Socio-Historical Context for the Development of Maatian Ethics
What is Maat?
1. Maat is an interrelated order of rightness. Obenga (2004 ) identifies four basic areas in which Maat is expressed:
A. The universal domain in which Maat is the totality of ordered existence, and
represents things in harmony and in place.
B. The political domain in which Maat is justice and in opposition to injustice.
C. The social domain in which the focus is on right relations and duty in the context of
community.
D. The personal domain in which following the rules and principles of Maat, “is to
realize concretely the universal order in oneself: to live in harmony with the ordered
whole.”
2. The basic concept of Maat as the foundation and order of the world lasts throughout the
history of ancient Kemet in a dynamic process of continuity and change. Maat remains the way of life from the Old Kingdom through the Late Period, including the Greek and Roman conquest.The key point is that the practice of Maat is conceived and carried out within the worldview which links the Divine, the natural and the social. This is the African worldview that can be recognized throughout the whole of the African continent.
3. As moral thought and practice, Maat is a way of rightness defined especially by the practice
of the Seven Cardinal Virtues:
• Truth -of self
• Justice -declaration of truth
• Propriety - stability of community
• Harmony –oneness of the soul
• Balance – of nature
• Reciprocity – stability of family
• Order – of family, community, and environment
4. As a foundation and framework for the moral ideal and its practice, Maat is the constantly achieved condition of and requirements for the ideal world, society and person.
The focus of this Husia class is on the continuity of Maat as the fundamental principle of ethics and religion in Kemet which endures in spite of changed concepts of it in various periods. Our challenge is to examine the moral ideal with an eye towards revealing its capacity for and contribution to our discussions on contemporary leadership and society as well as its moral and practical application on the individual, family and community levels.
Maat is the never changing internal base that directs the progressively adaptive and modifying behavior. As generations and centuries turn, time modifies, as time progresses, language expands, and rituals take added forms of expression. What (not who) is already great must become, and is expected to become greater – that is procreation. Also as time modifies the assessments, analysis and philosophies that were attached to the circumstances and determinants set to the “prior” (sp tpy) time period require modification (not revision) (Tep, 2002).
The Maatian ideal from Pre-Dynastic Kemet to the Old Kingdom
Pre-dynastic Kemet ( ? -3100) Nubia is the oldest monarchy in the history of mankind. Capital
cities, Napata and Meroe. Ta-Seti is another name for Nubia (land of the bow). Meroe is the cradle of arts, sciences, Medu Neter, temples, pyramids and divine kingship. Nubian civilization (humanization of the human and the building of an ethical code of human conduct) rose out of both Kemet and Sudanese heritage with contacts as far away as Libya and western Asia.
Inscription on Gebel Sheikh Suleiman monument, south of Qustul Nubia presides at a battlefield scene including fallen enemies – two bound prisoners and a royal ship.
Edfu text is an important document on the early history of the Nile Valley. This famous inscription is found in the Temple of Heru at Edfu. It gives an account of Egyptian civilization which was brought from the south by a band of invaders under leadership of King Heru.
The Ethiopians say that the Egyptians are one of their colonies which was brought into Egypt by Ausar. These Ethiopians who migrated to Kemet were called Anu. They build cities of Esneh, Erment, Qouch and Heliopolis. To these people we can credit with the most ancient bools of Kemet – the Pyamid tests and The Book of Coming Forth, and all the myths or religious teachings and all the philosophical systems called Kemetian.
Kemets greatest masters, Ausar, Auset, Heru and Djehuti all belonged to the Anu. Through these soverign rulers the core of Kemet’s philosophy and science was created and maintained. The Anu occupied southern Kemet and Nubia.
Monumental event: (3102 B.C.E.) Indo-European hordes start to come down out of the Eurasian Steppes reigning death and destruction. Asians and whites start to infiltrate the Delta. This led to a long series of wars between the Africans and Asians in the north.
Old Kingdom was a formative time in which the bases of Egyptian civilization were firmly established. These include concepts of state and kingship, artistic conventions, writing, literary forms, technology, science, medicine and other achievements, and disciplines of human knowledge. The socio-historical setting for Maatian ethics unfolds in this period (Karenga, 1989).
