18 november 2024
John Bjarne Grover
The righthand photo was suggested by the lower dove.
20 november 2025:
It is only two days later that I discover what the dove told: The righthand photo (which I took after I had taken the lefthand first) is of course a detail from the tomb of Nefertari, the wife of pharaoh Ramses II who reigned in Egypt probably around when Moses wrote his five books (the Torah, the Pentateuch) which according to Johann Maier ('Jüdische Geschichte in Daten') would have been around 1250-1230 BC. (Other estimates vary quite a lot). Here is the Nefertari image for comparison with the photo from yesterday in an excerpt extended a little further rightwards:
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It is seen that the lower dove is the bird between the hands of Nefertari, above the loudspeaker mouth (and the semicircle sign called a 'loaf'). Nefertari was seemingly good at playing the 'senet', as it was called.
The image of Nefertari is from the first annex room which could be reached after having decended down the entrance stairway - here from one angle and here from another angle. These can be compared with the larger original photo of mine. Nefertari is wearing a vulture crown with a 'shuti' (double plumes) decoration.
The cartouche showing the name of Nefertari (here apparently 'Nefertari Merimut') should thereby in my photo (as suggested by the dove between her hands) be approximately the following:
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The upper part of the cartouche I could not solve - could be it is a title or epithet of some sort -
the rest seems to be her name on the form 'Nefertari Merimut':
𓄤 = F35 = 'nfr'
𓇋 = M17 = 'j'
𓏏 = X1 = 't'
𓂋 = D21 = 'r'
𓏮 = Z4A = 'i'
𓈖 = N35 = 'n'
𓈘 = N36 = 'mr(y)'
𓏏 = X1 = 't'
The cartouche can also be spotted in more detail in the mid part of the iron shape which also seems to show Nefertari herself in front of a mirror:
This article seems to suggest that the top glyph in the cartouche is a 𓅑 = G15 = 'vulture with flagellum' - however, the 'flagellum' is not easily spotted, and the vulture is also dubious but perhaps possible. It here probably could refer to the 'vulture crown'.
Most of the glyphs in the cartouche are well present in the iron plate part of my photo - the two loaves (X1 = 't') are less visible. The 𓄤 = F35 = 'nfr' which seems to depict a 'heart and windpipe' could be seen as the heart and windpipe of the mirror image of Nefertari (in my photo). As it is seen, even the vulture crown and the double plumes can be spotted on the head of Nefertari. This tells of the magic in hieroglyphs - as they (as here) can show not only the phonetics but the image itself as well, such as the larger view can suggest (with the loudspeaker below and maybe a sort of visual sort of perception above). It may have been this which the friendly dove wanted to show me.
Could be this is what a 'cartouche' really is - rather than strictly speaking a socalled 'royal name'?
21 november 2025:
More generally, a cartouche could be seen as a 'resurrection' (within the enlarged circle ending in a tangent) of the life which is subjected to historic decay (see the rust on the vertical iron shape) by way of the glyphs - their form and meaning - that converge on the contents of the cartouche, which could be by a certain talent or more generally faculty which also is inheritable. Hence when the ancient societies chose able persons to the leadership, such as a normal presidential election of our days, and these abilities tended to be inheritable, royal families on the throne developed - and abilities tended perhaps thereby to become secondary. It is by the resurrection in the cartouche - if one thinks of all essential qualities being symbolically or rather sensorially recreated there - that the glyphs are conceived as hieroglyphs, because they transcend history and its decay. Esthetic logic (say, of a certain work) could resemble such 'resurrection in the cartouche'. 'Royal' names then probably came to be of the sort which could go in such a cartouche - if those cartouches really came to refer to royal names rather than to the semiotic properties of the cartouche-glyphs themselves.
© John Bjarne Grover
Rachmaninov Prelude in G-flat major Op. 23 No. 10 by Yuja Wang (from this page under this page).
On the web 18 november 2025
Last updated 14 december 2025
