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AKHENATEN/TUTANKHAMUN

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Bianca
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« Reply #1065 on: February 07, 2009, 10:16:50 pm »




             








Human-headed Winged Cobra



This figure of a winged cobra with human head was placed over the neck of the king's mummy, in the fifth group of amulets. It is made of sheet gold, embossed and chased. At the back is an eyelet so that it could be suspended from a linen-thread necklace.

A number of Egyptian goddesses, such as Wadjet, Meretseger, Werethekau, and Renenutet, were sometimes represented as winged serpents, but only Meretseger seems to be shown with a human head.

She was the tutelary deity of the Theban necropolis, where Tutankhamun's tomb lay. Her presence among the other head and neck amulets in the group would, however, be hard to understand. Furthermore, she was a late creation, whereas the other deities, whose figures were used as amulets
on the king's mummy, had belonged to the Egyptian pantheon since ancient times. Carter, in his slip catalogue of the objects found in the tomb, was unable to suggest any identification and merely wrote "significance unknown."

Although the precise identification of the figure remains problematical, some evidence of its associations seems to be offered by the other amulets in its group.

These amulets consist of five vultures, an erect cobra, or uraeus, and a pair of similar cobras joined together. The Middle Kingdom coffins generally depict, on the wall opposite the head of the deceased occupant, five vultures and five cobras, the latter usually represented erect, but one or more may be represented in repose.

The correspondence in the number of vultures suggests that there should also have been five cobras on the neck of the mummy. The human-headed winged cobra could be the fourth cobra, and the cobra in repose might be the fifth, assuming that it was misplaced by the embalmers. The texts on the coffins say that these vultures and cobras are to be put on the head of the dead person, but they do not mention their purpose.

Perhaps they were intended to be protectors of the five royal names.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2009, 10:19:53 pm by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #1066 on: February 07, 2009, 10:21:56 pm »





             








Flexible Head Bracelet
 


Thirteen bracelets were placed on the forearms of Tutankhamun's mummy, seven on the right and six
on the left.

Apart from these thirteen, there were other bracelets among the mummy wrappings and elsewhere in the tomb. This bracelet was placed on the right forearm, near the elbow. Its band is composed of nine rows of gold, faience, and glass beads threaded between six gold spacer bars that resemble the gold beads and keep the nine rows in position.

The clasp, which is like a pegged mortise and tenon joint, consists of three members: a hollow bar with a central slot, attached to one end of a gold cloison inlaid with a carnelian udjat eye, a cylindrical tenon that projects from the terminal at the free end of the band and fits into the slot, and a removable gold pin to hold the tenon in the slot.

On the back of the cloison there is the inscription "Lord of the Two Lands, image of Ra, Nebkheperura, ruler of order, given life like Ra for ever and ever."

The engraver has inverted the signs for the Two Lands. It is exceptional, but not without parallel, to find the epithet "ruler of order" after the king's throne name.

Both the eye and the cloison have figures of an uraeus with the double crown at the end opposite to the clasp.

The udjat eye consists of a human eye and eyebrow to which are added the markings on a falcon's head; it is thus symbolical of both Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, who is represented in human form, and the sky-god named Horus, who is represented either as a falcon or as a man with a falcon's head.

 The word udjat means "sound, healthy" and it was used by the ancient Egyptians as a name for the eye that Horus had lost when fighting with the god Seth to avenge the murder of Osiris. According to the myth, Seth tore the eye into fragments, but Thoth, the god of writing, wisdom, and magic, found the fragments and put them together. He restored the eye to health by spitting on it and then gave it back to Horus, and he, in turn, gave it back to life.

Filial piety was one of the virtues symbolized by the udjat eye: it could serve as a substitute for any of the offerings that an eldest son was supposed to provide daily at the tomb of his father. It was also thought to be a potent amulet against sickness and to be capable of restoring the dead to life, as it had done for Osiris.

