Whenever I am in Vienna one of my first visits is to St. Stephen’s Cathedral and this year was no exception. When I asked the cab driver who, by the way hailed from Iran, to take me there he seemed to be surprised. Why would a Viennese want to go there on a weekday morning when the church is actually hardly a place of worship any more but a museum overrun by tourists with cameras? So I explained to him that before I set out into the unknown in 1950 I had gone to St. Stephen’s and asked the Lord to stand by me in this endeavor. He did, now it’s payback time and show gratitude. As a good Muslim he understood and appreciated the sentiment.

Thereafter I went to the Dombuchhandlung which is behind the Cathedral on St. Stephen’s square. It used to sell only books that carried the Vatican’s nihil obstat seal of approval but in the spirit of ecumenism the strict rule has been relaxed and one now finds in addition other books dealing with matters of the spirit. This is where I saw in the window Ma’at Konfuzius Goethe. Drei Lehren für das richtige Leben by Jan Assmann, Ekkehart Krippendorf and Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer. Although Maat, as well as Confucius and Goethe have been long standing friends of mine, with whom I consult on occasion, I was surprised to see their juxtaposition and inasmuch as I also saw on the shelf Assmann’s more detailed exposition Ma’at. Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im alten Aegypten (Maat, Justice and Immortality in ancient Egypt) I bought that one too, as well as some others.

Assmann is a highly respected German Egyptologist, Krippendorff a Sinologist and Schmidt-Glintzer a Philologist; so what could motivate these three people to jointly prepare a small book of 166 pages which spans 5000 years of human history? The answer is that they looked for models which created and maintained a culture that could last thousands of years. Ancient Egypt from the Old Kingdom to its final collapse, as a result Caesar’s conquest, had lasted more than 3000 years, the China of Confucius had likewise a long history and is actually experiencing a renewal in our day. Thus, the motivating underlying idea for both of these states must have had an intrinsic beneficial quality that deserves to be brought to light. But one still wonders what role Goethe played in this context. In the US, if he is remembered at all, one knows him only as a poet. Yet, he was also for some time the Chief Minister of State for the small duchy of Saxe-Weimar- Coburg, and as such intimately involved with affairs of State, and in addition he was keenly interested in all phases of nature. He wrote about optics, botany, anatomy, anticipated Darwin’s theory of evolution and Nietzsche’s Ewige Wiederkehr. Goethe’s life (1749-1832) spanned the Seven Years War (called here the French and Indian wars), the American war of Independence, the French revolution, the Napoleonic era and the first stirrings of German nationalism. This period marked the beginning of the end of the feudal era and the transition to modernity as characterized by industrialization, the machine age, and the concomitant change from an autocratic monarchical system of government to a democratic one as exemplified by the founders of our republic. As such Goethe is the link between the past, present and future and this is why, as a genuine polymath, he belonged in the mentioned book.

The authors explained that the purpose of writing this small treatise, published in 2006, was to present some ideas in regard to questions which are not addressed today and for which conventional political thoughts have no answer. The book was written for those who do not regard the current world political developments as progress but as an Irrweg (mistaken direction, wrong track). It was the authors’ intent to at least make conceivable another form of “modernity” which does not consist of the mere prolongation of an industrial-capitalistic, market and profit oriented type society which has lost its “soul” long ago. By “soul” they meant a political ethic which would deserve the name “ethic.” This ethic can only be gained or regained by careful study of previous successful societies with ancient Egypt having been the first.

To discuss Maat, Confucius and Goethe is impossible in a few pages and I shall therefore limit myself to Maat as the motivating force of a civilization that had prevailed for thousands of years. But before doing so, one needs to know current American thought, which drives our policies into the mentioned Irrweg. This is perhaps best expressed in Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man. Even the title of this book, which was published at the end of the Cold War (1992), is probably not readily understandable by the majority of the American public because the American educational system no longer teaches world history and the rudiments of philosophy. We are training mainly technocrats and businesspeople. Fukuyama’s End of History deals with the thoughts of Hegel, and the Last Man came from Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Hegel is now known mainly as the intellectual father of Marxism while Nietzsche is equated with the superman and Nazism.

