Hatshepsut

I'm reading this biography at the moment. I've been fascinated by the story of Hatshepsut, the female Pharoah, ever since I read Pauline Gedge's excellent novel "Child of the morning" many years ago.
  This is one case where the novel is better than the truth. The author's problem with the life of Hatshepsut is that there are so few sources to go on. Official records are the only records that survive, stamped on stelae or on tomb walls, and these give very little idea of the real people behind the names. Kara Cooney is forced to make a lot of conjectures about Hatshepsut and her reign, and the word 'perhaps' appears ridiculously often. Perhaps Senenmut, her architect, was also her lover. Perhaps her nephew had her killed. Perhaps her father fully intended to have her made Crown Prince. And so on. The novel avoids all this by just going with an invented narrative framed and supported by the few facts we know about Hatshepsut, and is far more enthralling, full of gold and heat and the inexplicable wills of the gods, a really good read that just sucks you into an Ancient Egyptian timewarp.