From "Solomon, Falcon of Sheba" by Ralph Ellis, beginning on page 126:

"While it would appear that the mother of Jesus was following in these ancient Egyptian traditions, there is another section of the New  Testament evidence that again points towards Egypt....

....Mary Magdalene has been given some bad press in the Bible, and this was probably due to a strong priestly desire to distance her from Jesus - it was too embarassing to admit that she was Jesus' wife, let alone contemplate the possibility that she was his sister too.   But some of this bad press may actually have been derived from a subtle and deliberate mistranslation of a particular verse in the gospel of Luke:

      And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils.   Luke 8:2

          But this is not the only possible translation of this vers; it could also be taken to read:

         And a certain woman who had worshipped blinding (strong) winds, Mary, named (after the) Seven Tower out of which went god (winds).

   The word for 'healed' (theraputae) can mean 'worshipped' and the term for 'evil spirits' (ponerous pneuma) could easily become 'blinding winds'.    The reason for Mary, in her guise as a much later 'Queen of Sheba', being associated with whirlwinds (the jinn of the Koran) will be given later.   The term for 'devils'  (daemons) can be a reference to 'god' or even the jinn whirlwinds once more - in fact, the latter are still called dust-devils to this day.

         More important, however, is the fact that Mary Magdalene can be seen as being associated with both a tower and the number seven.   The name Magdalene can be literally translated from the Greek as meaning 'tower' and, as we have already seen, this association between the terms 'tower' and 'seven' is present in a famous Biblical quotation:

      Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against they rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the Tower of Seven  even unto the border of Ethiopia.   Ezekiel 29:10

       Just to review the explanations from chapter III, both of these words have been directly transliterated out of the original Egyptian:  the Magdalene 'tower' has been taken from the Egyptian word maktal or magdjal  (glyphs) meaning 'tower', while the number seven has been derived from the Egyptian word sefekh (glyphs) meaning 'seven'.

  So, Ezekiel's 'Tower of Seven' is none other than the Egyptian 'Magdal of Sefekh', the same title that is now being associated with Mary Magdalene.   The Tower of Sefekh was historically seen to be a prime symbol of Egypt and because of this notoriety it has already been identified with the Great Pyramid (the Great Tower) of Egypt.   The number seven is also translatable as Sheba, as this is one of the prime Hebrew meanings for this word.

Malcolm:  To understand where 'Seven' comes from, we need to go back to page 57 of Ellis's book:

     "If the great entrance door to the Great Pyramid was unbolted and opened on the seventh day, and if the door itself was considered to be the 'Great Door of Heaven' - the divine portal that led into the nether world of the Djuat, the land of the gods and the dead - then it is axiomatic that sefekh, the Egyptian term for unbolting a door and the number seven, would have become intimately associated with the Egyptian word seba, meaning the Great Door of Heaven.    The Seba (glyphs)  would have been s-sefekh (glyphs) (unbolted) on the Sefekh (glyphs) (seventh or Shabbeth) day.  This is indeed what is found, and in the translation from the Egyptian into Hebrew, the word for the number 'seven' became associated more with seba than with sefekh - hence the word for 'seven' in Hebrew is seba, not sefekh.

       But the original use of the word sefekh (glyphs) , as a term for unbolting the Great Door, was not entirely lost even within the Hebrew language; and I can confidently assert this because the association of this word with the Great Pyramid was retained in the Biblical book of Ezekiel:

       Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against they rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the   tower of Syene     even unto the border with Ethiopia.   Ezekiel 29:10.

         By the era of Ezekiel, the Israelites had been away from Egypt for hundreds of years, and their former homeland had now become the scapegoat for each and every misfortune that the Israelites encountered.      This verse is one of many oaths against the newly despised land of Egypt.

       It may not be immediately apparent what the quote is trying to say, because some daft translator has interpreted the 'tower' as being called Syene.    The Gideon Bible has taken this obfuscation one step further by saying that the land was laid waste 'from Migdol to Aswan'!      What a tangled web we weave....

        The truth of the matter is that the Gideon Bible's city of 'Migdol' was not a town but a 'tower', just as the King James Bible correctly translates - migdol (Hebrew letters) means tower in Hebrew.     The problem with the King James' version of this verse is that the word Syene is very badly transliterated into the English.    The usual Hebrew pronunciation for this word is actually 'Seven' (Hebrew letters) or 'Sheven' (Hebrew letters).       (Note the mixing of the 's' and 'sh' consonants once more.) 

        The tower in question is, of course, not really the 'Tower of Seven'; it is more correctly translated as the 'Tower of Sefekh' - but the verse is using he Hebrew version of this word, which is 'Seven'.    As I mentioned previously, the Hebrew letter 'kh' (Hebrew letter) has simply become confused with and exchanged for the similar-lookiing letter 'n' (Hebrew letter).

          This, however, does not fully explain this verse n the book of Ezekiel.  We have still not deciphered which 'tower' in Egypt would have been closely associated with the word sefekh, meaning to unbolt a door, and which 'tower' would also be closely identified with the number seven.     The answer is not only obvious, but also inescapable - the 'tower' to which Ezekiel was referring was a 'tower' that apparently defined the whold character of the land of Egypt.   

         It was a shibboleth, or symbol, that every enlightened reader was immediately supposed to understand to be a reference to Egypt, and so it is axiomatic that this 'tower' was none other than the Great Pyramid of Giza itself.     In reality, Ezekiel was trying to say:

    Behold, therefore I am against Egypt, and against Egypt's rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate from the Great Pyramid  even unto the border of Ethiopia.

    If the term sefekh referred to the Great Pyramid and if, in turn, the term seba was related to the doorway of the Great Pyramid - which is still the largest building on the planet - then the terms sefekh and Seba would have been as Egyptian as apple pie is American.   In this case, the name Seba (Sheba) would have been a positive reference to the land of Lower Egypt and likewise, the Queen of Sheba is likely to have been a queen or princess of Egypt."

Malcolm:  She was.   She was Queen ETIYE - named in the Kebra Nagast as Eteye Azeb - who was the favourite wife and queen of King Solomon/YmnHtp III.