Both the right and left eyes are represented in the udjat form, but the right is more common, perhaps through the influence of another myth, according to which the sun was the right, and the moon the left eye of the sky-god; the sun was regarded as the more powerful.

With the exception of the scarab, the udjat was the most popular amulet in ancient Egypt.
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« Reply #1067 on: February 07, 2009, 10:28:08 pm »




             








Necklace with Scarab with Falcon Wings Holding Infinity Symbol
 


Concealed beneath the twelfth layer of the linen bandages which enveloped the king's mummy were three necklaces with pendant-pectorals, one lying over the center of the thorax and the others supporting it on the left and right sides.

The middle pectoral bore the Eye of Horus flanked by a vulture and a cobra, the pectoral over the right side of the body was in the form of a falcon with wings curved upwards and a solar disk with uraeus on its head, and the third pectoral was the one shown here. It represents a winged scarab holding in its forelegs the lunar disk and crescent and in its back legs the basin.

Between the scarab and the basin, attached to each of them, are three gold bars.

The whole piece is made of solid gold decorated on the outer surface with cloisonne work of lapis lazuli, carnelian and turquoise colored glass.

In the lunar disk alone the gold is alloyed with silver.

All the details of the elements in its composition are finely engraved in the gold base on the inner surface.

It is evident that the pectoral represents the throne-name of Tutankhamun, Nebkheperure, but two of its elements are not the regular hieroglyphic signs used for writing the name.

The basin (heb) has been substituted for the basket (neb) and the lunar disk and crescent (iah) for the sun's disk (re). In both cases the substitutions can be explained as examples of artist's license, but the basin may have been intended to suggest the idea that the king would live to celebrate many festivals (heb).

Carter thought that the moon's disk was intended to counterbalance the sun's disk of the falcon necklace on the opposite side of the central pectoral. He remarks, however, that all these pectorals showed signs of friction and it seems unlikely that they would have been worn as a pair by the king during his lifetime, though he may well have worn them individually.

Chains of plaited gold wire connect the pectoral with two inlaid gold lotus flowers and a heart shaped pendant separated by two carnelian beads.

The pendant is inlaid with a cartouche bearing the king's name written in the normal manner and two uraei, one on each side of the cartouche.

Since the lotus flowers have five holes and the pectoral is provided with a similar number of eyelets at the tops of the wings, it is probable that the suspensory chains were originally intended to consist of five strands of gold beads.

The height of the pectoral is 9 cm and the width is 9.5 cm.
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« Reply #1068 on: February 07, 2009, 10:34:21 pm »




             








Necklace with Lunar Pectoral



Pectorals attached to necklaces and decorated with figures of deities and the symbols that were associated with them formed a high proportion of the jewelry found in Tutankhamun's tomb.

In this example the chains of the necklace consist of four rows of spherical and barrel-shaped beads made of gold, lapis lazuli, carnelian, feldspar and resin.

At the top of the necklace is a gold cloisonne counterpoise inlaid with a lotus flower and buds, two poppies, and two rosettes. Ten bead tassels, each ending in a faience corolla, are attached to a gold bar supported by the lotus flower.

The clasp consists of a tenon that projects from the left-hand corner of the counterpoise and slides into a mortise in the upper terminal bar of the necklace. The lower terminals, which are joined to the pectoral, bear the king's personal name and his throne name, flanked by uraei with outstretched wings embracing the shen sign.

The pectoral symbolizes the nocturnal journey of the moon across the sky.

At the base is the long, narrow, hieroglyphic sign for the sky, appropriately inlaid with blue lapis lazuli.

Beneath it are fringelike inlays of feldspar and lapis lazuli representing drops of moisture; they are added to the sky sign in the hieroglyphic writing of words meaning dew and rain. Lotus flowers and buds grow from the celestial waters; the golden bark seems to float above them.