Pyramid Age: Old Kingdom (3150-2250) Dynasty 1-6
A. Aha Narmer defeated the Asians and united the “Two Lands” starting the first
dynasty or nation-state shaped by religion. The ancient Africans had to rethink Maat
within the context of a large bureaucracy.
B. Religion gave the state its moral and political paradigm reflected in the Pyramid Texts which contain concepts of judgment, justification and immortality based on Maat, the Shabaka Text (Memphite Theology) where kingship is legitimated through the principle of right over might, and the positing of right as that which is loved and brings life and wrong as that which brings hatred and death. It also contains a religious drama of creation and a religio-political drama of the founding of a united Kemet and in the Sebait, the Instructions which offer an implicit and
explicit theory and view of leadership and society based on Maat, Kemet’s moral
and spiritual way.
C. Maatian ethics evolved in a period of consolidation and growth, and peace and
security. This in turn lead to the growth of a bureaucracy with its emphasis on
meritocracy and righteous leadership. The rising bureaucracy is key to the
formulation and evolution of Maatian ethics.
D. Geography of Kemet demanded careful administration – 600 miles of Nile Valley
from Memphis, approximately at the apex of the Delta, south to Aswan.
E. Strong administration produced and insured order and security and led to great
achievement in the Old Kingdom. Time of great intellectual, architectural and
scientific achievements – so organization of its vast human and material resources
was essential.
F. Bureaucracy was essentially a civil service. Practice of official authority was
inspired by disinterested service and justice on the part of the bureaucrats, in the
interest of the king and his subjects.
1. CEO of bureaucratics was prime minister and under him were the “sesh”
(scribe) with extended meaning of civil servant and intellectual.
2. Sesh same as civil service and scribal profession was the principle repository
of literacy and learning.
3. Mastery of reading and writing were essential for proper exercise of
administration and scribal schools were academies for the bureaucracy.
4. Prime minister’s office and tradition was significant for its administrative role,
the formal royal instructions by which the prime minister carried out his duties
and the tradition among prime ministers of setting down Instructions for those
who succeeded them and which became one of the main sources of Maatan
ethics.
5. Oldest complete book of Instructions is by Ptah-Hotep vizier or prime
minister of King Isesi of the Fifth Dynasty (c. 2350-2310 B.C.) It became the
model for all other Sebait.
G. Another socio-historical setting in which Maatian ethics was shaped was Kemet’s secure and peaceful context.
1. The settled, peaceful and tradition-oriented life encouraged a more placid and
benevolent attitude to humanity, so virtues of moderation and justice were more
easily practiced and sustained than in lands torn by conflict such as Palestine and
Mesopotamia.
2. Model person is not the warrior or priest, but the gentle person who serves and is
responsible.
3. Sheltered by a strong central government, a self-sufficient economy, capable army
and a difficult geography which discouraged invaders, Kemet up to the 11th Dynasty
enjoyed an unparalleled era of peace, development and great achievement.
H. Summary –Maatian ethics evolve in a context of social order and development and key is the sesh.
1. Formulation of the ethical vision emerges from the sesh and they advocate and attempt
to bring into being the just society.
2. Seba (moral teachers) i.e., scribes as teachers of ethics, pose a philosophical paradigm
of righteous leadership supported by a moral culture as key to the achievement of the
just society.
3. This paradigm offers a philosophical framework and grounding for the
conceptualization and development of the ethics of large-scale organizations and the
central role righteous (Maatian) leadership plays in this.
4. The Sebait which are the central treatises on ethics were written at first, essentially to
establish the ethical grounds for a Maatian leader or civil servant. Through teaching,
tradition and development, it became the collective moral focus and legacy of the
people of Kemet.
I. The economy of Kemet rested on a solid agricultural base, urban commerce, and maritime trade. It was managed by a large professional civil service which produced its laws, rules and ethics, as well as collected taxes in kind throughout the country, stored these goods in government warehouses, ruled in the name and at the pleasure of the king, but were effectively in control of the daily operation of the government. Within the stratum structure of Kemetian society, the royal family in its extended sense was at the apex, followed by land-holding nobles, civil servants, merchants, peasants and domestic servants.