In essence, Fukuyama endorsed the idea of history moving – arrow like – forward with liberal democracy as its goal. Inasmuch as this has been achieved in many countries of the world it will eventually encompass all. Although some dangers to it may well arise from the restless human spirit it is in his view, nevertheless, the best form of government. In spite of detours such as communism, Nazism and the like he regarded as a “fact that history is being driven in a coherent direction by rational desire and rational recognition.”  He wrote that, “We can think of human history as a dialogue or competition between different regimes or forms of social organization. . . .  If there do not appear to be viable alternatives to liberal democracy, and if people living in liberal democracies express no radical discontent with their lives, we can say that the dialogue has reached a final and definitive conclusion.” Fukuyama thereby rejected the cyclical nature of human events. Although he mentioned Plato in another context he did not deal with the Socratic idea that tyranny is always followed by oligarchy, which in turn leads to democracy. But democracy cannot be a stable form of government for any length of time because individual freedom will always lead to excesses. Eventually chaos results from which the cry for a strong leader will inevitably arise and the cycle starts anew.

We thus have two fundamentally different views of history and our current administration is hell bent on pushing the messianic age of liberal democracy with sanctions, bombs and tanks on countries which hold different views. The inherent fatal flaw namely individual profit, which fosters greed and does not consider the rights of others, is ignored. CEOs of major companies are paid obscene salaries for concentrating on the supposed value of their stocks thereby reducing the people who do the actual physical work to chattel that can be disposed of for the sake of shareholders. The dehumanization of our “liberal democracy” is in full swing and this is the Irrweg Assmann and his colleagues want us to reconsider before it is too late.

As mentioned above I had become acquainted with Maat decades earlier through Breasted’s The Dawn of Conscience which can be highly recommended to the English speaking public. It explains the development of ethical thought in ancient Egypt and how it had found its way into the Old Testament. As explained in The Moses Legacy. Roots of Jewish Suffering we now see Egypt and its contribution to human civilization only through the lens of Jewish writers with its concomitant inevitable distortions. This is why we have to go back to the original texts which in turn show us why Maat is needed for a stable society which serves both the individual and the state.

The concept of Maat arose during the Old Kingdom, which encompasses dynasties III- VI (ca. 2686 - 2181 B.C.), but entered classical Egyptian literature mainly during the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2133- 1786 B.C.). It should be mentioned that the dates are by necessity approximations and the ones given here come from The Cambridge Ancient History. The catastrophe which had befallen Egypt in the Intermediate period was regarded by the Egyptians as the typical example of what was bound to happen when Maat was not actively maintained by joint action of the people, the king and the gods. Just as youth does not know what youth is until one has lost it, Maat was recognized as such mainly after the chaos of the first Intermediary period and subsequently deified as a goddess after the Hyksos had been expelled at the beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty (1567 B.C.). She was then portrayed during the judgment of the deceased in her capacity as justice where her feather had to balance the scales of the person’s heart, i.e. his ethical behavior, during life. The type of conditions that prevailed in the first Intermediate period are depicted in: The prophecies of Neferti; The Complaints of Kakheperre-sonb; The Admonitions of Ipuwer; and The dispute of a Man and his Ba. (Miriam Lichtheim. Ancient Egyptian Literature Vol. I) All describe profound social upheavals and natural disasters.

Inasmuch as we enter with this literature into a realm of thought which profoundly differs from our current way of thinking I have refrained from defining Maat up to now and shall continue to use the Egyptian term rather than one of its various meanings. By coincidence Maat made a cameo appearance in a National Geographic TV presentation, “Engineering Egypt,” last week. The program tried to show how and why Khufu had his pyramid built and Ramesses II, Abu Simbel. Maat was mentioned as “order” according to which the structures were erected, to ensure the king’s immortality and ascent to the stars. This is correct but also potentially misleading because it omits the wider social context. Abstract words denote concepts which encompass a wide variety of meanings. What happens when only one of them is selected is perhaps best exemplified by the Greek word logos which can have, according to Langenscheidt’s Pocket Classical Greek Dictionary, 53 different meanings. Among them are: speech, conversation, deliberation, thought, reason, order, word, etc. When St. Jerome translated the gospel of John into Latin he used “verbum” for logos. This made the first sentence of the gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God” rather difficult to apprehend intellectually. St. John wanted to identify Jesus’ spirit with God, as the eternal Christ, but this can get lost when logos is rendered merely as “word.” Maat likewise has many meanings the principals of which are: truth, justice, righteousness and order. To isolate just one of these terms as a translation of the word Maat violates the entire concept because they are mutually interdependent. To explain the role Maat played in Egyptian society I shall now summarize the essence of Assmann’s views with apologies to the author because they are by necessity abbreviated and for interested German speaking persons the mentioned books can be highly recommended.

