s this concept of cosmic balance was so central to the beliefs in the afterlife, the concept of Maat also became essential to the everyday life of the Egyptians. The king in particular had to uphold the law of Maat in order to prove his worthiness as king. His main role was to ensure that order was always maintained and that the forces of chaos (e.g. foreign invaders, natural disasters) did not govern during his reign. Each king had a set of tasks that he would try to perform to prove his worthiness and his maintenance of order. These would have included extending the boundaries of Egypt, improving on the works of their father and producing a male heir. These tasks needed to be done to appease the gods who would in turn favour Egypt and allow order and prosperity to reign. Many kings are shown in temple and tomb decoration offering a small figure of the goddess Maat to Amun to show that they live by her rule and that they are governing Egypt fairly and justly. Any kings, who went against the principle of Maat, were erased from the king lists and therefore from history by those who ruled after them. Examples of these would include Hatshepsut the female pharaoh, Akhenaten, who abandoned the gods, and any foreign rulers. Egyptian kings did not want to be connected to those that went against the law of Maat. King lists in general were used to connect the current king to the deities who ruled Egypt at the beginning of time. King lists used in India of the 4th -12th centuries AD were also used to connect the kings of the Mahabharata (text from first millennium BC) with Manu, the first man (Brockington 1996, 192-3), which would also prove their right to rule as well as their divinity; indicating that the ideology of divine kingship was similar in ancient India and ancient Egypt; although that will not be discussed here.