This arrangement illustrates the convention regularly adopted by Egyptian artists to show two objects on the same plane when one object was behind another: the farther object was placed above the nearer. In this case the bark must be understood to be floating on top of the sky sign behind the flowers. So that it should be evident that the bark is conveying the moon and not the sun, the crescent is added to the moon's disk, again in accordance with convention.

Furthermore, the moon and crescent are made of electrum, a mixture of silver and gold and therefore lighter in color than pure gold or red carnelian, which were the materials normally used in representations of the sun.

The shape of bark itself with its incurved prow and stern is developed from the ancient Nile craft made of stems of papyrus lashed together. The design is the same as that of both the sun's bark and the bark used to convey the dead on funerary voyages to the sanctuary of Osiris at Abydos.

A thin cord, of which traces can be seen at the base of the moon's disk, was used to attach the pectoral to the wearer's clothing in order to keep it in position when worn. Its presence suggests that the necklace, like many of the other objects found in the cartouche-shaped box, was a personal possession worn by the king in his lifetime.



http://www.touregypt.net/cgi-bin/ksearch/ksearch.cgi?terms=The%20Tutankhamun%20Collection&display=25&p=3&showm=5&b=1&t=1&d=1&sort=Matches
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« Reply #1069 on: February 16, 2009, 08:06:55 am »









                                         Archaeologist opens tomb of King Tut






History.com
Feb. 16, 2009

On this day in 1923, in Thebes, Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter enters the sealed burial chamber of the ancient Egyptian ruler King Tutankhamen.

Because the ancient Egyptians saw their pharaohs as gods, they carefully preserved their bodies after death, burying them in elaborate tombs containing rich treasures to accompany the rulers into the afterlife. In the 19th century, archeologists from all over the world flocked to Egypt, where they uncovered a number of these tombs. Many had long ago been broken into by robbers and stripped of their riches.

When Carter arrived in Egypt in 1891, he became convinced there was at least one undiscovered tomb--that of the little known Tutankhamen, or King Tut, who lived around 1400 B.C. and died when he was still a teenager. Backed by a rich Brit, Lord Carnarvon, Carter searched for five years without success. In early 1922, Lord Carnarvon wanted to call off the search, but Carter convinced him to hold on one more year.

In November 1922, the wait paid off, when Carter's team found steps hidden in the debris near the entrance of another tomb. The steps led to an ancient sealed doorway bearing the name Tutankhamen. When Carter and Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb's interior chambers on November 26, they were thrilled to find it virtually intact, with its treasures untouched after more than 3,000 years. The men began exploring the four rooms of the tomb, and on February 16, 1923, under the watchful eyes of a number of important officials, Carter opened the door to the last chamber.

Inside lay a sarcophagus with three coffins nested inside one another. The last coffin, made of solid gold, contained the mummified body of King Tut. Among the riches found in the tomb--golden shrines, jewelry, statues, a chariot, weapons, clothing--the perfectly preserved mummy was the most valuable, as it was the first one ever to be discovered. Despite rumors that a curse would befall anyone who disturbed the tomb, its treasures were carefully catalogued, removed and included in a famous traveling exhibition called the "Treasures of Tutankhamen."

The exhibition's permanent home is the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. 
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« Reply #1070 on: February 20, 2009, 07:19:06 am »

                       
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« Reply #1071 on: February 20, 2009, 07:23:55 am »










                                             Who stole King Tut's crown jewels?


                            Not just the gold but also a very delicate part of his anatomy






GLENYS ROBERTS
30 October 2007
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On a dusty November morning the explorers made their way down the steep slope into the ancient
tomb in the eerie half-light.

Breathless with anticipation, they broke through the wall into the burial chamber itself. Then, as their eyes became accustomed to the dusk, they saw the glint of gold.

That was how, in 1922, the great Egyptologist Howard Carter and his wealthy sponsor, the fifth Earl
of Carnarvon, discovered the mummified body of the boy king Tutankhamun, who had lain undisturbed
in Egypt's Valley of the Kings for 3,000 years, surrounded by the treasures which had been buried with him.

