Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/136

 even the days of the month and the twenty-four hours of day and night, became the great and everlasting gods.

There is another Egyptian expression extremely frequent in the religious texts, the accurate meaning of which has never been recognized. Em ser en maāt is now generally allowed to mean "rightly," "perfectly," but it does not literally signify "in calculo veritatis," as Brugsch says in his Lexicon. Ser is the measuring line used by builders, and em ser signifies "ad amussim," "nach der Schnur," "au cordeau," "according to the line;" hence, "with the strictest accuracy." The whole expression therefore means, "according to the strict accuracy of Law," to which is constantly added, hehu en sep, "millions of times." Maāt is Law, not in the forensic sense of a command issued either by a human sovereign authority or by a divine legislator, like the Law of the Hebrews, but in the sense of that unerring order which governs the