Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Egypt/Archive 6

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 15:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Mark Antony

Mark Antony is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 23:58, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

This does have little to nothing to do with us. I took a look at it but can't really help you. It's far beyond "Ancient Egypt" Thanatosimii 15:38, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

If this article has nothing to do with this Project, you might want to removed your template from its talk page. Thank you, Sandy (Talk) 19:50, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Illustrative Images from the Altes Museum, Berlin

More to come, as I process the images. If anyone has requests for anything in priority, please let me know.

Other things that may be of interest include the famous "Green Head", the (small!) bust of Queen Tiy as well as her fragmentary coffin lid, reliefs depicting Amenophis III and Tutankhamen, plus many things from the Amarna period, including of course the famous head of Nefertiti.

Auf weidersehen from Berlin! Captmondo 23:02, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

If you are on this list and get the chance to see this collection in Berlin, by all means do so, as you will not be disappointed.

Cheers! Captmondo 04:04, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

That Thutmose III and Re-Harakhte stele will come in handy if I ever get around to somthing on Reeve's theory on atenism. I recently read his book, "Egypt's false prophet", and he takes the position that atenism is the culmination of the previous four or five kings trying to switch the patron god away from Amun to some aspect of Re, particularly Re-Harakhte. Not that that's what that has to be, but it would make a good illustration of the god nonetheless. Thanatosimii 17:51, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Glad to be of some help then. The theory you mention sounds interesting, will have to look for the title you mention. Captmondo 13:11, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

If anyone wants to start a Web page for the Nubian pharaoh Amanitenmemide, you have a ready image to start with. ;-)

Now on to the Roman and Greek items from the Pergamon Museum!

Cheers! Captmondo 02:06, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

The project tag.

Concerning the tag that goes on the top of the talk page for all the pages in our "jurisdiction," so to speak, is it possible to add another element that can be included in certain pages? Specifically, I have discovered that the primary works for several periods are not in english, and I was wondering if there were a way to change the template to include an optional, "The best sources from this period are in xxxx, and the attention of a xxxx speaker would be helpful" or some such flag. After finishing up Thutmose III, I've had this urge to straighten out the first intermediate period, but I was told outrightly in a "suggested reading" list in the back of my Grimal that there has been a lot of recent up to date research which can straighen out this period, in French and German. I don't read german, and I read even less french. Such a flag might help attract one who can do so, or at the very least it will warn people not to collect the english sources and treat them as they are up to date and authoritative. Thanatosimii 17:46, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Its a good idea, but changing the template is not easy (I copied a pre-existing one)! We could use a separate template to flag these specific issues, and perhaps link to a foreign wikipedia ? Markh 12:42, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I know even less about this tag editing stuff... is there a place for technical questions somewhere? I do agree that a link to a good foreign version (especially the German one, which usually has the best versions of pages we're lacking) would be helpful as well. Thanatosimii 19:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Ahmose I FA

Well, the GA passed with flying colors, and accordingly since Captmondo and I now have the time to adress concerns, we're nominating it for FA. Any help from other members of the project here would be helpful, though. Thanatosimii 01:54, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Ahmose I passed! So, since we now have a FA on a Pharaoh, should we make it the Selected Article (which now really can be called "Featured Article" ) for the Portal? No hard feelings against Smenkhkare, but we've finally got a FA now, and we should probably use it.
By the way, what's the deal with "today's featured article" on the main main-page do we ever want to suggest that for selected FA? Thanatosimii 17:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I have changed the portal FA, just using the introduction. Not sure what you mean in the second paragraph. Markh 10:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I screwed up some puncuation. How does one go about getting a FA considered for "Today's featured article"? Thanatosimii 02:04, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Go to the Today's featured article/requests section of Wikipedia. Take a look at the required format, and be ready to add a short description at the bottom including the desired date (if any) for it to appear. Hope that helps! Captmondo 03:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

December 29, 2006

"Ahmose I will appear on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on December 29, 2006." Yippee! Markh 09:35, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Congrats all around! This certainly ought to bring more exposure to this group. A minor word of warning, having gone through this previously: monitor the page that day and be ready to do lots of vandalism reverts! Cheers! Captmondo 10:04, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Um, it was going to be FA for this day, it's been changed to somthing about redshift... does anyone know why? Thanatosimii 03:33, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I just took a look at Today's featured article/December 2006 and the article summary is not listed there for today or the rest of the few remaining days for this year. Nor does it appear in the January 2007 list either. Where did you get confirmation that it was accepted onto the front page? I suspect you will need to resubmit. Captmondo 17:15, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

It's in the history on that page. It was changed because someone wanted the 30th's article changed to someone on their hundreth birthday or some such thing. I asked what's going to happen now, but haven't gotten a response. Thanatosimii 17:59, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, it's going to be rescheduled sometime mid-january. Thanatosimii 20:25, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Rosetta Stone: ACID collaboration of the week

Just in case people here were not aware of it, Rosetta Stone has been chosen as the weekly article improvement drive collaboration. Obiously, people from the Ancient Egypt project should get involved as they are probably the most competent on the subject. The article so far isn't that bad, but it's quite rudimentary and such a core topic deserves better. Cheers, Pascal.Tesson 19:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Peer review

Hi, I have just put 2 articles for peer review, Valley of the Kings and Egyptian hieroglyphs. One I have worked on extensively, the other is a nice long article which has been updated bymany people. Can someone swing by these and give them a once over and leave comments, etc. Cheers in advance Markh 10:32, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSED ROCKER★ 03:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

Requesting citations to back up Egyptian chronology article

Some nutter was going on about the supposed lack of Biblical bias in the dating of Ancient Egyptian chronologies dating back to the mid-19th century in this article. I reverted, but noted that that while this information is valid, it is not backed up by any valid citations on this point. So citations are needed!

I can't find anything that directly critiques early Victorian-era chronological references for Ancient Egypt. Can somebody out there come up the appropriate citations so that we can shut this argument down effectively?

Cheers! Captmondo 17:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

There are precious few books on the topic of the history of Egyptology; still there ought to be somthing about this somewhere. You might actually consider going down the biblical approach, however. Biblical scholars in the 19th century held to 4004 as creation since if you literally add up the dates in Genesis, you get that. Most, even those holding to inerrancy, will now reject a literal interpretaion of those dates, and it shouldn't be that hard to find somthing like "... but when archaeological discoveries showed history going back further than the literal dates..." in some book. The mere presence of that phrase would be citation enough, I believe, to use in citing that information. Thanatosimii 17:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I just saw this note. I've seen this discussed in print (which is why I added it to the original draft of this article), but I honestly can't remember which book I saw it in. At the moment, I don't know when I'll have the chance to do the necessary legwork to find that specific source.

But I can offer some impression of the problem that confronted 19th century Biblical scholars. I have at hand my great-grandmother's Bible, which happens to be a "Teacher's edition" published by the Oxford Press in 1896, and has copious discussions in the back discussing how the state of archeology circa 1890s fit with the Bible. (Despite it's date, in many ways the discussion is as valuable as anything published today. I have scanned about a third of the plates in this edition & uploaded the scans to Wikipedia Commons, & the illustrations of the Codices Sinaiticus & Ephraemi Rescriptus that appear in Wikipedia come from that book.) There is a discussion of the chronology of the Old Testament, from Adam to the patriarch Joseph, & provides two different totals of the years between the Biblical Flood & when Joseph was sent as a slave to Egypt: there is the 'Hebrew" total of 1072 & the LXX total of 1737. (The two texts vary in the numbers of years key individuals lived.) Remember, according to Genesis all humankind was destroyed during the Biblical Flood, so the oldest kingdoms of man -- like Egypt -- had to come into existence after the Flood.

Now, if I turn to my copy of the Loeb edition of Manetho's fragments, we immediately encounter a problem. According Eusebius, the patriarch Joseph "was appointed king of Egypt" during the 17th dynasty (Mantheo, fr. 48). I'll admit that I'm being lazy here, but relying the totals provided in other fragments of Manetho's chronology I find that between the beginning of the First dynasty & the end of the Eleventh alone, Manetho states 2300 years passed -- far more than either version of the Old Testament offer.

