Hatshepsut
Maria beside the statue of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, "Foremost of Noble Ladies," 1507 - 1458 BCE, the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Maria's blurred face is a metaphor for her parents' determination to obliterate her true identity by failing to disclose that she had been adopted. Gradually she comes into focus, assumes her true identity. As in ancient Egypt, when men and women were truly equal.
