linguistic:voice_change, information:filtering
Cosmology

The Egyptian conception of the universe centered on Ma'at, a word that encompasses several concepts in English, including "truth", "justice", and "order". It was the fixed, eternal order of the universe, both in the cosmos and in human society, and was often personified as a goddess. It had existed since the creation of the world, and without it the world would lose its cohesion. In Egyptian belief, Ma'at was constantly under threat from the forces of disorder, so all of society was required to maintain it. On the human level this meant that all members of society should cooperate and coexist; on the cosmic level it meant that all of the forces of nature—the gods—should continue to function in balance. This latter goal was central to Egyptian religion. The Egyptians sought to maintain Ma'at in the cosmos by sustaining the gods through offerings and by performing rituals which staved off disorder and perpetuated the cycles of nature.

The most important part of the Egyptian view of the cosmos was the conception of time, which was greatly concerned with the maintenance of Ma'at. Throughout the linear passage of time, a cyclical pattern recurred, in which Ma'at was renewed by periodic events which echoed the original creation. Among these events were the annual Nile flood and the succession from one king to another, but the most important was the daily journey of the sun god Ra.

When thinking of the shape of the cosmos, the Egyptians saw the earth as a flat expanse of land, personified by the god Geb, over which arched the sky goddess Nut. The two were separated by Shu, the god of air. Beneath the Earth lay a parallel underworld and undersky, and beyond the skies lay the infinite expanse of Nu, the chaos and primordial watery abyss that had existed before creation. The Egyptians also believed in a place called the Duat, a mysterious region associated with death and rebirth, that may have lain in the underworld or in the sky. Each day, Ra traveled over the earth across the underside of the sky, and at night he passed through the Duat to be reborn at dawn.

In Egyptian belief, this cosmos was inhabited by three types of sentient beings: one was the gods; another was the spirits of deceased humans, who existed in the divine realm and possessed many of the gods' abilities; living humans were the third category, and the most important among them was the pharaoh, who bridged the human and divine realms.