Public index · Myth / culture
Maʽat
42
Forty-two assessors / negative confessions
Spell 125 names forty-two assessors and a matching confession list. Manuscripts vary.
Egypt
One land. Several 42s.
See one 42. Ask another question. Spell 125 does not print a map of the nomes. El-Kemaly 2021: the judges’ places mix towns with sky and cavern. The Dendera wall does join the later nomes to the body of Osiris. Clement’s forty-two books are a Greek report of a library, not a recovered Egyptian shelf. Cipher on the English word NOMES is later still. One land. Several rooms. One temple walk that actually names the join.
42Maʽathere
Assessors. The Hall of Two Truths.
- 22 + 20Nomes
Land. The later map.
- 42Osiris
Relics. The Dendera wall.
- 42Hermes
Clement. A Greek report.
- ~42°Arris
The corner edge. Not the face.
What it supports
A recorded religious count in the Book of the Dead, Declaration of Innocence tradition. Papyrus of Ani is one witness. Forty-two declarations are documented in specific manuscripts. Versions differ. That difference is part of the object. El-Kemaly 2021: the judges’ places include nomes and cities, and also sky, cavern, darkness, twilight. That mixed map works against the old claim that the 42 judges simply are the 42 nomes.
What it does not
Not a single eternal code titled 42 laws of Maʽat. Not a 1:1 map of the later nomes. Steindorff and Breasted printed that correspondence. Spell 125 does not. Nomes in the Second Intermediate Period were not yet frozen at forty-two. The Dendera wall joins nomes to Osiris’s body. It does not join them to this Hall.
ExactnessCount
Form42
Unitassessors
Strengthattested
WhenNew Kingdom / received Book of the Dead