The first six dynasties, which had lasted approximately a thousand years, with the pyramid age at their center, were regarded in the chaotic Intermediary period as a golden age and when society had reconstituted itself in the Middle Kingdom the question what had gone wrong and why was given literary form and became part of the famed Egyptian wisdom teachings. The disasters of the Intermediary period taught the Egyptians that the natural state of man and the world is what may be called: all against all; a conclusion which Hobbes had arrived at about 3000 years later. Hobbes wrote “Unless there is a common power to keep them all [mankind] in awe . . . [there is] continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

This was the state Egyptians experienced in the Interregnum between the Old and the Middle Kingdom and they called it Isfet. It consists of: deceit, lies, brutality, greed, crime and war. One might summarize it as absolute egotism which rides roughshod over the wishes and concerns of others, or “my will be done.” Maat is the exact opposite: cohesion and harmony. This is to be achieved first within the family then the tribe and subsequently the state. Each individual knows his role and voluntarily cooperates in a harmonious society simply because it is the right thing to do. But because Isfet is the natural condition, Maat has to be acquired through patient education of one’s children. Isfet is not overcome by brute force but by acts of Maat where each particular act destroys one particular aspect of Isfet.

Assmann used the term “vertical solidarity,” which includes responsibility, and contrasted it with “horizontal solidarity.” The latter was the goal of the French revolution, with its offshoot of liberal democracies, under the banner of: Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood. Since human beings are by nature not equal and liberty uncoupled from responsibility leads to egotism, brotherhood never had a chance of coming into being. Vertical solidarity, on the other hand, is nature’s aristocratic principle at its best. The inherent inequality of high and low, strong and weak is recognized but counteracted by the demand for the strong to protect the weak from the power of the strong. In Egyptian society the power was concentrated in the crown and the king’s officials. They had to rule on the principle of Maat: truth will lead to justice and when justice is done order is established. When the king, as son of God, lived in Maat he reflected as well as established not only terrestrial but also cosmic order. But Maat is not self-perpetuating; it requires effort.

In contrast to biblical tradition, where God created the world and then took time off to rest, the Egyptians were aware that the forces of creation and destruction are eternally ongoing and since Maat is a product of effort against the natural destructive tendencies, Maat has to be recreated on a daily basis. The analogy was the sun, Ra, who rose in the morning, thereby allowed Maat to occur on earth and sank into the underworld at night to bring Maat to its denizens. Furthermore, for the Egyptians the dichotomy in the life of man was not between good and evil but between natural chaos and Maat which needed to be practiced in everyday life. The key to understanding Maat lies in what one may call “connectedness.” To be human required another human being or as the proverb had it; “a human comes into existence when he is surrounded by others. He is greeted with reverence for the sake of his children.” and “one lives when one is guided by another.”

Living in Maat required what Assmann called: 1) Communicative solidarity: listening, speaking and silence. 2) Active solidarity: when injustices were committed the wrong had to be corrected. 3) Abstention from greed. The sequence in point 1 is important because listening comes first. Its meaning is the biblical word “hearkening,” paying attention and taking to heart what the other person has to say. Turning “a deaf ear” to a complaint is a sin against Maat and leads to a bad end. The Instructions of Ptahhotep contain this admonition,

“One beloved by God hearkens

One who does not is hated by God.

The fool who does not listen

Nothing will be done for him.

He regards knowledge as ignorance

Something helpful as hindrance.”

Furthermore, the person who listened had to give the speaker a chance to fully unburden himself because for a person who is distressed pouring out his heart may be even more important than achieving success in his desire.

When speech was called for it had to be modest, rather than brash or querulous, and it had to be truthful. Whoever was unable to use well meaning speech was incapable of fitting himself into the community and thereby belonged to the “living dead.” Speech had to come before action because when, “words cease force takes over.” Here is another saying from Ptahhotep,

“Be a master of speech.

The sword arm of a king is his tongue.

