Humans had free will to ignore divine guidance and the behavior required by maat , but by doing so they could bring divine punishment upon themselves . A deity carried out this punishment using its ba , the force that manifested the god 's power in the human world . Natural disasters and human ailments was seen as the work of angry divine bas . Conversely , the gods could cure righteous people of illness or even extend their lifespans . Both these types of intervention was eventually represented by deities : Shed , who emerged in the New Kingdom to represent divine rescue from harm , and Petbe , an apotropaic god from the late eras of Egyptian history who was believed to avenge wrongdoing .