Airyanam Vaejah near Kazakhstan?

[Stephen Hodge]

Bhalchandrarao C Patwardhan wrote:

> One wonders, therefore, whether "Ma'at" isn't the same as the
Sanskrit 'Mati'
> or the Zoroastrian 'Humata'?

This is dubious, I think.  For one thing the vocalization of Egyptian
words is merely a convention as they were not indicated in
hieroglyphic script so nobody knows whether "ma'at" was really
pronounced thus..  Also etymologically, the word "ma'at" is a feminine
noun (-t ending) derived from the verb " m*' "-- "be proper, be true".
I do not know what the conventions for plain text representation of
Egyptian sounds is, but here my "*" is a glotteral stop and " ' " (as
in yr ma'at) is the consonantal 'ayin gutteral -- i.e the latter is
not just a little apostrophe that happnes to get in the way.  Thus
"m*' " is a tripartite root which is attested as far back as the
Pyramid Texts.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge