MꜣꜤt ‘Maat’, Death and the Afterlife

Abstract

This study sets out to demonstrate how in classical and traditional Afrikan thought one’s afterlife on physical and spiritual planes is thought of as being commensurate with one’s adherence to MꜣꜤt ‘Maat’ in terms of lived practice rather than simply as an abstract ideal. As such, we will interrogate textual examples from classical Kmt ‘The Black Nation/Land of the Blacks’ and attested lived examples from contemporary Afrika among the Kasena-Nankana with brief references to other cultural-linguistic groups. We demonstrate there is a shared understanding from the classical to the contemporary in terms of how one’s body is treated and how one’s experience in the afterlife is conceptualized. We find that conceptions of the afterlife have influenced how Afrikans engage MꜣꜤt ‘Maat’ as praxis.