The picture here is one of a beautiful and ordered world; created by a beautiful, mighty and august God who is ever concerned for his creation—humans, animals and plants. He brings light and floods the world with love and is indeed “mother and father (in that order) of all that you make.” This is clearly a portrait of mothered-fathered world, given life, love beauty and goodness by the Divine.

This sense of ordered goodness, of the world being grounded in Maat, though clearly more expansively expressed in the 18th Dynasty and afterwards, is nevertheless apparent from the Old Kingdom. The Pyramid Texts speak of heaven being at peace and earth being in joy because Maat is in its place.

The spiritual and ethical impact of Ma'at, then, was one of giving the ancient Egyptians a sense of being-at-home in the world, a world in which evil could never be dominant for long and right would always be triumphant. In other words, consciousness of Ma'at in the world provided a sense of confidence that right would eventually triumph regardless of evil, disorder or other negatives in the world. It is this confidence that led the ancient Egyptians to praise Ma'at for its durability, worth and effectiveness and its ability to provide the good life in this world and the next. Such was the faith in the power and effectiveness of Ma'at.