I assume the way that learned writers handled this discrepency over the following 18 (or more) centuries was to argue that Manetho made mistakes in his calculations, or that the quotations made from his texts were faulty -- or quite simply, they just ignored the problem. After all, Egyptology was for many centuries a very esoteric subject, & during that time it was far easier to find fraud & myth than reliable facts. However, when scholars were at last able to read the primary texts of ancient Egypt in the 19th century, this contradiction could not be overlooked any longer: they had incontestable & documented proof that human history extended earlier than the date of the Biblical Flood! Here my need to remember my source is important, because I remember that the 19th century's first reaction to this problem was to hide it; the first Egyptologists consciously misrepresented the information in these texts & inscriptions in order to shoe-horn them into accepted Biblical chronology. It wasn't until around 1850 that Egyptologists were confident enough to make this problem known, & it is my own modest opinion that this information helped to accelerate scientific interest in the age of the earth & the discovery of prehistoric life (e.g., dinosaurs, trilobites, the Neandertal Man, etc.).

Resistence to acknowledging this problem still continues, mainly by people who hold tightly to Biblical inerrancy, but I feel it's far more healthy to admit that all humans make mistakes, & because the Bible is written by humans there are errors in it. After all, to admit that there are errors in the Bible does not logically lead to the conclusion that it is completely in error. -- llywrch 01:02, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Pharaoh article

I'm not a member of this project, but I was looking at the Pharaoh article recently, and it looks to be in need of some serious clean-up. Specifically this passage:

Lets make this clear to all, because in the educated community, this is an undebatable fact upon many factors including conquests, languages, history, religions, and most importantly the simple fact of time frame. The Copts ARE the modern descendants of the ancient Egyptians and ARE the living descendants of the Pharaohs. These people were converted to Christianity during the Roman period in Egypt (coptic christians). Which explains the coptic languages derivative and so forth. But important to note - Roman Period is when ancient Egyptians, the Pharaohs, converted to Christianity, specifically known today as Coptic Christian.

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/EGYPT/PTOLEMY.HTM If you don't beleive this site, you can go to absolutely any scholarly journal, history book, or scholarly website and it will tell you the Roman Period. Be careful of websites where people just give their opinion. http://www.civilization.ca/CIVIL/EGYPT/egctimee.html You will find this: Roman Period 332 B.C. - A.D. 395, and take note that this was the period that the ancient Egyptians were converted to Christianity. The end of the Roman Empire was in A.D. 395, Egypt was controlled from Byzantium until the Arab conquest in A.D. 641

The writing there is obviously Unencyclopedic. Maybe a project member could fix it? Thanks! MightyAtom 05:15, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Haty-a

Do we have a page about the office of Haty-a, The term for local prince, count, baron, prince-govenor, etc., and if so, what is it called? Which translation is it. If not, we really ought to have once since it's a fairly important office. But then the question is again what should it be called? There doesn't seem to be any standard translation that everyone uses, and I'm guessing the transliteration of ḥ3ty-` isn't going to go over well with the technical restrictions. Any ideas? Thanatosimii 03:36, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Stephen Quirke's Titles and Bureaux of Egypt 1850-1700 BC translates it as 'Mayor', but in the Shipwrecked Sailor it is usually 'Count'. Both of which are a bit dull! [1] uses 'governor'. So there doesn't seem to be a good standard translation. HAty-a (upper case 'A') seems to be a directish tranliteration, so perhaps we should use that? Markh 22:18, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... is it possible to get the transliteration symbol actually in the title, or would technical restrictions get it messsed up? I think the transliteration is supposed to be somthing like ḥʔty-ʕ, although the two IPA symbols aren't quite accurate. Can that actually be a title under the technical restrictions? Furthermore, on a tangent, does anyone know how to make those symbols turn up right on my screen? it reads somthing like box-box-t-y-box to me right now... Thanatosimii 00:38, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

You may not have the correct font installed. I think that would be a technical restriction for using the IPA symbols, most people probably won't have them. I have a kids book on heiroglyphs somewhere that has the transliterations turned into 'words' (if you see what I mean), so that might do (we should also have TAty - vizier) Markh 10:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'll put somthing together on HAty-a for now, since I've got that as a red link in a page I'm trying to get to GA. Thanatosimii 14:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

HAty-a is nomarch according to my notes, usually also translated as governor or mayor. There is already a page for nomarch (mot a great one)...--Cliau 13:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

New proposed Egypt project

There is no also a proposed project dealing with Egypt in general at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Egypt. Any parties interested in working on articles related to the more current aspects of Egypt are more than welcome to indicate their interest there, so we can know whether there is sufficient interest to start such a project. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

An editor with a surprising name

I have David Rohl watchlisted for reasons I won't bother sharing at the moment. As I was looking over my watch list, I noticed these edits from an account with a familiar name (the only edits this account have made). Anyone know if this is the David Rohl, Egyptologist? The edits made are mostly noncontroversial (date of birth, status of a book at the press), although one obviously required a {{fact}} (Kitchen's comment about Rohl's theories), so I haven't bothered to revert them -- although I'd feel more comfortable if I knew these facts were true. -- llywrch 19:30, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd be very skeptical about the nature of what Kitchen actually said, and if it can't be verified, it should probably be taken out. The argument that the Conquest happened in the Middle Bronze (which is probably what he conceded as an outside possibility) is the standard argument for almost any Early Date exodus supporter, and is invariably followed by the argument that the Middle Bronze II C destruction layer is misdated and should be pulled down by a century (i.e. not during the second intermediate period). Whoever this suprisingly named editor is, I believe he's trying to twist Kitchen's comments to mean somthing that Kitchen never meant. Thanatosimii 20:21, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Which is why I added the fact template to this article. At the moment I don't see a pressing need to delete this contribution, & I'm willing to wait for this editor to add the necessary source so readers can verify just what Kitchen did say. If anything, I'm bemused by the possibility that if this editor is Rohl, he has tacitly accepted a biography of himself that one editor in the past claimed was very unfair to him! (Although I'm still puzzled why that person thought so: most of the biographical details were taken directly from Rohl's own webpage.) -- llywrch 21:55, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

If it is Rohl, I guess it's just our luck that he of all people chose to write somthing for wikipedia ;) Too bad we couldn't have gotten Redford or Grimal... heck, I'd settle for Hawass. Thanatosimii 22:12, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Update: Since I wrote the above, Mr Rohl & I have been exchanging emails over this article. He appears to be reasonable so far, but is concerned that I haven't offered any proof that his theory about Egyptian Chronology is not accepted by the majority of Egyptologists, as well as his need to provide a cite for the Exodus Conference. If the rest of you would watchlist the article in case I fail to explain to him the Wiki way with this article (hell, I really don't have that strong of an opinion on the identification of the Biblical Sheshak), & he decides to start an edit war on the article. -- llywrch 18:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Transliteration

I propose we need a Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Ancient Egyptian) (paralleling Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Indic)), in particular addressing transliteration issues. In particular, ȝ vs. 3 (vs. ɹ or what); ỉ vs. j, but in general just guidelines on how to name things. dab (𒁳) 16:21, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I've had to argue that two pages be moved back to their previous names this month because we lack such a convention to point to. Some general things to include I would think would be:
*Avoid greek names (i.e. no Sesostris, Amenemes, Amenophis, or Tuthmosis) but give their greek names in parentheses if common.
*Use (mostly) Gardiner's transliteration system, as it is the one I have seen overwhelmingly used in scholarly journals. However, try to find a replacement for that 3 for the aleph. There doesn't seem to be a good symbol for it... I can't seem to think of any places where changes are necesarry to his system right now.
*Names should be transliterated somewhere in the article on the so-named person or thing, but the common term should ideally use the common transliteration system- Aleph and Ayin become A's; i becomes I; w stays W or becomes U; all other letters become what they are transliterated into except for the augmented symbols- the four h's become h, h, kh, and kh, the funny t, d, and s become Tj, Dj, and Sh; Both s's stay S, the one that was z in the old kingdom remains a S; ... Am I forgetting any big ones?
That was a bit of a ramble on, but those are some places to start from, I suppose. Of course the big rule would be to chuck any and all of these rules if the literature uses a different version overwhemingly more frequently. Thanatosimii 01:52, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I second the motion, as I also recognize the need, (though I would not be able to provide much by way of expertise). What is the process for drafting up a sample template of this type? Captmondo 02:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Anyone thought about this ? Can I just create the page with the notes above (and then get them cleaned up)? Markh 16:22, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 20:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The shortcut for your project

You use WP:EGYPT as a shortcut to your project. However, on December 26, 2006 WikiProject Egypt started which is a project that create, improve, and maintain articles related to the nation of Egypt and create guidelines for articles about Egypt. We need to create a shortcut to our project. So, please consider creating another shortcut to your project like: WP:ANEGYPT so that we can make WP:EGYPT redirect to our project. Thank you.

