The stress here is on the texts being both
authoritative and exceptionally insightful.
Moreover, Hu and Sia not only symbolize and
express authority and insight, but are also at the
heart of both creative activity and moral practice
in ancient Egyptian or Maatian ethics. They are
powers available to all humans so that they may
understand, speak, and do Maat in an ongoing
cooperative project with the Divine of constantly
repairing and remaking the world.
The Husia is organized into seven major sec-
tions that represent the various kinds of texts in
the corpus of ancient Egyptian sacred literature.
The first section is the Books of Knowing the
Creations, taken from the title of one of the
narratives of creation titled “The Book of
Knowing the Creations of Ra” and including vari-
ous other creation accounts. The second section is
called the Books of Prayers and Sacred Praises
and includes literature of praise, petition, and
thanksgiving to the Divine. Although what the
Egyptians call “songs of praising and glorifying”
also occur in other books, this section is dedi-
cated essentially to them.
A third section of the Husia is titled the Moral
Narratives and includes didactic narratives such
as the Book of Khunanup, the oldest social jus-
tice text in the world, and the Book of Sinuhe,
both classical works in Kemetic literature. The
fourth section of the Husia is titled the Books of
Wise Instruction and includes major and minor
moral texts that the ancient Egyptians called
Sebait (SbAyt). The fifth section is titled Books of
Contemplation and includes literature called
complaints, lamentations, prophecies, and
admonitions in Egyptological literature. A sixth
section is called the Declarations of Virtues,
which contains autobiographical literature with
moral self-presentations expressing virtues and
vices central to Maatian moral conceptualization
and discourse.
Finally, the Husia contains a seventh section
called The Books of Rising Like Ra, books that are
customarily called funerary or mortuary texts in
Egyptology. These books include thePyramid Texts,
theCoffin Texts(The Book of Vindication), and
theBook of the Coming Forth by Day, commonly
calledThe Book of the Deadin Egyptological lit-
erature. Focused on the requirements and pursuit
of the afterlife, these texts, along with those of the
other sections, contain a wealth of spiritual and
ethical concepts that lay an early foundation for a
rich legacy of Maatian theological, ontological,
and anthropological discourse.An Afrocentric Project
The historical origins of the Husia as an intellec-
tual project lay in Maulana Karenga’s response
to the call to recover the rich legacy of Egypt by
Cheikh Anta Diop, a multidimensional and eru-
dite Senegalese scholar who pioneered the criti-
cal academic African focus on ancient Egypt as a
classical African civilization. He is best known
for his worksThe African Origin of Civilization
and Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic
Anthropology.
In these works, he sought to return Kemet,
ancient Egypt, to African history and to use its
intellectual and spiritual legacy in the creation of
a new future for Africa and African peoples. He
said that returning ancient Egypt to African
history after the detachment that Europeans had
imposed on it for racial and ideological reasons,
and to recover and engage its rich legacy, would
achieve three basic goals. It would reconcile
African history and human history (i.e., end the
falsification of history), aid in creating a new
body of human sciences, and contribute to the
renewal of African culture. Diop also called for
the development of an African-centered philoso-
phy that would bring forth the best of African
views and values and address the pressing mod-
ern ethical and social issues confronting African
peoples and the world.
In response and contribution to this Diopian
proposal and project, Karenga, with his organiza-
tion Us and the Kawaida Institute of Pan-African
Studies, launched a series of initiatives. He began
an intensive study of ancient Egyptian history and
culture with a focus on its ethical thought. This
study led to his return to the academy to earn a
second doctorate in religion and social ethics and
his writing a major work in the field titledMaat,
The Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt: A Study in
Classical African Ethics. He also developed and
taught classes in ancient Egyptian studies at the
KIPAS and CSULB, instituted an educational322 Husia