Truth is the Soul of the Sun

A Biographical Novel of Hatshepsut-Maatkare

by

Maria Isabel Pita

Copyright ©2009 Maria Isabel Pita

Smashwords Edition

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.