Since it’s Halloween, I thought adding a death goddess to my Goddess Series was fitting!
Ma’at is the Egyptian goddess of truth and order. She spends a lot of time in the Egyptian underworld. According to the Book of the Dead, after you die, the canopic jar that contained your preserved heart (the organ that housed the soul) was set on one side of the Scales of Judgement.
Ma’at then placed her Feather of Truth on the other side. The jackal-headed god Anubis then weighed the two against each other.
If your heart was lighter than the feather (and therefore pure), Anubis sent your soul on to eternal life. If it was heavier, your soul was fed to the crocodile-headed demon Ammut.
Ma’at was sometimes symbolic shorthand for everything that bound together Egypt as a civilization (civil order, natural law, personal morality), and sometimes a personified goddess like this. Either way, you very much wanted her to come down on your side.
Detail from Family Man, Page 270.
This is the second page of a little scene in Family Man that I’ve been looking forward to for awhile! You can catch up over at lutherlevy.com.
This morning’s lettering practice, using my favorite translation of Rilke’s poem Herbsttag (Autumn Day); I always think of this version when the weather turns to autumn.