 Someone violated King Tut's grave, taking his ribs and his ****.

The discovery was unprecedented and the news flashed round an astonished world. Within a few weeks, however, the world had a new reason for amazement, when Lord Carnarvon died of blood poisoning.

Ostensibly, the result of a mosquito bite aggravated by a shaving accident, it was blamed on the ancient Mummy's curse.

At the exact hour of the peer's death in Cairo the city's lights mysteriously went out, while back at home at the grand family castle, Highclere in Berkshire, his little dog Rosie let out a loud wail and breathed no more.

Ever since that day myth and supposition have surrounded the life and death of Tutankhamun. For, even though a new exhibition on the boy king is about to come to Britain, very little was known, until now, about the real person behind the treasure.

Now aided by modern science, the present Earl of Carnarvon, greatgrandson of the ill-fated explorer who spent £2million of the family fortune on exhuming the king, has embarked on a quest to piece together the true story of the boy's life and death.
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« Reply #1072 on: February 20, 2009, 07:25:06 am »










The extraordinary findings are revealed in a TV documentary which also brings to light that, though the hapless pharaoh was discovered intact, his grave has been mysteriously violated since Carter's dramatic find 85 years ago.

Not content with hacking out his ribs, someone in modern times - most likely the Second World War, when the tomb was unguarded - has also removed Tutankhamun's ****.

To understand why, it is first necessary to appreciate the new findings about the pharaoh himself.

Tutankhamun was born in the new Egyptian capital of Amarna on the Nile in 1342 BC. His father was the curious pear- shaped pharaoh Akhenhaten, whom some think introduced monotheism (the belief there is only one god) into Egyptian society as a result of finding Moses in the bullrushes.

Akhenhaten broke with the old Egyptian religion to build a brand new capital halfway to Cairo and installed his famous queen Nefertiti in a palace there.

According to hieroglyphic records, Nefertiti only bore her husband daughters. Now new finds among the ruins suggest Tutankhamun's mother was one of his father's secondary wives, a woman called Kiya, who lived in great style in her own wing in the palace.

Dramatically they also suggest that Kiya died in childbirth and that Akhenhaten and his queen Nefertiti wept copiously at this death in the family.

Having lost his mother, the little boy was brought up by his wetnurse and when his father died he was crowned king.

Tutankhamun was only nine at the time, so it seems safe to assume that there was an adult, probably military, power behind his coronation, who also encouraged him to marry his teenage sister as was Egyptian tradition.

The two are pictured together on a golden throne.

Blinded by so much gold, early explorers gave little thought to the more mundane artefacts in the pharaoh's tomb. Yet it is these, together with modern body scans, that seem to reveal what actually happened to Tutankhamun, who was dead by the age of 19.

From the grotesque body shapes on temple carvings and preliminary photos taken in 1926, experts hitherto imagined that he must have been a sickly weakling who succumbed to a genetic disease.
Or that he was murdered by an ambitious successor with a blow to the back of the head. But an examination of the contents of baskets and jars placed in the tomb yields quite another scenario.
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« Reply #1073 on: February 20, 2009, 07:26:05 am »











The ancient Egyptians, who believed that life and death were a seamless process, traditionally placed food and medicine in containers to succour the dead in the afterlife. In Tutankhamun's case these were full of medicinal herbs to cure headaches and fever, indicating he might well have been ill at the end of his days.

But the tomb was also full of canes.

These suggest that the young pharaoh may have suffered from a bad curvature of the spine that made it difficult for him to walk unaided.

Recent scans of the body, however, show that contrary to previous assumptions, Tutankhamun was not a weakling at all.

All the signs are that, not only was he able-bodied, he was an exceptional athlete.

Indeed, according to Dr Zahi Hawass, of the Supreme Council of Egyptian Antiquities, he seems to have been a fan of extreme sports.