--Meno25 01:57, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:ANEGYPT is a little long. I wouldn't object to somthing like WP:ANEGY or somthing... or perhaps we could do a roundabout soulution and take WP:KMT? Thanatosimii 03:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

While I like WP:KMT, there's the potential for conflict with the Kuomintang, which uses KMT as its acronym. WP:KEMET maybe? Captmondo 03:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Is it really likely that there's going to be a wikiproject:kuomintang? But yes, I see potential conflict. However, there could be concievable conflict with just about anyone based on whatever we take. Still I suppose WP:KEMET works just as well. Thanatosimii 05:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Map series

I've started a world history map series based on The Cassell Atlas of World History by John Haywood et al. I would like to do a similar series for just Egypt, using the Penguin Atlas of Ancient Egypt. Does anyone have or know where I can find a high-resolution blank map of the region, preferably with the areas of western Libya, Nubia, the Levant, and Cyprus shown, that I could use as a template? Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 19:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Research request area

We could use a seperate page, or at least area, for putting up requests for research that other people might be able to fulfill. Some of us have more access to some books and journals than others. For instance, I can get ahold of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, but not the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. If we had a source collaboration page, I could request research be done by someone who did have JEA access, and someone who needed JNES research done could put up somthing and I could go look it up. Additionally, we could each list books we own so that we know who has what.

Specific example: We could use Thutmose III : A New Biography over at Thutmose III, to fill in certain gaps in artistic and domestic development. After we get information from that book, I believe only minor work is required before we peer review then and go for FA. Now, I can get that book in a month or so, but if any of you have access to that book, I could put a request up and you, if you had the time, could do some research and get the work done weeks earlier than I could. (by the way, if anyone does have access to that book, we could use help). This, I believe, would just be a simple way to get the most help to the places of most need. More potential for collaboration is better than less. Thanatosimii 21:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

One more reminder to be on guard

Today is the day Ahmose I is Today's Featured Article. Thus, be on guard if you have the time to keep watch, since at least one vandal has shown up already. Thanatosimii 01:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Request for help: Osiris and Horus

The Jesus as myth article currently includes an almost entirely unreferenced section on Osiris and Horus. If someone knowledgeable about Egyptian mythology could check the accuracy of its statements in that area and indicate appropriate references, that would be great. EALacey 10:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I have left comments on that talk page. I don't think much of those arguments (I am nearly certain that they either directly or indirectly derive from the far out of date works of E. A. Wallace Budge) but given the title of the article, it is perfectly suited to cover such theories therein. However, if a scholar with the necesarry credentials cannot be produced, I would think it only fair to add a "this is not accepted in the disciplines of Egyptology and Second Temple Judaic Studies" proviso. Thanatosimii 05:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Articles on religion and gods

I have done some editing on Amduat, Coffin Texts, and particularly Four sons of Horus becasue I found they were full of personal opinions and interpretations (which were unreferenced). I found it difficult because I couldn't find any basis for what was being said so I tried to replace it with quotes from texts and so on. My editing skills are a bit primitive and loading pics takes an age cos I am on dial up. Is anyone looking at religion specifically? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Apepch7 (talk • contribs) 22:57, 29 January 2007 (UTC).

Ooops sorry forgot to Apepch7 23:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

New Template

Hi, I saw this page and you guys didn't have a template so use this.

This user is a participant in WikiProject Ancient Egypt.

( Seong0980 07:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC) )

Goddess question

Hi,

In the article Amunet I found something I have questions about, but it was added by an anonym IP a long time ago and no source was mentioned. The sentence is: "she [Amunet] was said, as representing the air, to have become the lesbian consort of Iabet, the moon itself, and was depicted as such on tombs, coffins, and sarcophaguses." Now as far as I know, Iabet is the personification of the East, and she was depicted with Amentet, the personification of the West. Was Amunet identified with Amentet or was the anonymous editor mistaking one for the other because of the similar names? And was Iabet associated with the moon? (I haven't heard of female Egyptian deities associated with the moon yet.) – Alensha ^talk 16:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Ramesses II

This article could be featured with a bit of work, I think. I changed some info on his family background, esp. siblings, and wrote new articles (Henutmire, Nebettawy, Princess Tia.) The "Building activity and monuments" section is way too long, especially considering that all of these merit their own articles (which, in most cases, they have, but those independent articles go into less detail than this long section). The tomb of Nefertari should either have its own articles or be moved to Nefertari's article. Also, the exodus stuff should have its own article and discussed only briefly in the main article. It's long enough to have its own article, also, with all respect to religious readers, I doubt this is serious enough to be discussed in Ramesses' article in full length. – Alensha ^talk 16:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Anyone else? :) – Alensha ^talk 21:10, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I think what you have done so far has been much needed for that article. Shunting people to look at articles that provide more in-depth information elsewhere is certainly called for, especially when it comes to specific monuments and the ever-contentious "Pharaoh of the Exodus?" section. Unfortunately there's still a lot of cleaning up to be done, especially by the contributor who cited works but didn't provide page numbers -- don't expect this to get to Feature Quality status if this isn't taken care of. This particular article has also proved to be a magnet for vandals and for those with definite opinions on the subject, which has made me leery of devoting too much time to this particular article in the past, so expect a running battle trying to keep it together. I would also suggest taking a look at the German and Polish equivalents of this article, as they both became featured articles in their respective languages -- even if you can't read either language directly (I can't) there are some good ideas (and images) that you may be able to reuse in the English version. For what it is worth, I think the mummy section ought to come after or be a sub-section of the area devoted to his tomb. Finally, there are a wide range of images that could be called upon to illustrate various points on WikiMedia; see: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ramses_II. Keep up the good work! Captmondo 16:09, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The article is clearly shaping up (or perhaps slimming down is better in this case) quite nicely, but I'm afraid the formatting could use some work still. The page is a little picture heavy, both in size and quantity of images. I'm not sure if this is against the rules for style, but perhaps it's a good idea to remove some and put a commonscat notice directly in that section linking to images of ramesseid construction.
The 19th dynasty is outside of my area of specialty, but I think I can easilly put together a short section on his dates of reign as well. You also might want to consider cutting out the "Names" section. Those sections were prolific before the pharaoh infoboxes were introduced, which now renders them superfluous and removed in most articles. The only data there which is not very redundant is his names' likely pronunciations, however there's no citation for that, and thus it might be better to just cut it. It's always in the history if a citation can be produced, at which time that could also be put in the infobox. Thanatosimii 19:15, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

it is getting better now, thanks to everyone who worked on it! – Alensha ^talk 22:49, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for expert advice

Hi there, I'm one of the editors involved with the influenza page. We are looking for some academic references or discussion of ancient Egyptian animal agriculture. In particular, any information on if they had pigs and waterfowl/fishfarms. If anybody has information on this, please drop a note on the [talk page]. Thank you. TimVickers 22:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for a cleanup/expert advice

See the [talk page] for the Old Kingdom article for more information. -HawkeyE 10:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Credentials check.

