"The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may distort it; but there it is."
--Winston Churchill

"Truth (ma'at) is good and its worth is lasting; and it has not been disturbed since the day of its creator, whereas he who transgresses its ordinances is punished. It lies as a right path in front of him who knows nothing. Wrongdoing has never yet brought its venture to port. Evil may indeed win wealth, but the strength of truth is that it endures, and the upright man says, 'It [truth] is the property of my father.'"
--from the Maxims of Ptah-hotep (Middle Kingdom, Kaster translation)

We figured it out in less than five minutes. The Truth About Ancient Egypt, which men have been seeking and selling their souls for since before the Renaissance, was set down in mere minutes by five exhausted midterm-taking graduate students in a lounge room on the second floor of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.

It all began when one of my colleagues started talking about a hieratic inscription she was cramming for an exam, which involved Ramses III and the Sea Peoples. Now, keep in mind that our instructors (part of the shadowy conspiracy to keep the "real truth" about Egypt from ordinary men and women, often referred to enigmatically as "THEY") seem to agree that it is not entirely clear who the Sea Peoples were or where they came from, though we can seem to make sense of some of the names given to the tribes included in the Sea Peoples. This was the beginning of the breakthroughs, it seems. Since we didn't have a definitive answer, THEY had to be keeping it from us.

"What if the Sea Peoples came from South America?" said one of the guys, between bites of breakfast.

"No, wait - what if Ramses went to South America to get help against the Sea Peoples?" added someone else.

We looked at the door. THEY weren't coming; THEY hadn't even heard. So we went on.

"Yeah - Ramses went there, and taught them how to build pyramids -- "

"And they paid him in cocaine...which he took back and used as a mummy dressing -- "

"But the pyramids weren't the same because Ramses lived so long after the aliens had come to build the first pyramids, and nobody could read the Atlantean writing -- "

And so on and so forth. By the end of the discussion (all five minutes), we had solved every major mystery of Egyptology since the beginning of the Napoleonic expedition, or before - and THEY hadn't even noticed. We broke up, went to class, and resumed our normal lives.

Or did we?

I'm telling this story because it's been a week when speculation about ancient Egypt has been at a high, at least locally, after several well-done popular documentaries on the subject aired on local cable television and a two-page article in our major newspaper off something having to do with one of those documentaries (namely, the conspiracy theory of a serial killer and Tutankhamen). I have received in the last ten days both "the truth about Giza" (a city has been found underneath the pyramids which is a three-dimensional rendering of the Orion constellation, and is complete with laser beam locked doors, secret knowledge and Osiris, the living Atlantean mummy, dressed in pink with "Osiris" conveniently stitched on his lovely robes), and "the truth about Tutankhamen" (well, more than one truth here, admittedly - either he was the victim of an evil murder plot *or* he was Jesus Christ, take your pick), and "the truth about Sekhmet" (an interdimensional being masquerading as a lion-headed Egyptian goddess who grants her special children immortality, among other things), and, finally, "the truth" about THEY, those evil nasty Egyptologist types who tried to keep all the other truths from me and other truth-seekers like me all week.... but I can't tell you that truth, because I am one of THEM, and then I would either be lying (not telling "the truth") or deliberately misleading you from "the truth" because it is my duty as one of THEM to do so.

It's enough to make you wonder just what truth is anyway, seeing as everybody seems to have one and they don't all seem to agree....

About the only thing in this whole mess that I can assert to be completely, literally and utterly true is Truth Itself, or Ma'at as we call Her/it in Kemetic. Ma'at is both a concept and a Name of Netjer - the embodiment of truth in the sense of "what is right." In English we do not have a good word for Ma'at, because for us "truth" and "belief" are terribly intertwined and in the touchy-feely day of politically correct diversity, everyone is supposedly entitled to their own truth, which dilutes the power of truth to such an extent as to be meaningless and indistinguishable from belief.

Let me illustrate. Beliefs are what I hold dear, and what I understand to be truth, in some cases. Beliefs are formed by me, are reinforced by me, and are mine. Beliefs, however, do not have to correspond to reality (which is real truth, or truth which cannot be compromised, or truth which can be empirically proven to be so). Here's the difference between truth and belief, which I believe (there I go using that word) to be the issue with things like our five-minute Truth Session.

I may believe that gravity is irrelevant. I may believe gravity to be nonexistent, and I may believe it to the depths of my soul, with all of my conviction and faith. I may form a group to tell the rest of the world about how gravity is false and that I am immune to it. However, whatever I believe about gravity, this morning when I get out of bed, my feet will be on the floor, not on the ceiling. No matter what my belief might be, the truth is that I will still be "right side up" and that if I walk off a building roof, I will land on the ground and cause myself damage, unless of course I am on the space shuttle and walking in space, where the truth is that there is no gravity (even if I believe in it).

Truth is something which can be observed with the senses, and cannot be changed no matter how sincere, how devout, or how imaginative I am. Truth is the gift of Netjer - but it isn't a free gift. We must seek truth - seek it for what it is, test our beliefs against it, and modify them as necessary. Blind faith is not for the Kemetic Orthodox - but faith based in believing what is true - and also being able to believe in things which are true but cannot be empirically proven - is. My imagination is Netjer's gift, too - but I need to be able to discern where my imagination, my belief, ends - and where reality, where truth, begins. Ma'at is not mine to bend or break - I am Ma'at's, and She will bend or break me if I do not move with Her.

This is the only Truth there is. I believe that, with all my heart. And I know it to be true. Faith is the bridge of distance between truth and belief, a bridge that all can walk upon and find balance, which is the second meaning of Ma'at. Netjer gives us the gift of discernment, to balance the gift of imagination. Keep this in mind when people tell you "the truth," even if it's six-foot aliens building pyramids in your backyard....