Égypte ancienne Faience Figure de la déesse Maat, la vérité. Période tardive, 664 - 332 av. Rare. 17,5 cm H.

Goddess Maat

CULTURE: Ancient Egypt

PERIOD: Late Period, 664 – 332 BC

MATERIAL: Faience

DIMENSIONS: 17,5 cm height total, 12,5 cm heigth without stand, 8 cm height only the figure without stand and feather.

PROVENANCE: Private collection, Paris, France. Purchased from Hôtel Drouot, Maître Maignan, October 10, 1973, lot 49.

CONDITION: Good condition. The plume is made of modern brass.

DESCRIPTION:

Maat, in ancient Egyptian religion, the personification of truth, justice, and the cosmic order. The daughter of the sun god Re, she was associated with Thoth, god of wisdom.

The ceremony of judgment of the dead (called the “Judgment of Osiris,” named for Osiris, the god of the dead) was believed to focus upon the weighing of the heart of the deceased in a scale balanced by Maat (or her hieroglyph, the ostrich feather), as a test of conformity to proper values.

In its abstract sense, maat was the divine order established at creation and reaffirmed at the accession of each new king of Egypt. In setting maat ‘order’ in place of isfet ‘disorder,’ the king played the role of the sun god, the god with the closest links to Maat. Maat stood at the head of the sun god’s bark as it traveled through the sky and the underworld. Although aspects of kingship and of maat were at times subjected to criticism and reformulation, the principles underlying these two institutions were fundamental to ancient Egyptian life and thought and endured to the end of ancient Egyptian history.



Notes:
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The piece includes authenticity certificate.
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