I was recently reading an article by Aidan Dodson on the mortuary temple of Amenhotep I. I've run across his name in citations here before, so I supposed he was a reliable source, but I found that this article was hosted at [2], which has connections with certain... fringe authors. Is this just a case of strange bedfellows, or is Dodson on the fringe too? Thanatosimii 19:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it is 'strange bedfellows' see [3] and [4]. Markh 08:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Amenhotep I

For the past few months, I've been stumbling over sources with relevant data on Amenhotep I. I've been piecing it together, and I am approaching FA levels of exhaustiveness. I've still got to add a little on the Ebers papyrus, Amduat, and rewrite his building projects stuff, but at least I have the sources I need for that on me. However, Exhaustiveness is not the only thing required for a FA; since most of the text is my own, it all reeks of my style a little to much, I think. So, if anyone wants to take a look at smoothing off some rough edges, it would be helfpul, since I plan on putting this up for FA soon. I have a week and a half away from school now, and since that affords me the best amount of time to respond to FA nomination comments, I do hope to be able to nominate it within that timespan. Thanatosimii 03:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I really didn't expect to wait quite so long before getting around to it... but I finished all my concerns about this article, got some WP:MOS issues ironed out, and am about to nominate it for FA. Thanatosimii 22:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Ramesses II moved

Someone has moved the above article! Does anyone know how to get it back without losing all of the edit history ? Markh 14:35, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Protecting Hatshepsut from vandalizing edits

Given the recent spate of vandalization from various anonymous IP sources of the Hatshepsut article, I asked for and got that page set to semi-protected status, which means that only registered or long-standing users can edit the page directly (note that this ban is only in place until mid-April -- but it may be long enough to deter some of the more persistent vandals). I know this is an issue on some other pages as well (Ramesses II comes to mind) so for those who might want to ask an Admin to protect a page, here is where to go. Captmondo 17:32, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Touregypt

someone came through wikipedia and deleted just about every last instance of this site from the entire place. I cleaned up a lot of it, but we should be on the lookout for more that I missed. On this note, does anyone really know why that site keeps getting pogromed out? This is not the first time I remember someone going bananas over it... Thanatosimii 03:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't like how it was added to the spamlist & ranted about that process on Wikipedia: Village pump (policy). So far the essay has been treated like a troll -- that is, ignored. Comments appreciated. -- llywrch 20:56, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that touregypt has useful material and should not be placed on the spamlist just because somebody does not like it. I would suggest that a person who removes a reference should replace it with an alternative. Just pulling out references is actually a destructive act, judgmental, and can leave an article in a mess. Ekem 02:34, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

If you look at the discussion, there seems to have been a lot of name calling from at least one administrator – so I am rather despairing of what we can actually do. It seems that the the wikipedia community is actually no such thing. Markh 22:21, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Markh, if you mean whom I think you do, he appears to be encountering some more problems due to his brusque tone & inflexible stance on the matter; have a look at the relevant thread on WIkipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. But I'm posting here to ask for a favor from the rest of the folks: can someone post a request for a link to this website at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist? One request to whitelist a link to touregypt.net seems to have stalled & has been left to wither away. -- llywrch 00:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. I am more upset by the attitude of this admin, than by the blacklisting of the site. Markh 12:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Touregypt has been added to the whitelist, and it doesn't look like it's being objected to by opponents this time, so we can theoretically restore the pages now. However, I was personally told:
* Try and use other websites that could convey the same information.
* The presence of ads doesn't bother most of us, but some will still feel that Tour Egypt isn't the best authority to use on Wikipedia, since they are mostly a commercial venture.
*The rules on external links still aplly.
Now, the consensus here seems to be that there never was a spam problem with this page at any point, however in order to be gracious winners, I suggest that restoration of the use of that domain should be done with some consideration (not necesarraly as a project, just us weighing each link personally) as to if each individual page is useful, and not done en masse. Thanatosimii 22:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Although it's been a while since I've worked in this topic, I made a stab at what I think is how we should proceed with Unas -- as well as pushed this past a stub. Does it work as an example? -- 06:18, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Beware of Ancient Egypt deathrays

Dear members of WikiProject Ancient Egypt, may I ask for volunteers for keeping an eye at User:Reddis contribution in this area? I'm more than willing to assume his good faith, but nevertheless he may be taken away by his sympathy for non-standard theories. Please see e.g.

Pjacobi 18:20, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Please have a look at the [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/History and geography<article content RFC]] filed regarding Dendera_Temple_complex#The_Dendera_light. --Pjacobi 11:15, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian cuisine

I couldn't find anything in the main articles on Ancient Egyptian cuisine so I thought I would start working on one. Does anyone know if we have anything written on the subject?

Peter ^Isotalo 15:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Bug in <hiero> tag

I don’t know if this is the right place to put this, but there’s evidently a bug in the <hiero> tag, or maybe Mediawiki. Take a look at Ptolemy (name): The tag is in a list, and after the table is closed, a new unordered list is opened although the previous one was never closed. For the meantime, I’ve worked around it by breaking the list in two and taking <hiero> outside of the list.

Also, how can you find out more info about <hiero>-format templates? Are they just a synonym for {{hiero|}}-style ones?

—Felix the Cassowary 07:30, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Photo's

Have added some new high def pictures to my wikkicommons page http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Merlin-UK if they are any use to you Merlin-UK 19:30, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Oxyrhynchus FAR

Oxyrhynchus has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. LuciferMorgan 22:13, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

We can take a look, but to my knowledge noone here has extensive knowledge on the Roman period. Thanatosimii 17:02, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The Eloquent Peasant

I have categorized my article on the Egyptian story The Eloquent Peasant as Ancient Egypt and Ancient Egyptian Literature and am wondering how it can be included into the Ancient Egypt Wikiproject. - Zulu, King Of The Dwarf People 16:19, 28 Apr 2007 (UTC)

Great Pyramid of Giza‎ vandalism

Anyone want to support page protection of Great Pyramid of Giza‎? Markh 21:09, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian monument infobox

I've created an infobox for Ancient Egyptian monuments at Template:Infobox_Ancient_Egyptian_monument. I am currently using this infobox in the Temple of Edfu article. My thought was this could be used to tie together various historical sites. We currently have infoboxes for Egyptian pyramids (Template:Infobox Egyptian pyramid) and royal tombs (Template:EgyptianRoyalTombDetail), but nothing that fits temples or the general case all that well. I tried to make this infobox flexible enough to be used in most monument articles. Please take a look and let me know what you think. — Meersan 17:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Dynasty articles/stubs problem

We have a well-meaning yet oddly thinking Wikipedian who is putting the articles about the various dynasties into a peculiar format. I left a note on his page about it, but I'm the first person to communicate with him in this manner -- despite the fact he's contributed to Wikipedia since 2005. Anyone else want to take a look at these reorganizations & offer their input? -- llywrch 02:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian cuisine (fer real)

I've started an article on the foods and eating habits of ancient Egypt. Don't hesitate to chip in. Egyptology is not one of my strongest topics.

Peter ^Isotalo 01:31, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Immanuel Velikovsky

An anonymous IP address is adding in fringe 'facts' into several articles. Djoser, Akhenaten, Thutmose III amongst them. Any ideas on how to deal with someone who doesn't appear to respond to suggestions? Markh 17:17, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

After a glance at Djoser, if he reverts you a third time (& no, it's not relevant at this point if he waits until the 26th or later), he may get a 24-hour block. Long-time Wikipedians (like me) are tired of this mindless revert-without-discussion routine. Now, if these persons were important to Velikovsky's theories, maybe inclusion of Velikovsky's opinions would be relevant (much as I tried to do with David Rohl's theories) because he is familiar to many people; this would be done by creating a section & stating that "X plays an important part in the theories of Velikovsky, & this is how." However since I haven't read Velikovsky (nor do I care to), until someone explains how these fit in -- or this anon decides to talk to the rest of us -- he can be blocked for short or longer periods of time. -- llywrch 03:15, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Image:Akmanthor.jpg - hoax?

This image appears in the article about the pseudoscience of reflexology. It claims to be adapted from a dead web page. The image description says:

It is a wall painting found in the tomb of the highest official after the Pharaoh - Ankhmahor. The tomb is also known as the physicians tomb. Therefore it suggests that what the people in the painting is doing must be somewhat related to health, therefore it is suspected that they are practising the early version of reflexology.

