Finger ring, likely belonging to Queen Tiye

The design on the bezel of this stirrup ring has been proposed to form an ideogram for Akhenaten and Nefertiti as Shu and Tefnut, respectively, the children of Atum-Re and the parents of the sky and earth, represented by the solar disk above and the land sign below. Exploration of Heliopolitan elements in the Amarna theology seemed to warrant this interpretation, in which the crouching king is interpreted as Shu and the queen as Tefnut. The correlation between Nefertiti and Tefnut was thought to have been established independently based on similarities between Nefertiti’s distinctive blue crown and a sphinx headdress believed to belong to Tefnut. However, a number of more recent studies argue that the headdress attributed to Tefnut and considered similar to Nefertiti’s blue crown cannot be established as Tefnut’s, undermining any notion of a systematic connection between the goddess and the queen.

Looking again at this bezel, there are no indicators distinctive of Shu and Tefnut. In fact, the figure of the king (for neb, ruler), with a maat feather on his knee and the sun disk above, is a well-attested form of the monogram for Nebmaatre, the throne name of Amenhotep III. The sign at the bottom of the oval is oddly thick if meant to be the land sign, and has interior ripples. Among the sealings and rings excavated at the palace city of Amenhotep III at Malqata, this watery oval is a substitute for the canal sign (see 12.180.403) read mer (beloved). Who then is the female? Mut has been suggested, yet the female wears only the usual two-feather crown and holds the fly whisk carried by queens, not the ankh that divinities bestow. Given these features, the queen ought to be Tiye, in her typical crown, and we should read the formula as "Tiye, beloved of Amenhotep III." The ring was excavated at Amarna, where Tiye was resident for the latter part of her life.

A few rings with names of Amarna royalty were made of this pink-tinged gold.