There is some disagreement about how to read this word and its ideogram
; the German tradition (cf. the Wörterbuch) tends to read
nt or
nwt, while Loprieno reads
nʔt with an unwritten but phonemic glottal stop, and the Anglo-American tradition (cf. Gardiner, Allen, Faulkner) reads
njwt. Gardiner supports the latter reading with reference to
n(jw)tjw?(“those belonging to the lower heaven”) from the Pyramid Texts, derived from
nj(w)t(“lower heaven”). The German readings are supported by a writing of
for the name of the
goddessTefnut (
tfnwt or
tfnt) in the
Amduat IV 48, as well as by the use of the word in place of
nt in writings of
ḥnt(“pelican”). The reading of
nwt is apparently supported by
Diodorus Siculus, who claims that Thebes
was named after Osiris’s mother, presumably the goddess
Nut (
nwt). Loprieno’s reading with a glottal stop is supported by the Hebrew rendering
נֹא(nōʾ) of the name of Thebes as well as its Akkadian transcription
𒉌𒀪(né-eʾ, ni-iʾ). Other evidence includes the very late variant writing
n(j)wtkꜣrṯ for Ancient Greek
Ναύκρατις(Naúkratis) and the (late) Greek rendering of the word as
νη(nē) in the name of the pharaoh
Psusennes.
