We are all familiar with the famous bust of Nofretete (Nefertiti in neo-Egyptological garble).
Who was this woman? Who was she?
Mark Rose in "Where's Nefertiti?", a book review of Joann Fletcher's The Search for Nefertiti: The True Story of an Amazing Discovery, William Morrow & Co., comments on the alleged find of Nefertiti's mummy in tomb KV35, where Joann Fletcher has allegedly identified the "Younger Woman" in that tomb as Nefertiti. Priority to this identification is disputed by a certain Marianne Luban, who is thus equally in error in falsely identifying this mummy as Nefertiti, since the mummy is a male according to DNA evidence (En Route to the Truth by Mark Rose).
Truly, most of these accounts of Nefertiti's life, identity and mummy are more or less empty speculations, as also Joyce Tyldesley's book, Nefertiti: Egypt's Sun Queen, and quite typical for Egyptology, where rampant speculation is the rule, rather than the exception.
Mark Rose writes:
"The mummy in question was found in 1898 in a sidechamber in the tomb of Amenhotep II, which is designated KV35 in the numbering system for the Valley of the Kings. With the "Younger Woman" (as it is known) were two other mummies (a male youth and the "Elder Woman). All three had been partially dismantled by looters. In another sideroom were nine royal mummies that had been taken from their original tombs and been rewrapped and moved to KV35 by 20th Dynasty priests. Two other mummies, that of Amenhotep II and a unidentified male, and two skulls complete KV35's human inventory."
Who are the mummies found in Tomb KV35 and why do the Egyptologists have so much difficulty in identifying who they were?
To answer that question we first have to correct the Egyptologist's false transcription of Nefertiti's name, originally rendered as Nofretete and now given in "neo-Egyptology" as Nefertiti. Both versions are hopelessly wrong.The correct transcription of the hieroglyphic name of Nefertiti, as we have discovered, is in fact Chetite, i.e. the name means the Hittite Queen, a name which makes sense since at this time there is a flurry of letter exchanges to and from this region, the so-called "Amarna Letters". (Explanation: the hieroglypgh NFR as in NEFERtiti means "breath in the throat", so it is not meant to write NFR out as part of the name, but rather to render it as a "rasping throaty breath" sound.)
We know that Echnaton (=Akhenaten, who is King Saul) obtained a Queen of the Amazons from around the Black Sea as his wife (this was Nefertiti). She was the HITTITE QUEEN. Indeed, when Saul died, it was Nefertiti, under the name Ankhesenamun (= Ahinoam, A(nkh)-he-noam) who asked for a Hittite son to be King of Egypt:
"According to Hittite history, it was during the seige of Carchemish that Suppiluliumas received a message from widowed Queen Ankhesenamun, asking him for one of his sons to be king of Egypt."
Nefertiti was the wife of Echnaton (neo-Egyptological Akhenaten), both wrongly transcribed. Echnaton is actually King Saul of the Bible. Echnaton is Ish-Naton "father Nathan" and his (i.e. Saul's) son Jonathan is "young Nathan", Jo-Naton, so that these were Nathan Sr. and Nathan Jr. One could also view the names as being old (n)Aton and young Aton. Nathan in Hebrew means "gift of God" and compares to Adonis or Adonija.
The name "Saul" was applied biblically to the "Sun King" because Saul is an Indo-European term for "sun", as in the Latvian term Saule meaning "sun". King Saul viz. Echnaton viz. Akhenaten was a sun worshipper and became known to us as the first monotheistic king for this solar worship, which was presumably imported by his Hittite wife.
Nefertiti (correctly "Chetite") is rendered in the Bible as Ahinoam ("daughter of Ahi"), and Ahi was the Egyptian vizier, a Hittite, now transcribed as Ay:
"Nefertiti's origins are confusing. It has been suggested ... that Tiy was also her mother. Another suggestion is that Nefertiti was Akhenaten's cousin. Her wet nurse was the wife of the vizier Ay, who could have been Tiy's brother. Ay sometimes called himself "the God's father," suggesting that he might have been Akhenaten's father-in-law."
As we have discovered, Ay is equivalent to the Biblical priest Ahimaaz, who was the father of Ahinoam (Biblical scholars err in thinking there are two different personages: Ahimaaz, the father of Ahinoam, and also Ahimaaz (Achimas) the son of Zadok - both are the same):
"Ahimaaz: 1. The father Ahinoam, the wife of Saul (1 Sam. 14:50).... 2. The son and successor of Zadok in the office of highpriest (1 Chr. 6:8, 53). On the occasion of the revolt of Absalom he remained faithful to David, and was of service to him in conveying to him tidings of the proceedings of Absalom in Jerusalem (2 Sam. 15:24-37; 17:15-21). He was swift of foot, and was the first to carry to David tidings of the defeat of Absalom, although he refrained, from delicacy of feeling, from telling him of his death (2 Sam. 18:19-33)."
Noam in Hebrew means "pleasant, gentle, sweet, kind, and tender" and noam is actually the "male" version of no'omi, i.e. Naomi, so that a later Biblical gender change has occurred in this name. Nefertiti is translated similarly by the Egyptologists as "the beautiful one". Ahinoam is translated as "brother of pleasantness" which of course can not be right since this is a female. Accordingly, the name of the Hittite Queen was NAOMI "the pleasant one".
Biblical scholars also err in thinking that there are two Ahinoams, i.e. Naomis, one Ahinoam as the wife of Saul and Ahinoam of Jezreel (Israel) as the wife of David. Obviously, these are one and the same person, as David took the wife of Saul (Nefertiti) into his court upon Saul's death.
Hence, it is quite clear from the above analysis that the "Elder Woman" [Mummy 61070, as cataloged by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo] from tomb KV35 is Nefertiti, as correctly suggested by Susan E. James in her 2003 KMT article (Susan E. James, In a "Secret Chamber" in the Valley of the Kings: Dueling "Nefertitis"!, KMT, a Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, 2003, Vol 14(3), pp. 22-29).
That mummy is not, as generally and erroneously believed to be, Queen Tiye, the wife of Amenhotep III. Rather the Elder Woman in KV35 is Naomi, the Hittite Queen, known to us as Nofretete or Nefertiti.
We also make here an aside on the only female Pharaoh: We agree with Donald P. Ryan that the reddish-blonde haired mummy of a woman found on the floor of Tomb 60 is Hatshepshut, together with her half-sister Neferura, the other female mummy found there. According to our research Hatshepshut is the Biblical Deborah who is called the woman of Lapidoth, a term erroneously assumed by some to be her husband, but elsewhere the term Lapidoth is correctly interpreted as "woman of fiery spirit", and is thus a reference to her red hair. Ramses II was also red-haired. The Pharaohs of Egypt definitely did not originally come from Egypt.
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