This wall painting is dated back to 2330 B.C.

I suspect a hoax. It doesn't look like a wall painting; it looks like papyrus, and a recently made papyrus for that matter. The hieroglyphs seem badly formatted, and in my cursory acquaintance with the language seem to not make much sense. Was wondering if anyone here had any thoughts. - Smerdis of Tlön 19:36, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Yup ... writing makes no sense to me... --Cliau 13:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

In light of these concerns and because it is currently not used by any articles I have nominated it for deletion. -Icewedge 07:51, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I came across discussion of this image on the ifd page, and I'd like to point out that this isn't a hoax. (Whether or not it represents reflexology as reflexologists like to claim is another matter.) You can find it frequently referred to in reliable sources on the reliefs in Ankhmahor's mastaba, such as [5], [6], or [7]. There's a photo of the relief this picture was made from here, so at least part of it is accurate, if reversed, and the representation of the hieroglyphs is fanciful, at best.

Unfortunately, it's not easy to find pictures of this tomb's reliefs, at least online, except for the famous one that's been interpreted as a depiction of a circumcision. As it's not currently open to the public, new images are not going to be available either.

However, it's certainly a copyright violation if orphaned, as it's a modern work that's merely based on the original and must be copyrighted. If it's used at all it needs to be with a valid fair use rationale. TCC (talk) (contribs) 02:04, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Amen

Font display error?

On Egyptian biliteral signs I get ı͗w, ı͗b, ... rendered as a vertical stroke in the lower half of character height, followed by a superscripted hollow upright rectangle of character height, then the Latin consonant. Copy/pasting it in an edit window gives something like a small-caps "1" followed by an invisible character followed by the Latin consonant. This is weird; I ought to have Unicode support. The 2 characters in question are rendered as a "j" here. Dysmorodrepanis 00:52, 12 July 2007 (UTC) Added missing info -- dys

Proposed merger

Wikipedia:WikiProject Egyptian Religion seems to deal almost exclusively with content which also falls within the scope of this project, with the exception of Hermetism, an article which has since been turned into a redirect. As that project seems rather inactive, I think it makes sense to merge it to this project either as a task force of this project or just remove the page entirely. Personally, I would prefer the former however. John Carter 14:11, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

It would nice to see someone with sound Egyptological knowledge go through the entries on religion and sort fact from fantasy. If this is more likely to happen with a merger then I would support it.Apepch7 11:43, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Who is Christian Settipani?

I have no idea who Christian Settipani is, and why he is now referenced a large number of Ancient Egyptian articles. He doesn't appear to be a professional Egyptologist (and is described as 'Technical Director of an IT company in the Paris area.'). Anyone know whether they are a reliable source ? Markh 19:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Not just Egyptological, but a large number of articles related to ancient history. It seems he's exactly what his bio says he is, and the references are to his works on tracing genealogy to Antiquity. It looks as if he's being cited to support statements on the families of Antique royalty.

Unfortunately, he does not appear to be a reliable source. [8]. Without checking, I wonder how fanciful his published work is. His publisher is "Editions Christian", a French outfit that specializes in genealogical works. I would guess they have no one on staff to properly evaluate ancient historical claims. To judge from some of his reviews, he has a habit of engaging in speculation.

The article on him was added by a user I normally think sensible, and admin no less; otherwise I'd have guessed this was spam. TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Battle of Kadesh

I think we are in need of some help in the Battle of Kadesh article. We have one author who is continually adding references that I consider to be copied from another website (they do not seem to understand my concerns), has added a large amount of references that are irrelevant and basically messed up the article. Can anyone help us out and look at this page? Cheers Markh 23:54, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

The same user (User:Rktect) has copied more text from the [9] page into the Nine bows article. Markh 22:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Four sons of Horus

I have been looking at the main entry for the four sons of Horus and the four stub entries for Hapi, Imsety, Duamutef, and Qebehsenuef. It seems to me that the best way to handle these would be to merge the four stubs back with the main entry as there isn't much to say about each individual son. I have already raised this at Talk:Four_sons_of_Horus and have only had one response so far which was positive. I don't mind sorting this out but as it take some time to sort out any double redirects I don't want to start only to have it reverted. So what do people think about my sugestion?

Molybdomancer 21:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Reforming the WikiProject Ancient Egypt page

With the indulgence of the people who are part of this Wikiproject, I would like to undertake a revamping of the main WikiProject page for this group.

I have just added a automated listing that rates all of various articles that have been tagged as being of some interest to this community. I wanted to find such a tool myself so that I could have a better idea as to how many project pages are within (and without) the scope of this project. I found this application and tweaked it to reflect our interests, hoping none would object if I placed it here.

I would like to further refine the main Wikiproject project page, with the hopes of helping to focus the group`s efforts, or at the very least to provide useful information for those interested in raising the general quality level of Ancient Egyptian articles in Wikipedia.

Any objections or comments? Captmondo 02:56, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at WP:MIL or WP:WPARCH for ideas, both nice looking project pages. Markh 21:36, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, there are some good ideas there. Will use them!

Just for the record, I like the layout seen on the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Military page, but I like the "banner" at the top of the WP:WPARCH page and the "awards" offered on the WP:MIL page for outstanding contributors. There are useful things there that can be usefully "poached". ;-) Captmondo 13:00, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Added a banner (its a straight copy of the one from WP:WPARCH). There some missing links Markh 18:36, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Excellent work -- and I see you have made additions to the bottom of the page as well to fill in some of the missing blanks that were on the banner.

Will spend some time over the weekend filling in further info. Captmondo 01:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

No objections. I would be interested in knowing what you were specifically referring to by "automated listing", though. John Carter 22:34, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

It's the "[subject] articles by quality statistics" function that was put together by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team -- it's the colourful table currently at the top of the project page that lists the status of all articles that have been tagged with an Ancient Egypt banner in their respective talk pages. If you click on the links (FA, A, GA, etc) you'll get a list of all Ancient Egyptian articles that have been assessed at that quality level. It also serves as a means to find out what pages are ostensibly of interest to the group. I have been using the link lists as a means to add articles to my watchlist, and can also see a few articles which are likely candidates for deletion or merge. Cheers! Captmondo 12:22, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I thought that might be it. I just wasn't sure from the phrasing whether I was right, and wanted to be sure I knew what you were talking about. Thanks for the clarification. John Carter 14:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Other than the awards, what's on the main page pretty much finishes the "revamp" (with much thanks to Markh for lending a hand). Is there anything else people would like to see added? (Haven't forgotten about the "awards", but I need some dedicated time using PhotoShop to come up with some.) Captmondo 00:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject Ancient Egypt Award Proposals

In keeping with other Wikiprojects that offer graphical icon-like "awards" to outstanding contributors, I can think offhand of three levels of awards that I think would be appropriate:

Wiki Vulture pectoral: Used as a protective amulet, awarded to those who have made outstanding ongoing contributions to vandal-fighting relating to project pages. (Reference image: here)
Wiki "Gold of Honour": This was a collar of gold that was presented by the pharaoh to trusted officials; this would be given to those who have made outstanding contributions to the field (helping significantly with a Good Article, or long-standing quality contributions to various articles would qualify. (Reference image: here; not the best image I've seen of this, and I am sure I could come up with something suitably iconic).
Wiki "Golden Flies": These were handed out by the pharaoh to those who succeeded/excelled in battle; I think this is wholly appropriate for anyone who has worked on getting an article to Feature Article status. (Reference image: here and here).

Given our area of interest, there's no lack of possible iconography that can be used here (perhaps a Ushabti or an Eye of Horus for vandal fighters, for example), so if anyone else has suggestions go right ahead! As long as there is a sample image I can work with and would lend itself to being "icon-ized", I'll happily tackle the job in PhotoShop. Cheers! Captmondo 02:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Am also thinking of a particular Ancient Egyptian variant of the ubiquitous barnstar awards. Just need some dedicated time with PhotoShop and will present some ideas here when I have something to show. Captmondo 00:15, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Project watchlist

Hi, I had a look at another WikiProject (I thought it was WP:ISLAM, but I can't find it now!), and they have a global watchlist for their project. Basically if we create a page that has a list of every article within the project scope, and then look at the related changes, we get a project watchlist, as below (just an experiment) ..

