Maat
She is depicted as a tall woman wearing a crown surmounted by a huge ostrich feather. Her totem symbol is a stone platform or foundation, representing the stable base on which order is built.
The word, Maat translates "that which is straight." it implies anything that is true, ordered, or balanced. She was the female counterpart of Thoth. We know she is a very ancient goddess because we find her in the boat of Ra as it rose above the waters of the abyss of Nu on the first day. Together with Thoth, they charted the daily course of the sun god Ra. She is sometimes called the 'Eye of Ra' or the 'Daughter of Ra'.
Maat plays an important part in the Book of the Dead. Itwas in the, Duat, the Hall of Maat, that the judgement of the dead was performed. In Egyptian mythology, Duat, or Tuat, Akert or Amenthes is the underworld, where the sun traveled from west to east during the night and where dead souls were judged.
Those people with good, (and pure), hearts were sent on to Osiris in Aaru. The weighing of the heart, pictured on papyrus, in the Book of the Dead, typically, or in tomb scenes, shows Anubis overseeing the weighing, the "lion-like" Ammit seated awaiting the results and the eating of the heart, the vertical heart on one flat surface of the balance scale, and the vertical Shu-feather standing on the other balance scale surface.
Funerary
Thoth stood to the right of the scales recording the results. Having passed this test the soul is lead by Horus to meet the King of the dead, Osiris. The throne of Osiris rests on a pool of water from which a lotus flower is growing, upon the lotus stand the four sons of Horus. Behind the throne of Osiris stands Isis and her sister Nephthys.
In the story of Maat, she was the wife of Thoth and had eight children with him. The most important of her children was Amun. These eight were the chief gods the Ennead - creating the Earth and all that is in it.
Because of Ma'at, the Egyptians knew that the universe, worked on a pattern. just as, later the Greeks called the underlying order of the universe Logos (meaning,order,pattern).
"In the beginning was the logos*, and the logos* was with God and the logos* was God." - John 1:1
* Logos was the 'Word', another name for Jesus.
There is a small temple dedicated to Ma'at (inthe ruins) at Karnak. The temple is inside Precinct of Montu, the smallest of three enclosures at Karnak. The temple seems to have been built by Hatsheput, then reconstructed by Tuthmose III. You can see a computer reconstruction of Ma'ats temple at
http://www.ifrance.comhomann/t3maatec.jpg