Chariots buried with him, as well as gauntlets for holding chariot reins and body braces designed to protect his body, indicate that the boy pharaoh was a daring charioteer who must have taken his life in his hands every time he whipped his horses over the rough desert roads at more than 25 miles per hour .
There are shoulder clothes to shield him from the blazing sun and hundreds of arrows, some of which have clearly been used for hunting.

The final clue is revealed by a break in the bone just above the pharaoh's left knee. Modern technology shows that the damage was not done after death, but that the young king broke it in life, probably as a result of a hunting accident.

The fracture had no time to heal before Tutankhamun died, probably of an infection contracted when he tumbled from his chariot at speed, crushing his thigh bone and ripping open the flesh. Despite all local herbal cures, he did not survive.

Such startling new discoveries paint an entirely new picture of the life and death of the most famous pharaoh of them all.

The Royal Horticultural Society in Britain has also established, from the nature of the garlands that were placed round the king's neck for his funeral, exactly when this would have taken place.

Significantly the flowers included cornflowers, which bloom in the Nile Valley between March and April - evidence, it would seem, that he was buried in spring.

And working back 70 days from that date - the time it took for the ancient Egyptians to mummify a body - the pharaoh, it seems, would have been out hunting in the cooler days, towards the end of the year, probably delighted, before his fatal accident happened, to get back into his chariot again after the unbearably hot summer.

So what of the broken ribs and the pharaoh's member, which were both intact when Howard Carter first opened the tomb, but have mysteriously disappeared?

So valuable was the tomb that it has been guarded round the clock since its discovery.

However, there was one period when a modern grave robbery might have taken place. During the Second World War when the Egyptian desert was reduced to a battleground.

The latest tests indicate quite clearly that someone must have used this opportunity to deliberately cut away the pharaoh's ribs in order to get to the jewelled collar he was wearing and which was glued fast to the body by the ancient embalmer's sticky black resin.

As for his ****, if it was not ground down by local robbers to use as primitive ****, perhaps it was stolen by a soldier as a memento of his war years in the desert.

If so, it may yet come to light.

The extraordinary story of Tutankhamun is not over yet.
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« Reply #1074 on: February 20, 2009, 07:26:55 am »







QUOTE:


"Akhenhaten, whom some think introduced monotheism (the belief there is only one god) into

Egyptian society as a result of finding Moses in the bullrushes."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


CHRONOLOGICALLY INCORRECT!!!


IT MAY HAVE BEEN THE OTHER WAY AROUND IF, INDEED, MOSES EXISTED AT ALL.....
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« Reply #1075 on: February 25, 2009, 09:55:55 pm »










                                       Where Did Queen Nefertiti Come From?







Queen Nefertiti is one of two most famous queens of ancient Egypt, the other being Cleopatra. Her beauty, revealed in her famous limestone portrait busts - the loveliest masterpieces of Egyptian sculpture - has made her widely known around the world. Yet, in spite of her fame, historians are not unanimous about her origins. There appears to have been a deliberate attempt in ancient Egypt to erase the existence of her memory due to reasons that will be elaborated in this article.

Nefertiti is a mysterious figure. Some say, who she was, or who her parents were, is unknown and that she was just a commoner. Others have suggested that she was a Hittite princess, or that she was a Mittani princess from a neighboring kingdom, or a daughter of Ay, one the viziers to the pharaoh. However clarifying the matter would help to clarify other significant aspects of ancient Egyptian civilization.

