Passage: 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 were 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 were 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.Egyptian texts take different views on whether the gods are responsible when humans suffer unjustly. Misfortune was often seen as a product of isfet, the cosmic disorder that was the opposite of maat, and therefore the gods were not guilty of causing evil events. Some deities who were closely connected with isfet, such as Set, could be blamed for disorder within the world without placing guilt on the other gods. Some writings do accuse the deities of causing human misery, while others give theodicies in the gods' defense. Beginning in the Middle Kingdom, several texts connected the issue of evil in the world with a myth in which the creator god fights a human rebellion against his rule and then withdraws from the earth. Because of this human misbehavior, the creator is distant from his creation, allowing suffering to exist. New Kingdom writings do not question the just nature of the gods as strongly as those of the Middle Kingdom. They emphasize humans' direct, personal relationships with deities and the gods' power to intervene in human events. People in this era put faith in specific gods who they hoped would help and protect them through their lives. As a result, upholding the ideals of maat grew less important than gaining the gods' favor as a way to guarantee a good life. Even the pharaohs were regarded as dependent on divine...

Question: In what kingdom might it begin?
Middle Kingdom