Speech is mightier than battle.”

Equally important as speech, however, was the knowledge when to remain silent. This is still expressed in our proverb, “speaking is silver, silence is gold.” Furthermore, tattling and spreading rumors did not belong to Maat.

For Assmann’s second point namely active solidarity the key sentence is, “the deed returns to the doer.” This corresponds to the Indian concept of Karma where each action has a consequence which is either good or bad depending on its origin. Or in current parlance: what goes around comes around. With other words: you will reap what you sow. For the Egyptian life and death were a continuum and if an injustice had not been remedied during the lifetime of the individual it would be at time of death. Individual life could persist as long as the tomb was properly cared for. This is why the person, and not just the king, had to establish a proper tomb for himself during his lifetime which had to be subsequently maintained by his son. In this way solidarity extended beyond the limited lifespan of the individual, broke the shackles of time, and thereby removed the fear of death.

To discuss the religious aspects of Maat further at this time would lead too far afield and I shall therefore limit myself to the practical aspects of how justice was to be dispensed by the magistrate. In civil disputes the goal was not to punish one of the litigants but to achieve mutual agreement i.e. arbitration. In this way harmony was restored and another major sin against Maat, greed, was avoided.  For criminal cases the death sentence was rare, more commonly it involved physical punishment especially beatings and in case of severe offenses mutilation such as cutting off one’s tongue or nose which provided a visible permanent deterrent. In contrast to our blindfolded “Lady Justice,” who graces our law courts and still holds Maat’s scales, Maat’s eyes were open in order to detect injustices carried out against the weak and powerless anywhere.

Inasmuch as Maat was the ruling principle a written law code was not necessarily required and if a magistrate did not act in accordance with Maat complaints would be lodged against him which might even reach the king. This is exemplified in the tale of “The Eloquent Peasant” which will be discussed later. For now let us read what Ptahhotep had to say about greed,

“If you want a perfect conduct

To be free from every evil,

Guard against the vice of greed:

A grievous sickness without cure,

There is no treatment for it.

It embroils fathers, mothers,

And the brothers of the mother,

It parts a wife from husband,

It is a compound of all evils

A bundle of all hateful things.”

These were just three samples of the 37 Maxims in regard to Maat of the Vizier Ptahhotep who lived during the Old Kingdom and whose teachings were revered. A good example of how Isfet can be overcome by Maat is the mentioned tale of the Eloquent Peasant which originated during the Middle Kingdom. It also makes the point of another one of Ptahhoteps’ instructions, “Worthy speech is more hidden than greenstone, being found even among slave-women at the mill-stone.” With other words, even the lowliest of the low may know Maat and are entitled to it.

The narrative is of a peasant from Wadi Natrun whose family faced starvation and he, therefore, loaded all his property on his donkeys to exchange it in the city of the king for food. On the way a greedy rich man saw the laden donkeys and decided to rob the peasant of his belongings. The path which the peasant had to follow beyond that man’s house was narrow. On one side there was a canal and on the other a barley field. In order to maintain a sense of legality the greedy man ordered one of his servants to spread linen clothes over the path and he told the peasant not to step on them. This forced the peasant’s donkeys into the barley field. One of the donkeys then did what comes natural and took a mouthful of barley. The greedy one then claimed that his property had been violated and took the peasant’s goods. The latter complained about the injustice and said that if there was no restitution he would go to the magistrate, Rensi, who was known to be a just administrator, and put the case before him. This incensed the greedy one and he gave the peasant a sound threshing. When the peasant’s appeal for justice proved fruitless he went to Rensi’s estate and complained to his servants. They made light of it but were impressed by the peasant’s eloquence of speech who kept remonstrating that what was happening to him did not accord with Maat. Rensi then personally listened to the peasant’s appeal for justice but did not commit himself to a course of action. Instead he went to the king and brought this unusual situation of an apparently wise peasant to his attention. In order to elicit further sayings from the peasant the king advised Rensi that he should turn a deaf ear to the peasant’s complaints, while at the same time providing in secret some food for him as well as his family. This set the stage for the peasant’s nine complaints against Rensi, whom he regarded as forsaking Maat and fostering Isfet.