An aspect of genetics, that appears not to have been given the attention it deserves, can help resolve this mystery. It is the elongated skull or the dolichocephalic heads that many members of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty possessed. One of the reasons that historians ignored this feature at first is because some thought that it was just a feature of stylized art. Some have suggested that elongated skulls are not an unusual feature and prevail in some African and Nordic tribes. However here, it is not a question of just a long skull that some Africans or ancient Nordics could possess. Those are within the limits of normal human variation albeit on the longer side. Here we are talking of a skull shape that goes well beyond the normal human shape, to the point that biologists have attributed it to rare diseases, some even to extraterrestrial sources. Studies have shown that it is a rare occurrence indeed. Certain African tribes such as the Mangbetu and the Zande produce long skulls by binding the heads of young but this latter type of elongation produces quite a different effect. Moreover studies on Egyptian royal mummies have proved conclusively that the royal Egyptian dolichocephalic head is not a result of binding but rather a genetic family trait. The skull shape is so pronounced that many initially thought it was just an artistic feature until the actual mummies with such skulls were discovered. Some modern doctors postulated that this might be a result of a rare deforming disease. However that too has been ruled out since the trait is shared in the family by inheritance. Research work by David Childress in Peru, Adriano Forgione in Malta and Andrew Collins, (Andrew Collins. Gods of Eden. London: Headline Book, Pub. 1998) has led to a greater knowledge of the elongated skull. The first is that this is a rare anomaly that has been found since ancient times in other parts of the world as well. If those possessing the elongated skull belong to a certain race that has now become extinct cannot be said with certainty. Such skulls have been discovered not only in Egypt but also in Peru, Malta and the Mittani belt of northern Iraq and Syria and those possessing such skulls appear to have been associated with the royal or priestly classes. Except for Peru the other four locations are in close geographical proximity therefore the possibility that all of them arise from the same genetic source cannot be ruled out. The genetic source of the Peru skulls may also be the same since there does appear to be an old world origin of American civilizations.
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« Reply #1076 on: February 25, 2009, 09:57:20 pm »









Nefertiti too possessed such a skull and therefore the possibility of her being a commoner becomes unlikely. The second speculation that she was a Hittite princess is also ruled out by reference to available historical records. Rather she appears to be a Mittani princess daughter of the Mittani king Dashrath. The confusion has arisen because in historical records the Mittani have been confused with Hittites on occasions. Both Hittites and the Mittani belong to the Indo-European speaking Aryan races.

The Mitanni were a people of Aryan origin who ruled a vast kingdom with a largely Hurrian population in West Asia in the second millennium BC, for a brief historical epoch, sometime after 1500 BC. It was a feudal state led by a warrior nobility in which apparently the royal women were trained along with men in horse riding, chariot racing and warfare. This training was provided for the eventuality that they might be called upon to rule if widowed. Such accounts are found in the Puranas and Vedas, ancient historical records of the community that the Mittani kings belonged too. The Rig-Veda, an ancient scripture of Mittani rulers recounts the story of a warrior, Queen Vishpla, who lost her leg in battle, was fitted with iron prosthesis, and returned to battle. The Mittani kingdom in Syria was a foreign and brief one lasting for about 150 years. During their brief reign the relationship they established with Egypt has left a significant mark in history. It was a mutually beneficial alliance that permitted the Mittani to continue in foreign surroundings and provided a buffer to the Egyptians against Hittite incursions. The Mittani kingdom was eventually weakened by Hittites and returned to Syria in approximately 1330 BC.

While they ruled in the area, the Mittani Royal house developed close amicable relations with their western neighbors, the Egyptian Royal house through intermarriages as well as financial, military and religious alliances. For a period they became as one family. There appear to have been some alliance amongst the priestly class as well. The daughter of King Artatama was married to Thutmose IV, Akhenaten's grandfather. His son, King Shuttarna in the early fourteenth century BC sent his daughter Kiluhepa to Egypt for a marriage with Pharaoh Amenhotp III. And the daughter of the King Dasharatha, the son of Shuttarna, Princess Tadukhipa, became the queen of Akhenaten. The Egyptian Pharaohs also introduced horses and chariots in Egypt because of their relationship with the Mittanis.
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« Reply #1077 on: February 25, 2009, 09:58:32 pm »









The archeological finds at Amarna shed light on the relationship between the two royal families. In one Amarna letter, written to Akhenaten's mother, Tiye, my sister, the Mitannian king complains that Akhenaten has not sent gifts that his father had promised, "I had asked your husband for statues of solid cast gold, but your son has sent me plated statues of wood. With gold being dirt in your son's country, why have they been a source of such distress to your son that he has not given them to me? Is this love?" Dushrath wrote to Tiye instead of to the pharaoh himself because he was more comfortable in writing to his sister than the king. The letter is hardly a diplomatic or royal letter. It is a family communication.