We would have to have the pages in the scope of this project, so as not to get them deleted (or easily vandalised). Anyone else think this is a good idea? Markh 20:57, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

NOTE: it was Wikipedia:WikiProject Islam/Islam and Controversy task force. Markh 22:10, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it is a good idea.

In fact, in keeping with being bold, I've compiled a page that contains every Ancient Egyptian-tagged article, which can be found at: Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt/Ancient Egypt Watchlist. So, using the Recentchangeslinked function you get a comprehensive What's changed page that covers off every Ancient Egyptian article that is so tagged.

Any plans on how to deploy this? Cheers (and great idea)! Captmondo 01:19, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

How about a userbox? Markh 21:41, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

File:Icon paw logo2.jpg

Show recent changes to
Ancient Egypt
watchlist articles

If I might suggest some changes to the article list. I've been the one making most of them for the various religion projects, and I've been setting them up by categories. By doing so, it should be a bit easier to monitor whichever new articles are created, as those will most likely be the articles which were added to the categories since the last time the article page was updated. I acknowledge that the only project I've actually been able to test this theory on to date is WP:SAINTS, but it does make checking on new articles in the scope of the project much easier. John Carter 21:46, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, although it still relies on people adding them to the template(s), also I'm not sure how to do it ? Where in WP:SAINTS is this done , as we may need to copy it! Markh 22:06, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Um, I don't think that what John Carter proposes is a good idea in this case, as the current way of creating the list that is being referenced leads itself to automation/scripting, whereas I doubt a category approach can or will always be kept current. I suggest that the two lists be different (or be held in different places).

I support what John Carter is doing in general as I understand it (having a handy list of all Ancient Egyptian articles is well worth having), but I would prefer a (semi-)automated approach when it comes to having a watchlist. If I am wrong and there is automated code behind this, could you please show us an example (I couldn't find it on WP:SAINTS either).

And just an aside, I think a good audit of what has been tagged as an Ancient Egyptian article would be a good idea. I have subsequently run across articles from some that are dubious (such as those for various Generals/court officials from the time of Alexander the Great that do not reference Ancient Egypt at all or at best only glancingly. Captmondo

Requesting updated assessment

Hi folks--I'd like to request an updated assessment for Abu Mena, which has been significantly rewritten since its original assessment. Thanks! Dppowell 00:40, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd call this start class. Give me a few minutes and I'll write a short peer review on areas to work on. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 00:50, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, deposited the mini review at the article's talk page. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 01:21, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

FYI : requested move : Portal:Egyptology to Portal:Ancient Egypt

DYI User:Jeff Dahl has requested that the portal page Portal:Egyptology be renamed to Portal:Ancient Egypt at WP:RM?

- see Portal talk:Egyptology. 132.205.99.122 19:43, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Interesting discussion on naming convention

Hi all, there is an interesting discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Ancient Egyptian), which started as a rename discussion for KV62 (see talk:KV62). It would be great to have everyone's input, whether you are for or against the suggested move. Having a set of conventions would prevent a long discussion each time a name change is suggested. Markh (talk) 23:12, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

If I am the only person that finds the discussion above of any interest (KV62 would be renamed Tomb of Tutankhamun), then I'll stop arguing. Markh (talk) 19:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Ancient egyptian warfare or Military history of Ancient Egypt

Which is it to be? The content ought to be merged but I'm not sure which title is best, or perhaps another option? Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 03:24, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Someone suggested it should be Military history of Ancient Egypt becuase other ancient warfare articles are "Military history of...". There is definitely content from Ancient egyptian warfare that can be merged to Military history of Ancient Egypt, and it could be split up better. --θnce θn this island ^Speak! 16:44, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Details needed

Hey people, I have a book here that makes an off-hand reference to a tomb discovered in may 1993 in Gizeh, apparently for a "Nakh-Min", but I haven't been able to find the specifics. Can anybody help? Circeus (talk) 04:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you reading Egyptian Heart by Griffith [10]? It's probably a literary invention; I don't see any mention of it on google scholar. Unless there's a different spelling, I don't see that specific tomb. There were a number of tombs of workmen discovered at giza in the 90's by Lehner and Hawass, I don't know if any of them were named "Nakh-Min". You could try Lehner's book Complete Pyramids for more information. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 04:18, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

It's from a French-language yearbook, actually (I'm trying to work on 1993 and its thematic subarticle). Given that I haven't been able to fault it on anything else (the other archeological findings mentioned are the Çayönu linen, the Egyptian silk and St. Augustine Fort) and that there's a picture, I'm not tempted to ascribe it to invention. Of course the transcription is probably approximative. They mention a dating of ca. 3,200 B.C. and that it was probably a general of some sort, which suggested the similar Nakhtmin, but apparently that guy's tomb hasn't been found yet.

I haven't looked in detail at the 1993 Britannica yearbook yet, so I haven't lost hope completely to unearth enough details.Circeus (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Here's a suggestion though, Lehner and crew did unearth some very important materials at giza during the 1991-1992 season [11] and [12] and that is a good candidate for the 1991 article. The discoveries of the bread molds and other materials that dig season are pretty well known, and important. The discoveries show how the pyramid builders were living; how they baked their bread and brewed their beer, and how they were being fed by a strong central government which enabled such grand monument construction. This is a more famous and important discovery than any of the tombs they found. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 05:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I guess I'll just drop that part, but you can add a line or two to summarize that (I don't think I could really do it justice) in 1991/1992 in archaeology. Circeus (talk) 06:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

For anybody who knows a lot about hieroglyphics...

For anybody who knows a lot about hieroglyphics, List of hieroglyphs/german-Gardiner-list-translated could use a LOT of help. --θnce θn this island ^Speak! 16:46, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Project banner

It is my sincerest hope that this statement is not taken as being an attempt to subvert this project, take control over it, or any similar thing. However, the Template:AfricaProject has recently had parameters put into it to allow it to provide separate assessments for all the "Africa" projects, including this one. If in the interests of reducing banner clutter the members of this project were to choose to use that banner, please let me know and I can adjust any categories accordingly to permit it. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 00:18, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I've provided an opinion here, but in a nutshell, I'm against it for tracking purposes. — Zerida 01:46, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Egyptian religion work group articles

I noticed that the religion work group no longer has separate article assessments. It would be easy enough for me to adjust the banner to permit it to have assessments which would also feed into the main Ancient Egypt assessments, if you thought there would be any purpose in doing so. John Carter (talk) 21:11, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Heptastadion

I came across an article on Heptastadion while working through the backlog. I sourced what I could from a rudimentary google search, but I imagine I'm missing a lot. I hope I wasn't out of line in adding this project banner, as I hope someone more familiar can help expand or fill in missing information. Travellingcari (talk) 17:29, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Alchemy FAR Review

Alchemy has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. (old notice, archived by Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 18:47, 30 March 2008 (UTC))

Sekhem-Scepter

could someone take a look at this article by a newish user. I don't think the actual facts are hugely wrong necessarily, but then I know hardly anything about ancient Egypt. Special Random (Merkinsmum) 00:23, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Topic is legit, but needs cleanup. I'll take a look. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 00:39, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Ancient Egypt a featured article candidate

Ancient Egypt is currently a featured article candidate. You can comment on the nomination here. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 03:00, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

