Hatshepsut was Pharaoh of Egypt for 22 years. She initially babysat the throne for her stepson, Tuthmosis III, the rightful heir, who was too young to reign when he first inherited it. Hatshepsut probably told him, in time-honoured fashion, that she was only "minding it for him" until he grew up. But then when he did, she omitted to give it back and had herself crowned in his stead.       

Hatshepsut, not short on ego, was frequently depicted wearing a beard and male attire, probably an effort to shore up her dodgy claim to the throne. She also built many great monuments with her head on them, where Tuthmosis’s head unquestionably should have been.

It must have been galling.

But Tuthmosis grew up to be a general, with troops at the ready, and it seems that he could have taken out the old bird any time he felt like it. So why did he choose not to take back what was rightly his?

Tuthmosis was a patient man, who probably believed that revenge is a dish best served cold: He waited until his step-mum was as cold as nature could make her, and then he made his rather audacious move.  

When Hatshepsut died, at the ripe old age of 50, Tuthmosis put his stonemasons to work, with chisel and hammer, to carve out her image from every object that bore it, and her monuments were razed to the ground. In addition, scribes went to work on the coldest cut of all: With pen and ink, they removed every reference to her in the annals, and her legacy was obliterated from public records.

When he was done with her, it was as if Hatshepsut had never existed. In a sense, Tuthmosis stole his stepmother’s identity.  

But archaeologists have recently identified her body, or so it seems, and her legacy, long a source of mystery and intrigue, will certainly live on. Tuthmosis’s revenge remains incomplete, although not lacking in execution.

Fast forward to 2007, when it is not nearly as easy, even for a modern-day Pharaoh, with supercomputers at the ready, to scrub out someone’s identity, although it is accomplished without much difficulty in many Hollywood movies, where all things are possible.

Today, in most cases, the challenge is that every piece of information that is reduced to bits and bytes is probably cached somewhere, ready to re-emerge and embarrass us at the most inopportune time.

A recent case in Australia is a good example. A recruitment company inadvertently exposed personal data from 2000-2001 on the Web, where it remained for at least a month. The data was stored in a customer relationship management (CRM) database and several spreadsheets.

As well as personal details about potential clients, sales people are quoted making derogatory comments about their targeted accounts. One prospective client is referred to, by name, as a "retard," and another as a "good for nothing."

According to reports in The Age newspaper, these individuals, who may have moved up the food chain at their respective companies by now (most of the companies still exist), "include large and small businesses, federal and state government agencies, non-profits and even several AFL teams."

Such an unfortunate episode is unlikely to win the errant company any friends, or enable them to gain influence with government movers and shakers.

CRM databases and spreadsheets are, of course, useful repositories for data about current and prospective clients, but it bears stating the obvious: They should not be replete with derogatory or personal comments that might prove offensive or upsetting to the objects of their affection, should they inadvertently see the light of day.

A client whose personal data has been exposed on the Web, with potentially adverse financial consequences, will not be mollified to learn that the security breach was accompanied by unflattering personal characterizations. And unlike Tuthmosis, he or she is most unlikely to wait decades before seeking retribution, with a plethora of lawyers and regulators at the ready to seek amends.

But if such data does exist, and you want to remove it, be sure to truly obliterate it.

Remember that hitting "delete" does not remove data for all time; it remains lurking in the ether, just waiting for primetime.

And history tends to repeat itself.