The origin of queen Tiye, like that of Nefertiti are also shrouded in controversy. It is very possible that the priests did not approve of the Egyptian family connection with Mittanis. They had good reasons for it. Primarily it was the introduction of foreign gods and unorthodox customs into Egypt as a result of these foreign queens. Queen Tiye too has been recognized for her unorthodoxy like Nefertiti. Historians have however admitted that there appears to be a relationship between Tiye and Nefertiti. There was. Tiye was Nefertiti’s aunt – the sister of her father Dashrath. The Amarna letters prove the close family ties between Dashrath and Tiye. Another reason for the discomfort of the priesthood was that before the appearance of the Mittanis, the priestly clan often supplied brides to the pharaohs. That helped them to maintain their power in Egypt, but this new source of royal brides must have been a source of much anguish to the priestly clan. They may have responded by claiming that the new brides were not royal but just from a common tribal source that had managed to grab a neighboring kingdom. This last assumption may have arisen from their ignorance of Mittani royal roots that have a history perhaps longer than even the Egyptian civilization as illustrated by their sacred texts, the Vedas.

Some historians have claimed that Tiye was the daughter of Yuaa, a priest of Mittani origin that her mother Tuaa, was of royal descent, from the royal family of Mittani. If this latter was the case then it would make Tiye a cousin of king Dasharath rather than a blood sister. However, the utter informality of communications between Dasharath and Tiye, along with historical records indicating that the Mittani kings had provided the Egyptian pharaohs with their daughters as queens suggests that Tiye was a blood sister of Dashrath, the Mittani princess Kiluhepa. In either case the Mittani royal origin of Tiye, and by extension that of Nefertiti appears to be of little doubt. Both bore a resemblance as revealed from their statues. Physical resemblance of relatives within the Mittani and Egyptian households appears to have been accentuated by inbreeding to the point that even Nefertiti and her husband bore a striking resemblance to each other. As compared to humans of other races, Akhinaten appeared effeminate and some suggested that he had no sexual organs because a **** statue of him depicted him without any. Akhinaten fathered many children and the absence of sexual organs in his statue is more likely a result of modesty. The ancient Egyptians were not as open about male frontal nudity as the Greeks were in a later civilization. In reality Akhinaten may have been rather well hung. However there is a possibility that his sexual chromosomes were XXY rather than XY, a result of inbreeding. The possibility arises because of the speculation that the elongated skull is primarily a feature imparted by the X chromosome and that its presence in males is only likely with an extra X. However a confirmation of this last hypothesis must await further advances in genetic science.
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« Reply #1078 on: February 25, 2009, 09:59:50 pm »









Betsy Bryan, a professor of Egyptian art and archaeology at Johns Hopkins, found a statue of Tiye, Akhinaten’s mother, at the Mut temple. When the statue was removed it revealed itself as a queen of Amenhotep III, whose name appears repeatedly on the statue's crown. Schwappach-Shirriff curator of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in California told Discovery News that it is significant that the statue was found buried within a temple. " It shows that she indeed had strong religious ties because she was found in a temple ” she explained. Women at the time could not serve as priestesses, but both Bryan and Schwappach-Shirriff think the emerging evidence, such as this statue, indicate that at least some women may have been more central to certain Egyptian religions than previously thought. This new role of women in Egypt appears to be due to the foreign Mittani origin of these queens.