GA Sweeps

Hi there, I am part of a group of editors conducting a sweep of GA articles to check whether they meet the criteria. I have just come to the royalty section and have been reviewing the articles on some pharaohs and noticed some problems which this Wikiproject might be able to help with. Basically put, Akhenaten, Hatshepsut and Ramesses II will all require additional sourcing in places to remain as GA. (I have already passed Amenhotep I while Amenhotep III and Thutmose I are, on initial review at least, good enough to remain GA). I would much rather keep these articles than delist them and there is no serious time pressure for delisting as long as someone is willing to take these issues on board in the near future. If there is interest here then I would be happy to give the project advice on how to get these articles back to GA standard, and if not I will give the articles the standard seven day review and delist if no progress is made. Please let me know if anyone is interested in participating in this.--Jackyd101 (talk) 11:57, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I can start with Ramesses II. If you want to start a section on the talk page with issues that need to be addressed, that would be helpful. I'm sure we can find volunteers to do the other two, or I can get to them if no one jumps on board, so if you can make a list on the talk pages we can take care of any issues with them. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 14:48, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd be happy to, glad to see there is interest in this, its always a shame to delist something due to disinterest. I will provide a full list of improvements on the talk pages and insert ^{[citation needed]} tags where I think they are necessary. Although the templates I will leave on the talk pages have a seven day time limit I have no problem at all in giving indefinate extensions as long as work is continuing. Regards--Jackyd101 (talk) 15:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I thought I'd left a message here earlier, but I must have forgotten to save. I reviewed Thutmose I and was ready to pass it until I read the unsourced attribution in the final paragraph. If someone can sort this out (and it doesn't look like it would take too long), then I'd be happy to pass it.--Jackyd101 (talk) 19:38, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps I can fix this. Give me a day or two. -- Secisek (talk) 02:07, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I have decided to keep Amenhotep III as a GA, although it might be worth someone here looking over the prose, sourcing and lead just to tweak them and make them a bit better. I have also provided the first half of a review at Ramesses II. It is a big job but I will come back to it soon, although there is information there to be getting on with. I know he is not a pharoah, but Cyrus the Great apparently comes under the auspices of this project and that article needs serious attention if anyone is interested. If anyone has any questions about GA Sweeps then please get in touch. If anyone wishes to provide their own reassessments based on their superior knowledge of Ancient Egypt then please be my guest based on the instructions at WP:GAR.--Jackyd101 (talk) 18:08, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I've had to take a bit of a Wikibreak, but I had some time and I'm looking over the GA Sweeps articles I have on hold. I'm afraid that unless someone takes over Hatshepsut and Ramesses II I will have to delist them in a week or so from today. On the other hand, I'm happy to pass Thutmose I and although I haven't yet done a formal review, Akhenaten will probably pass without too much difficulty. Let me know if anyone can take these on. Regards.--Jackyd101 (talk) 10:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I have been updating the RII article recently, what needs to bee done to keep the GA rating ? Markh (talk) 18:51, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Well at the very least you need to fill the ^{[citation needed]} tags dotted through the article.--Jackyd101 (talk) 18:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Great Pyramid of Giza

Why was this classified as a 'Good' article? When I first looked at it a few weeks ago it was pretty bad in my opinion, with some very dubious external links and some of the body that was supposed to represent main stream thought in fact biassed against it. It also seems unbalanced. No mention of the Caliph el Ma'mun, John Greaves, Nathaniel Davison, Howard Vyse, etc. I also think that the causeway and temples should be in the article, it wasn't built as an isolate monument but part of a complex. And of course the boats.--Doug Weller (talk) 11:45, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

It is classed as a good article because it passed as such nearly two years ago, when the criteria were much less rigorous than they are today. If you leave a list of recommended improvements on the talk page then people may be able to fix it and if nothing is done then you can delist it using the instructions at WP:GAR.--Jackyd101 (talk) 13:19, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Serious work was done and I belive it would now pass GAR, however other editors are encouraged to add more sourced material to improve the article. -- Secisek (talk) 20:13, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Secisek has really worked hard on this and improved it. It still lacks a bit of the history of its exploration, but other than that it is vastly improved from what it was a few weeks ago.Doug Weller (talk) 20:36, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Joining the Project

How di I sign up? I can't edit the front page list, so? Thanks.Doug Weller (talk) 10:31, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Possible adjustments to project banner?

Would anyone object to the project banner being altered a bit to include assessments for the Egyptian religion subproject? I ask this because I think that articles related to that subject have a reasonable chance of being edited by some parties, like me, who might be more specifically interested in mythology/religion than in Ancient Egypt per se, and this would allow such editors to be able to more clearly work on such content. John Carter (talk) 22:13, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

New Project Name

Wouldn't this project sound a lot better if it were called WikiProject Egyptology? It would make the project sound.... much more interesting. And, as alwaysListen to your Princess, dear Wikipedians. (talk) 20:16, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

It might, but it would be a very large hastle to rename everyting project related. -Icewedge (talk) 18:55, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I think we had some limited discussion of this point in various ways, for example the name of the associated portal. I think the conclusion is that Egyptology is the study of ancient Egypt, so the project would be interested in archaeological methods/digs, Egyptologists, journals, and the science of how we discover information about ancient Egypt. On the other hand, project Ancient Egypt would be focused on the substance: the biographies, histories, and culture of the society rather than the methods by which we study it. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 01:05, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian burial customs

Greetings from WP:CLEANUP. This article has been listed on the main Cleanup page for at least 18 months, and while it appears to have been substantially improved in the intervening time, some of the text is still a little oddly structured, and it may be that the article would benefit from expansion. However, as the article is no longer a desperate case, I will be removing it from the Cleanup page. Please consider this a polite notification that this is an article that you, as a project, may wish to devote some time to improving. Many thanks! Cricketgirl (talk) 21:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Zaket

The above stub states that this person was a king during the Sixteenth dynasty of Egypt. I can't find any sources for this. Nk.sheridan Talk 21:52, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Race of ancient Egyptians RfC

I am considering setting up an RfC for this article as it is currently (as always) under dispute as to what this article should even be about. Some comments would be appreciated, especially in this section. Thanks! --Woland (talk) 18:05, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The RfC section is now up. Please consider weighing in. Thanks.--Woland (talk) 18:54, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Project awards

It seems that the creator of this project intended there to be special WikiProject Ancient Egypt awards but the section for awards has remained "TBD" for several months so its about time we actually created one/some. How about just the classic barnstar format with an Egypt related picture, like below. -Icewedge (talk)

		[what should the title be?]
		{{{1}}}

How about the following, which could be given out for people who regularly "watch" ancient Egypt pages and the project watchlist and revert lots of vandalism?

		Eye of Horus Award
		{{{1}}}

Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 22:26, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I like it! If no one else objects you should institute that on the WPAE page. -Icewedge (talk) 20:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

What about "Gold of hono(u)r" ? See Ay's tomb for a detailed picture Markh (talk) 20:40, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I have added the Eye of Horus Award award to the project page. -IcĕwedgЁ (ťalķ) 00:01, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 22:22, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Article ratings

I am not a member of the WikiProject of Ancient Egypt but I have contributed a lot of information for various articles here under my Leoboudv and 24.87.131.31 IP number. I would like to make 2 suggestions to the person who assigns ratings to certain Egyptological articles here.

May I suggest that the articles on Ramesses IV, Osorkon II and Takelot I be promoted from B minus to 'Good'? They are all well sourced and well written articles. I added most of the sourcing.
Secondly, the article on Neferneferuaten, a newly discovered female pharaoh who ruled between Akhenaten and Tutankhamun at Amarna has not been rated. She certainly exists (as Dodson & JP Allen wrotes) and is attested by a Year 3 date but her precise identity (whether she was Meritaten, Nefertiti, etc) is unknown.

Regards, Leoboudv (talk) 22:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Neferneferuaten as been assessed as B class. To get an article tagged as a GA please submit them and follow the directions at WP:GAN. Thanks for your work with WP:AnEgy articles, have you considered joining up? -IcĕwedgЁ (ťalķ) 05:27, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Egyptian pyramids

Just a quick note to let you know that Egyptian pyramids (which is tagged as in the scope of your project) is up for GA reassessment. The concerns are listed on its talk page, and the article will be given one week for improvement. Nikki311 03:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 1828 articles are assigned to this project, of which 263, or 14.4%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 14 July 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place a template on your project page.

