What, exactly, are "totafot?"

Here's the text of the "Sh'ma" biblical quotation, which is included in our siddurim/prayer-books, in which "totafot" appear--see the second to last line of "Part One."


" . . . frontlets between your eyes," my eye!


Here are some possible explanations/translations.  This article seems to support a long-standing theory of mine, which is that "totafot" is a "loan word," a word borrowed from another language.  I also find it interesting that, to the best of my knowledge, "totafot" doesn't appear anywhere else in Tanach/Bible, and, consequently, we Jews have never seen this word in the singular.


I can't keep blogging about politics and current events.  The political scene is practically making me ill, and I can barely turn off all "screens" for Shabbat/Sabbath or a Yom Tov/holiday without learning, when I turn everything back on, that there's been yet another terrorist attack. :( :( :(