An Introduction to Mafdet:
Mafdet: the Cheetah/Female Mother Goddess
Unlike the other Mother Goddesses (who were all represented as having a human form, Mafdet is particularly unusual in that she was always represented as half human/half cheetah. Those animal/human characteristics (together with her acknowledged animal fierceness in protecting what were initially most certainly the tribal, Mother Goddess spiritual values of Balance and Truth) are an indication of Mafdet having an early preliterate African/Nubian Mother Goddess origin.
Author's Note
It is clear to me that Mafdet barely made it into the Dynastic Pantheon when the male Gods ascended (around 3200 B.C.) precisely because of those Nubian/Mother Goddess/animal characteristics. In short , she smacked much too much of the of the old Nubian Mother Goddess period. This is why we have almost no artistic represent at ions of her today. In Dynastic times we see her represented sometimes as a lynx or a mongoose. I believe that both of these were are attempts to reshape the "cheetah" nature of Mafdet . Mafdet couldn't be disposed of entirely, however, because of her relationship to Ma'at and therefore Ra, but I believe she was subjected to the kind of benign neglect that Nixon made famous many thousands of years later.
End Author's Note
It is my belief that these primary spiritual values of Truth and Balance would have originated in the Mother Goddess period, although Ma' at in literate Dynastic times also came to represent Order, Law, Morality and Justice, as these are primarily literate concerns. From the beginning, though, Mafdet was seen as protecting Ma' at from the Serpents of Disorder that were constantly threatening to drag Egypt into Chaos.
This fear of Chaos is central to Egyptian spirituality and I believe it has very deep preliterate roots. It most probably originated in the high value the Nubian/Proto-Egyptian Mother Goddess culture placed upon co-operation between the sexes. We have to remember that there had to have been a great deal of tension, fear and anger on the part of men because of the high role women played in these cultures.
I have no doubt that from time to time this male anger burst out against the women with disastrous social consequences and was thus to be avoided at all costs. This is why Mafdet would be such a prominent Mother Goddess. Without Truth and Balance, the entire social/spiritual structure of those early hunter/gatherer tribes would have broken down.
It is clear even to modern peoples that without Balance, the cooperative leading of the tribe by men and women would be lost and Chaos would ensue. Truth plays an important role in Proto-Egypt and in preliterate cultures in general. Julian Jaynes tells us that humans possessing muthos consciousness weren't aware of guilt and planned deceit because they had no mental space to endlessly replay a wrong they had done (guilt) or endlessly plot how to wrong someone (planned deceit). In their place were the primary emotions of shame and lying (on the spot).
This helps explain why Indians in our Western movies always spoke of white men as speaking with forked (or split) tongues, meaning that they said one thing but intended another, which is an excellent description of the planned deceit that came with logos consciousness, and is something very different from lying on the spot. Preliterate tribe members expected the truth in their communications with each other. They knew no other way. Whereas we, with our immense arsenal of planned deceit, can endlessly deceive our fellows. We almost expect that some form of planned deceit will play a role in many important communications we have with each other.
For preliterate peoples, however, the detection of a severe lie could lead to the liar being shunned by the tribe, or in the worst case permanently expelled from the tribe, which was the cruelest fate as well as the greatest shame a tribe member could experience. Not telling the truth about important matters, e.g., the death of a tribe member, endangered the stability of the tribe because it threatened to destroy the tribe members' ability to trust each other. It may help us see the effect of lying if we think of the hunter/gatherer tribes as large families of 30-60 people, all intimately related. Then think of your family and what the effect of lying would have on its ability to trust one another when matters of life and death were involved.
In short, Truth and Balance were intertwined preliterate spiritual values that maintained the healthy life of a tribe. Without Balance, the cooperative governing of the tribe would be lost and in the fighting between men and women that ensued, Truth would be thrown out the window. Without Truth, the value that enabled tribe members to trust each other, all attempts to govern cooperatively would be lost. Thus once Truth and balance were lost, darkness of Chaos would rush in to take their place.
However, it was in late preliterate times c. 4500-3200 B.C. and literate, Dynastic times, that Order became absolutely essential because their agricultural activities became very large and they, in turn, became completely dependent on extremely orderly growing and harvesting practices. Without them, their entire food supply could be destroyed and there would be a sudden absence of food. It didn't matter if the disturbance was climatic or organizational, the social chaos brought on by famine was the Egyptians' worst nightmare.
In Dynastic times, I see Order becoming an even more important spiritual value because of the sheer size and complexity of the empire. This is also the time when Ma' at came to embody not only Order as a prime spiritual value but also Law, Morality and Justice, as these are primarily literate concerns. Thus it is clear that while Ma' at developed over time, the Mafdet/Ma' at relationship went back at least to the Early Nubian Proto-Egyptian (6000-4500 B.C) period and probably much ealier, and it too strengthened and deepened with the impact of highly organized agriculture.
When I speak of her "shaman counterparts", I mean that I see our prophetic female Nubian shaman as one of a long line of Nubian shaman/prophets who traveled back and forth between the Nile Delta and Nubia during Neolithic times. I see her as differing from the others in the same way as Jesus differed from the prophets who prefigured him. That is to say, both Jesus and my proposed female shaman were both psychically superior to those who prefigured them i,.e, they could perform feats of prophecy and healing beyond those of their predecessors.
