CHAPTER 11Men-kheper-Ra spent very little time in the south at Waset. He found his aunt-stepmother Hatshepsut to be a dangerous and difficult woman. He never knew where he was with her. One moment she treated him like a close and beloved relative, and another like a suspected traitor; one moment like a man, and another like a child. Sometimes he thought of her as an inspired visionary, and at others as a ruthless manipulator of men’s lives. His friend Amenemheb believed that the visions were self-induced because of her overweening ambition.
“Anyone can say they have spoken with the god,” the cynical young man said. “She is always alone when it happens. Either she has been supping on the milk of the sycamore fig and genuinely believes that her hallucinations are religious verities, or she
