The Argyle Sweater by Scott Hilburn for January 07, 2012

Ouch! Better make that a BIG scrolly heart…..those Hieroglyphics take up a lot of room.

Oh, and Ramses, one other little problem…. um…. you do know Akhenaten’s gonna beat you up for that?

Isn’t that supposed to be Nefertiti? Either way it gonna be painful.

Oops! Wrong Pharoah. My bad. It’s still gonna hurt, though.

That would be Ramesses II and her name was Nefertari, so you are spelling both wrong.

The reason I know just a little about ancient Egypt is that I adopted a cat (pictured left) from a shelter 2 years ago and I wanted to give her an exotic name.I thought Cleopatra was too common, so I picked a more obscure name.None of my relatives liked the name, so my cat will forever be known as Kittycat, but her friends call her Kitty Kitty.

It sphinks!

Susan, you’re thinking of Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten

JP — You’re right, of course. I usually see this one spelled Nefertari and my eyes, in the wee hours, saw Nefretiri as Nefretiti.

What with spelling variations and no vowels, those ancient Egyptians

(Oops! Hit submit too soon.) …had to be really careful when they were passing notes in study hall.

And even if we did know for sure how to pronounce it, we would still have trouble agreeing on a spelling. Most scholars believe the first syllable of Rameses’ name was pronounced neither “RAH” nor “RAY”, but something akin to the sound a cat makes when choking on a bullfrog. There is a minority, however, that believes it is pronounced more like the sound of a bullfrog choking on a cat. Personally, I recommend the spelling “rrrRRrhAiyMOhSSEHs” for simplicity’s sake, but for some reason I’ve been having trouble convincing many Egyptologists to agree with me.

I lived in Chesapeake Virginia for 18 years.Not too far away, on the Eastern Shore a family whose name was spelled Enroughty started pronouncing it “Darby” to distinguish it from another family. There are other examples:http://articles.dailypress.com/1993-04-18/news/9304180225_1_indian-names-place-names-powhatan-indians

Rockngolfer: Not too common, there were only seven, all 30th dynasty, and only the last particularly famous. :-)

Night-Gaunt: Not that I recall, certainly not names, hearts, and/or scrolls. For that matter, despite their use of maces in battle, they never figured out the purpose of the brain and discarded it in the mummification process while other organs were kept in canopic jars in the tomb.