The Mittani royal families appears to be the source from which elongated skulls arrived in the Egyptian royal family. Thutmose III and Thutmose IV grandfather of Akhinaten did not possess such a skull as revealed by their statues at Luxor and Cairo Museums but his grandmother Queen Mutemwiya , Great Royal Spouse of King Thutmose IV and royal daughter of Artatama I, King of Mittani probably did. The Mittani queens were given new Egyptian names after their marriages to the Pharaohs. The change in names added to the fact that the Pharaohs had more than one wife has lead to the confusion as to which is which. Add to this the propaganda circulated by the priests who were the principal scribes of the time and the clouding of history becomes certain. The Pharaoh Akhinaten, who too possessed the elongated head, could have got this trait from his father, mother or grandmother. His daughters and son King Tutankhamen possessed the same skull as well. There was considerable inbreeding in the royal families and this tends to establish a genetic trait. The elongated skull was probably a common feature of the Egyptian and Mittani royal households and this would have lead them to consider that they had become one family. Akhinaten had two wives Kiya and Nefretiti and scholars are unsure as to which of the two is the Mittani Princess. However, if one were to go by the elongated skull then it has to be Nefretiti who was the Mittani princess. Add to this the fact that she was a warrior queen who has been shown participating in chariot races and wielding weapons. She was not the typical Queen of Egypt. She was shown in very prominent positions in the Amarna art, and has even been shown in the warlike position of the Pharaoh - grasping prisoners' hair and breaking their skulls with a mace. Order in ancient society was maintained by ruthless punishments. This was very unlike Egyptian princesses but not unexpected of a Mittani Aryan one.
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« Reply #1079 on: February 25, 2009, 10:03:34 pm »









In ancient times it was not uncommon for queens and princesses to have a personal nurse who stayed with the princesses well into adulthood often accompanying them into a new household after their marriage. The nurse often played the role of a substitute mother if the real mother was not available. If a princess came from the Mittani kingdom, it is expected that she be not sent alone to a foreign land but along with maids and her personal nurse. That is the least a royal father could do when sending his daughter to another country. Did such a nurse accompany Akhineten’s Mittani wife into Egypt? One lady in the palace did claim to be her nurse. It was Tey who never claimed to be the queen’s mother but did claim to be her nurse. Tey is also known to have had her own daughter Mutnodmjet born from a marriage to the prominent Egyptian Aye. Nefertiti would have regarded the daughter of Tey in a sisterly way and one inscription reads, "Mutnodjmet, may she live like Re forever, sister of the King's Great Wife. Therefore, it is clear that Nefertiti regarded her Nurse’s daughter as her sister. There is little doubt that Mutnodjmet was Aye’s daughter because there are prominent depictions of the two together. The fact that Nefertiti had a personal nurse, who is well known in Egypt, is also evidence against her being from a common or unknown background. If it was claimed by some that Nefertiti’s background is not known in spite of the fact that her nurse continued to be present as the wife of a prominent personality is an indication that a deliberate attempt has been made to ignore Nefertiti’s background. Aye even became a Pharaoh at a later stage after the death of the last heir of the eighteenth dynasty.

There are other bits of evidence that support the theory that Nefertiti was a Mittani princess. Nefertiti means the beautiful one who has come, signifying a princess from afar. During his rule Akhinaten probably due to the Aryan influence of his mother and wife attempted to establish a new religion, that of monotheistic worship with the Sun as the symbol of God’s power, to the utter dismay of the priesthood. This attempt resulted in an open revolt by the priestly class.

The striking resemblance between Nefertiti’s portraits and those of her young husband has prompted some scholars to suggest that she was his half, or even his full sister. Brother and sister marriages were common in Egypt. But we know from historical records that this was not the case here. Rather if the princess were the daughter of Dushratta, then her aunt would be the mother, and her grandmother the sister of the grandmother of the King, a relationship even closer than cousins and there would be nothing strange in their resembling each other as brother and sister.
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