A
Biographical Novel of Hatshepsut-Maatkare
by
Maria
Isabel Pita
© 2009, Maria Isabel Pita
All Rights Reserved
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Shortly before Hatshepsut,
translated as Foremost of Noble Women,
was crowned Pharaoh she took the throne name Maatkare.
The concept of Maat—depicted as a
goddess—is one Egyptologists
still struggle with but it can essentially be
summed up
like this: Maat is the Divine force or
energy that
manifests through the sun and flows through the world. Maat
is the spirit of beauty and order. Maat
also
represents truth and justice when, through human beings, she becomes
the
conscious exercise of faith in the transcendent creative power
embodied in the
solar disc. Because Maat breathes life
into everything,
the more someone opens their heart to Maat
the
healthier and happier they are as
circumstances seem
almost magically to favor them. Hence the famous scene from The
Book of the
Dead (actually entitled The Book of Coming Forth By Day and
Opening the
Tomb) where a human heart is shown balancing on a scale with the
feather Maat always wore in her hair.
Everyone possesses the mysterious
ability to enrich the world with joyful flights of the imagination. The
ancient
Egyptians recognized that “Life, health, strength” was the reward for
what they
called “Cutting Maat” with their every
thought, word
and action. Immortality could only be achieved
through
“the intelligence of the heart.” Maatkare
means Maat is the Ka of Re, i.e. The
True and Beautiful (proper)
Manifestation of the Sun’s Divine Life-force. A more poetic but still
accurate
translation of Hatshepsut’s throne name is Truth is the Soul of the Sun.
For more than three
years I immersed myself in all the available information to date about
Hatshepsut-Maatkare (inevitably there are
gaps in the
physical evidence Egyptologists fill with various theories) then I let
the “intelligence
of my heart” lead the way along the mysterious currents of a life lived
thousands of years ago in a time and place very different from our own.
And
yet, I will admit, writing this book felt like finally going home.
Maria Isabel Pita
July, 2009