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Nefertiti
Nfrt-jjtj
Nfr.t = “the beautiful/perfect one” (fem.) | jj.tj = “she is come”
Nefertiti was the chief wife and queen of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (r. 1353–1336 BCE), who made the sun god Aten the supreme deity of ancient Egypt and changed his name to Akhenaten. Nefertiti’s full birth name, accordingly, celebrated the sun-disk by adding the name Nefer-nefru-aten (“Perfect/Beautiful is the perfection/beauty of Aten”). The translation of both Nefernefruaten and Nefertiti depends on the meaning of the first element—nfr. Tentatively vocalized as nefer, this word can mean both “beautiful” and “perfect,” hence the two possible meanings.
In the name Nefertiti, the adjective nfr is used as a noun meaning either “the beautiful one” or “the perfect one,” both with the feminine ending t. For a more precise reading, it is spelled out using four hieroglyphic signs that have these phonetic values: nfr, f, r, and t. The second element is the stative form of the verb jjj, “to come.” The stative is one of the most common Egyptian verb forms, one that Egyptian has in common with most of the Afro-Asiatic languages, including Akkadian and Hebrew. It is used to express a state of being, often as a result of a completed action (“to come” → “is come”), in which it is similar to the past participle in English. The pronominal suffix tj here indicates the feminine third-person singular. The name Nefertiti, then, translates as “the perfect/beautiful one is come.” Contemporary transcriptions in cuneiform indicate the name Nefertiti was pronounced something like Naftita.
Nefertiti Nfrt-jjtj Nfr.t = “the beautiful/perfect one” (fem.) | jj.tj = “she is come” Nefertiti was the chief wife and queen of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (r. 1353–1336 BCE), who made the sun god Aten the supreme deity of ancient Egypt and changed his name to Akhenaten. Nefertiti’s full birth name, accordingly, celebrated the sun-disk by adding the name Nefer-nefru-aten (“Perfect/Beautiful is the perfection/beauty of Aten”). The translation of both Nefernefruaten and Nefertiti depends on the meaning of the first element—nfr. Tentatively vocalized as nefer, this word can mean both “beautiful” and “perfect,” hence the two possible meanings. In the name Nefertiti, the adjective nfr is used […]
