"The beauty has come" - this is how the name of Nefertiti is translated. But where did she come from? What kind of country and people gave birth to such a beauty who became the queen of Egypt?
Yes, Nefertiti was not Egyptian. Most researchers have concluded that she is the daughter of the king of the state of Mitanni Tushratta and this was a dynastic marriage. But the state of Mitanni itself is almost forgotten, but it was a mighty kingdom that fought on equal terms with the Hittite state and Egypt and conquered the famous Assyria.
A very brief history
The Mitanni kingdom has a history of almost 500 years. It appeared, apparently, in the XVII century BC. and existed until the XII century BC. During the period of their highest prosperity, under King Shaushattar (about 1500 BC), the Mitannians strongly pushed the Hittites, conquered Assyria and reached the borders of Egypt. In general, they controlled the territory from Northern Syria to Southern Iraq (in modern terminology).
It was a strong state that played a significant role in the geopolitics of that era, but was very poorly located. On the one hand, the mighty Hittite state, on the other, the great Ancient Egypt, and in the south was Assyria, which, although it fell for some time in dependence on Mitanni, always posed a threat.
The kingdom fought desperately for almost four hundred years, but the result of the struggle on three fronts is of course a foregone conclusion. In 1250, the Mitannian kingdom was destroyed by the re-emerged Assyria, once dependent on Mitanni.
The kingdom ceased to exist, but as a legacy it left us one mystery and one beautiful story.
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True Aryans
No, don't think anything bad. The main population of Mitanni was made up of Caucasian-speaking Hurrians, similar in language to the Urarts and the peoples of the North Caucasus. The official languages of the state were Hurrian and Akkadian, which belong to the Semitic languages. But there were two interesting points.
Well-developed horse breeding and chariot business, even better than the Indo-Europeans of the Hittites. But it is known that it was the Indo-European tribes that differed in this, and such a high level of development of horse breeding among the Hurrians caused surprise. And when the Mitannian treatise on horse breeding was found, it turned out that all the special terminology of Indo-European origin, and not at all Hittite, but of some other kind.
In addition, all the kings of Mitanni had a middle name derived from the same unknown Indo-European language, and in the texts written in Hurrian and Akkadian they refer to gods from the Indo-European pantheon. That is, in this kingdom there was an unknown Indo-European substrate, and the representatives of this people apparently constituted the elite of the state, although they switched to the Hurrian language. So what language was it?
Oooh, this is where there was room for a wide variety of versions. The first were, of course, the Iranian and proto-Armenian versions, simply because the Hittite-Luwian version disappeared immediately, and the area of formation of the Iranian and Armenian languages next to Mitanni and they are also Indo-European. The name itself worked in favor of the proto-Armenian version - Mitanni (Meatanni, Maotanni) can literally be translated from Armenian as “one house (clan)”. However, further research showed that Armenian has nothing to do with this, and the name is just a coincidence. By the way, similar coincidences are found quite often in different languages and no less often serve as the basis for constructing funny pseudo-historical constructions.
The Iranian version lasted a little longer than the Armenian one, nevertheless there was some similarity, but it was also discarded, because a group of languages with which there was no doubt - Indo-Aryan was found. Moreover, the language of the people who lived in Mitanni is much older than all known Aryan languages, including the oldest of them, Sanskrit. They wrote and spoke in it already when the future Indo-Aryans did not even know about India.
The mystery is that it is not clear where this Aryan people came from in the center of Western Asia, where neither before nor after there was not a single representative of the Indo-Aryan group. Either they came from the north from the steppes, leaving no evidence of their progress, or, on the contrary, did not go anywhere, and thus confirms the origin of Indo-Europeans from Western Asia. Unknown. But the language itself in modern historiography is called "Mitannian Aryan". And that's a fact.
And of course, this country will forever remain in the annals because of one Mitannian princess, who has become the standard of female beauty.
The story of the girl Taduhippa
We know her by the name Nefertiti.
Computer reconstruction of the face of Queen Nefertiti.
In the XIV century BC. An alliance was concluded between Egypt and Mitanni, and to consolidate it, the 12-year-old daughter of the Mitannian king Tushratta was sent to Egypt, who was to marry Pharaoh Amenhotep III. The girl's name was Taduhippa.
The poor thing was not lucky, she did not have time to enter marriageable age, and the elderly groom died. According to ancient Egyptian traditions, all women in one way or another connected with the pharaoh were to be killed and buried with him. So we might never know about the beautiful Nefertiti.
But the girl was amazingly beautiful and the heir to the throne, the future Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, the famous Akhenaten managed to fall in love with her. He defended the girl and did not let her be killed, going against all traditions and prohibitions. And then he married her and loved her all his life. At the wedding, the princess, according to tradition, was given a new name - Nefertiti, which means "the beauty has come." The woman turned out to be not only beautiful, but also smart and in many ways helped her husband in his amazing reformatory activities.
Here is such a beauty, clever and it may well be that "a true Aryan".