Key excerpts are: first he praised Rensi’s power and then reminded him of his duties “For you are father to the orphan, husband to the widow, brother to the rejected woman, apron to the motherless.” When this fell on deaf ears he continued to point out that the scales of justice need first of all to be to be straight and then balanced. Rensi’s conduct, therefore, was reprehensible, “a man who saw has turned blind, a hearer deaf, a leader now leads astray.” Since there was no response from Rensi exhortations of this type continued and became increasingly harsher, “You are learned, skilled, but not in order to plunder! You should be the model for all men, but your affairs are crooked! The standard for all men cheats.” In the face of silence he continued to plead, “Speak justice, do justice, for it is mighty; it is great, it endures, its worth is tried, it leads to reveredness. . .  . Crime does not attain its goal” When this also failed to make an impression he gave up and said, “Here I have been pleading with you, and you have not listened to it, I shall go and plead about you to Anubis!” Having been unable to achieve justice from the living he will now kill himself and take his case to the gods. At this point Rensi no longer continued the charade and restored not only the peasant’s property to him but saw to it that he and his family was taken care of.

When we now compare this state of affairs with what is currently happening in our country we will have to admit that Isfet has been allowed to drive out Maat. Keeping Ptahhotep in mind it is obvious that our president has behaved like a fool because he failed to listen to wiser council before invading Iraq. He was warned by some members of the administration, as well as probably by his father, in addition to the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Egyptians and the Turks not to engage in military action against Iraq. He was deaf to advice and now in the words of Ptahhotep, “nothing will be done for him.” He is discredited and will not be able to achieve anything constructive at home or abroad. Mr. Bush also violated the instruction that “a king’s sword arm is his speech.” He did not allow the UN inspectors to finish their task but rushed into war. He won one battle but is now stuck in a situation he can no longer control. Nevertheless, he still eschews listening and talking to his enemies.

In spite of the fact that it should have become painfully clear that this “War on Terror” cannot be won militarily our administration is now intending to sell $60 billion of military equipment to Israel and some Sunni Arab countries. We are exporting death and destruction as a means to keep our economy going and that is also Isfet. Since this weapons deal is directed against Iran the Iranian government may well respond with an acceleration of its nuclear program, as a deterrent against invasion. As the old Egyptians said, “The deed returns to the doer,” and some of our troops may well find themselves eventually on the wrong end of this fire power. A situation similar to our support for the jihadists who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s might be in the offing within a few years but in a much wider context. Thus, we have in the words of the eloquent peasant a president who “has turned blind, a hearer deaf, a leader now leads astray.”

Obviously our vice president is not only no better but even worse. Furthermore, the highest law enforcement officer of the land, Attorney General Gonzales, has either such a serious memory problem that it should disqualify him from holding office or has committed perjury in the recent Senate hearings. As such, Maat cannot be found in the Department of Justice either. The peoples’ representatives in the Senate and House are bitterly divided, cannot get any meaningful work done and, therefore, have the lowest approval rating ever since polling began.

The country at large also reflects the lack of a common ideal. The economy is based on greed and a person’s value is measured in dollars. Assmann’s horizontal solidarity, which is supposed to exist in Fukuyama’s vision of the liberal democracy, expresses itself merely as a lack of respect where everybody is addressed only by his/her first name. Fear is a dominant factor which even goes to the extent of some parents being afraid of their children lest by disciplining they hurt their feelings. In sum and substance Isfet in form of lies, deceit, and quest for personal advantage, rather than Maat, is the reality at present.

How do we rectify this situation? If it can be done at all it will take decades because like everything else that lasts Maat will have to be grown organically from its roots. There is an innate sense of goodness and compassion within the human being which manifests itself as an outpouring of helpfulness after catastrophes. We saw it in the days immediately after 9/11, Katrina, and the Southeast Asia tsunami. This feeling is spontaneous but unfortunately brief and within less than a week personal priorities take over again. Nevertheless, this sense of responsibility towards unfortunates can and should be cultivated. Once it is established in the individual, it will be automatically transmitted to the family, from there to co-workers and eventually society at large. This is the only way to replace Isfet with Maat because it comes from the heart rather than as an imposed doctrine which one has to obey. This will take decades but the time to start the process is now!

In this essay I have limited myself to the concept of Maat in the social sphere rather than its additional religious connotation which became prominent during the Egypt’s New Kingdom. This aspect and its importance for our time will be taken up in the next installment.