Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

A well-researched, eminently readable biography without artificial fictionalization of the often bowdlerized final  Ptolemaic  ruler of Egypt.  Schiff brings a feminist view to the party, quietly pointing out  just how thoroughly Cleopatra has been demonized even while remaining the object of fascination through the ages.  More importantly, this work outlines Cleopatra's effectiveness as a ruler, a point often lost in the romance of her story.  4 stars

Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh by Joyce A. Tyldesley

Two Egyptian queens in one day!   Not that I read these in one day, just how I've gotten around to posting.

And  just a reminder that my library, and my comments and reviews, are at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/WarriorofWorry

The author's excellent work on the daily life of ancient Egyptian women piqued my interest in her biography of this queen (more usually spelled Hatshepsut) who ruled as a King of Upper and Lower Egypt.*   I was not disappointed - though it has the hallmarks of a scholarly work, and the narrative flags from time to time, it was overall a quite entertaining story about a woman who was omitted from the Kings List for reasons still unknown.  Tyldesley thoroughly debunks the notion that Hatshepsut's younger brother, who ruled after her, wiped her name from her temples and public works in a jealous rage.

*See also my review of Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, in which Hatshepsut played the role of evil, spendthrift ruler who usurped her brother's throne.  That characterization was based upon the scholarship of the time (I don't have the original copyright date but suspect 1960's or so), which Tyldesley neatly refutes in her survey of current archaeological thinking.