In arranging his thoughts and their visible forms Kheperȧ was assisted by the goddess Maāt, who is usually regarded as the goddess of law, order, and truth, and in late times was held to be the female counterpart of Thoth, "the heart of the god Rā." In this legend, however, she seems to play the part of Wisdom, as described in the Book of Proverbs,[1] for it was by Maāt that he "laid the foundation."
Having described the coming into being of Kheperȧ and the place on which he stood, the legend goes on to tell of the means by which the first Egyptian triad, or trinity, came into existence. Kheperȧ had, in some form, union with his own shadow, and so begot offspring, who proceeded from his body under the forms Shu and Tefnut. According to a tradition preserved in the Pyramid Texts[2] this event took place at On (Heliopolis), and the old form of the legend ascribes the production of Shu and Tefnut to an act of
- ↑ "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths I was brought forth...... Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: when he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: when he gave to the sea his decree,...... when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him, as one brought up with him......" Proverbs, viii. 22 ff.
- ↑ Pepi [.,]. 466.
