This was not entirely her reaction to patriarchal pressures. She was a slave girl who served a spice merchant in the port city of Canopus in Egypt and her name was Massika. She always did the right things, but only in imitation of others for her heart wasn’t in rituals or offerings. She had learned that the gods adhered in every important thing, but she didn’t believe it. She felt that truth and justice could be maintained without the goddess Ma‘at. Devotion to Ma‘at, to her, seemed more like a crutch, and excuse, more a shirking than an exercise of duty, because it was proper for every person, to be truthful and moral and to uphold fairness in all things.
Unusual characters