not uttered lies.” 09. To the Assessor of Maat called “Bone Breaker” from Heracleopolis I turn and say: “I have not carried away food.” 10. To the Assessor of Maat called “Green of Flame” from Memphis I turn and say: “I have not uttered curses.” 11. To the Assessor of Maat called “You of the Cavern” from the west I turn and say: “I have not committed adultery.” 12. To the Assessor of Maat called “White of Teeth” from Faiyum I turn and say: “I have made none to weep.” 13. To the Assessor of Maat called “Blood-Eater” from the shambles I turn and say: “I have not eaten the heart.” 14. To the Assessor of Maat called “Eater of Entrails” from House of 30 I turn and say: “I have not attacked any man.” 15. To the Assessor of Maat called “Lord of Truth” from Maaty I turn and say: “I am not a man of deceit.” 16. To the Assessor of Maat called “Wanderer” from Bubastis I turn and say: “I have not stolen cultivated land.”
17. To the Assessor of Maat called “Pale One” from Heliopolis I turn and say: “I have not been an eavesdropper.” 18. To the Assessor of Maat called “Doubly Evil” from Andjet I turn and say: “I have slandered no man.” 19. To the Assessor of Maat called “Wememty-Snake” from place of execution I turn and say: “I have not been angry without just cause.” 20. To the Assessor of Maat called “See Wohm You Bring” from House of Min I turn and say: “I have not debauched the wife of any man.” 21. To the Assessor of Maat called “Over the Old One” from Imau I turn and say: “I have not debauched the wife of any man.” 22. To the Assessor of Maat called “Demolisher” from Xois I turn and say: “I have not polluted myself.” 23. To the Assessor of Maat called “Disturber” from Weryt I turn and say: “I have terrorized none.” 24. To the Assessor of Maat called “Youth” from the Heliopolitan nome I turn and say: “I have not transgressed the Law.” 25. To the Assessor of Maat called “Foreteller” from Wenes I turn and say: “I have not been wroth.” 26. To the Assessor of Maat called “You of the Altar” from the secret place I turn and say: “I have not shut my ears to the words of truth.” 27. To the Assessor of Maat called “Face Behind Him” from the cavern of wrong I turn and say: “I have not blasphemed.” 28. To the Assessor of Maat called “Hot-Foot” from the dusk I turn and say: “I am not a man of violence.” 29. To the Assessor of Maat called “You of the Darkness” from the darkness I turn and say: “I am not a disturber of the peace.” 30. To the Assessor of Maat called “Bringer of Your Offerings” from Sais I turn and say: “I have not acted (or judged) with undue haste.” 31. To the Assessor of Maat called “Owner of Faces” from Nedjefet I turn and say: “I have not pried into matters.”
32. To the Assessor of Maat called “Accuser” from Wetjenet I turn and say: “I have not multiplied my words in speaking.” 33. To the Assessor of Maat called “Owner of Horns” from Asyut I turn and say: “I have wronged none, I have done no evil.” 34. To the Assessor of Maat called “Nefertem” from Memphis I turn and say: “I have not worked witchcraft against the King.” 35. To the Assessor of Maat called “Temsep” from Busiris I turn and say: “I have never stopped the flow of water.” 36. To the Assessor of Maat called “You Who Acted Willfully” from Tjebu I turn and say: “I have never raised my voice.” 37. To the Assessor of Maat called “Water-Smiter” from the abyss I turn and say: “I have not cursed or blasphemed God.” 38. To the Assessor of Maat called “Commander of Mankind” from your house I turn and say: “I have not acted with evil rage.” 39. To the Assessor of Maat called “Bestower of Good” from the Harpoon Nome I turn and say: “I have not stolen the bread of the gods.” 40. To the Assessor of Maat called “Bestower of Powers” from the city I turn and say: “I have not carried away the khenfu cakes from the spirits of the dead.” 41. To the Assessor of Maat called “Serpent with Raised Head” from the cavern I turn and say: “I have not snatched away the bread of the child, nor treated with contempt the god of my city.” 42. To the Assessor of Maat called “Serpent Who Brings and Gives” from the silent land I turn and say: “I have not slain the cattle belonging to the god.”