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:17, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Sounds interesting. Do we wanna give it a try? - Icewedge (talk) 07:08, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

This looks really useful, as far as I can tell! Cherryleaf (talk) 09:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Good Article reassessment for Valley of the Kings

Hello, as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force, I am conducting the GA sweeps for Archaeology articles promoted prior to August 2007. The first article I am looking at is Valley of the Kings. I believe that it is close to meeting the GA criteria, but it is lacking a few sources. I have gone through part of the article (and will continue over the next few days) and done some copyediting and added "citation needed" tags. It would be great if editors from this project could help address these tags and/or discuss them on the article's reassessment page (located here. Best wishes, GaryColemanFan (talk) 00:16, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I have completed my review and placed the reassessment on hold for a week to allow for my concerns to be addressed. GaryColemanFan (talk) 01:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Good Article sweeps: Great Pyramid of Giza

Hello, as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force, I have conducted a Good Article reassessment of Great Pyramid of Giza. I have a few minor concerns that should be addressed if the article is to remain listed as a GA. If anyone is able to help out, the reassessment can be found here. Thanks, GaryColemanFan (talk) 14:46, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I am the only one who has addressed any of the concerns. There are a couple of minor issues (citing a small paragraph and adding a couple of sentences) remaining, so I am extending the hold because I'm really hoping not to have to delist the article. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, GaryColemanFan (talk) 14:31, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Links

the links on the top of the project page don't work properly! Can someone sort it out please?hannah (talk) 19:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge?

All the Gods and goddesses are all on separate pages and there isn't a page with a link to all and listing all the Gods and Goddesses, should I create one? hannah (talk) 19:15, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I think that Egyptian pantheon covers this already, although perhaps it should be moved to a more obvious title. - Icewedge (talk) 00:00, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Ancient Egypt

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 20:35, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Dubious edit

This edit on Merneptah was made by an IP that was used a few hours earlier for vandalism of Potato. I know next to nothing about ancient Egypt, so one of you might like to check it out. Matt's talk 13:00, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I have checked the edit and the IP's changes seem to be legit: the first change is backed up by this page which states "Sety II was likely the son of King Merenptah and Queen Isetnofret" and the second addition is true by our own article on Amenmesse. - Icewedge (talk) 23:45, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Matt's talk 09:05, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Paut Neteru

This article has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paut Neteru. I think it could do with some input from this project as it seems to me as a non-expert that this is probably a notable subject but that the current text of the article is about a fringe interpretation. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:22, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Good Article sweeps: Mummy

Hello, as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force, I have conducted a Good Article reassessment of Mummy. I have a few concerns that should be addressed if the article is to remain listed as a GA. If anyone is able to help out, the reassessment can be found here. Thanks, GaryColemanFan (talk) 15:40, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Drawings of antique monuments in Egypt

Hello, since a long time ago, I'm working to illustrate a lot of articles in the ancient egypt project of wikipedia.fr (France). Don't hesitate to use them freely. Here's the link to my user page [13] where you can find a great part of these drawings. 195.146.225.161 (talk) 16:59, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Egyptological alef and ayin and yod

These now have Unicode code points. Should we not use them? -- Evertype·✆ 09:50, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Shebitku Titulary

The titularies in the Shebitku article has a picture of the cartouche that reads as what is listed for the nomen and the cartouche shown for the nomen reads as what is given as the praenomen. Someone seems to have mixed the pictures. I assume ŠʔBʔTʔKʔ is the nomen, and not ĐdKʔRʕ, but I am uncertain enough that I will abstain from correcting the article myself. 67.177.214.210 (talk) 23:04, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Saqqara

News piece on BBC about two tombs 'recently' discovered - Tombs discovered after 4,000 years.--Alf ^melmac 16:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Hieroglyphics resembling helicopters

Can anyone direct me to a free image of hieroglyphics on Wikipedia or Commons of a hieroglyphics resembling modern vehicles? I need them to illustrate Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. If they aren't any already on this site, can I just upload this and say it's a public domain work because the artist has been dead for thousands of years? Alientraveller (talk) 16:10, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Transcription help

Hi folks, can you take a look at Ful medames? Am I correct in assuming that the hieroglyphs can be transcribed as follows:

p [actually: pʰ] + w [actually: u] + y + r [actually: l] + "is a logogram" + "grain" [Gardiner N33] + "plural"

The logogram marker puzzles me - what does it refer to? Otherwise, it would rather plainly translate to "fava bean seeds". Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Nubian queen seeks html geek

Amanitore, 2000 years old but look years younger seeks person with knowledge of html to put her name in hieroglyphics. Historic record available on other language versions. Good sense of humour. Victuallers (talk) 15:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the hieroglyphs fit in the infobox, but if you check the Hungarian version of the article, it has them. An Egyptologist guy wrote nice articles about her and other Meroitic rulers, most of them have hieroglyphs. – Alensha ^talk 23:10, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Milestone Announcements

All WikiProjects are invited to have their "milestone-reached" announcements automatically placed onto Wikipedia's announcements page.
Milestones could include the number of FAs, GAs or articles covered by the project.
No work need be done by the project themselves; they just need to provide some details when they sign up. A bot will do all of the hard work.

Click here for more information or to sign your project up.

I thought this WIkiProject might be interested. Ping me with any specific queries or leave them on the page linked to above. Thanks! - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 21:39, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I think we should do this, but anyone got an idea of what out milestones should be ? Markh (talk) 10:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree, our milestones can be pages —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zuzzerack (talk • contribs) 23:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If you take a look at the announcement page link above, you can see what it is all about: basically, the # of pages belonging to a category that have made GA or FA status.

Probably we need a round number like 10 FA or GA articles to qualify.

If we want to reach milestones, we need to be more co-ordinated in our article improvement efforts. Any nominations? (I would nominate Narmer Palette, but am game for anything else). Captmondo (talk) 01:03, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems like a good article, about the milestones, should we do 5, 10, 15,20, etc. articles in the FA or GA status? Zuzzerack (talk) 02:21, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. Lots of work though... Captmondo (talk) 02:55, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 04:44, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Bek (sculptor)

Akhenaten's sculptor needs some wikilinks to his article and a native English speaker to clean up the article after me. Thanks :) – Alensha ^talk 23:10, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Great Pyramids

Some of the incoming links to Great Pyramids, such as the one from Giza Necropolis, seem to think the term means the Pyramids at Giza. However, Great Pyramids actually redirects to Egyptian pyramids, which is a general article. Ideally someone needs to decide what we want "Great Pyramids" to mean and fix up the articles appropriately. 86.161.40.162 (talk) 02:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:NOT#PLOT

WP:NOT#PLOT: There is an RfC discussing if our policy on plot, WP:PLOT, should be removed from what Wikipedia is not. Please feel free to comment on the discussion and straw poll.

Apologies for the notice, but this is being posted to every WikiProject to avoid accusations of systemic bias. Hiding T 13:22, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Praise of the Two Lands

See question at Talk:Sneferu.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 19:33, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Amenhotep III notice

I'm writing to notify the community that I have placed Amenhotep III on hold as part of the GA sweeps. It is currently a GA but unless significant work is done it will be delisted in a week. Please go here for my assessment. If you have questions please contact my talk page. H1nkles (talk) 19:35, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation

This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.

We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.

If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 22:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Popular pages

User:Mr.Z-man has a new service available to various requesting WikiProjects which gives the project a monthly update of the number of hits on the 1,000 most frequently accessed articles for that project. An example of such a listing can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Popular pages. Would the members of this project be interested in getting such a list for their use? John Carter (talk) 18:50, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

depictions of lionesses and links to Sekhmet etc

Hi all, I would love some help at lion where there is some material which would be good to add as long as it has a reliable source. Can anyone help here to source two (well, three) sections of removed text at Talk:Lion#Hero_son_of_lioness_goddess? Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:23, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Under Siamun, Egypt embarked upon an active foreign policy and he is most probably the Pharaoh who formed an alliance with the new ruler of Israel, King Solomon against the Philistines. Solomon, the son of David, had just assumed power around 971 or 970 BCE which was certainly around the middle of Siamun's reign. As part of the arrangements within this Egyptian-Israelite alliance, the Egyptian king attacked and laid waste the Philistine city of Gezer in part to safeguard Egypt's commercial ties with Phoenicia--something which the Philistines were threatening--and also to take advantage of the Philistines' momentary weakness after King David's series of Biblical wars against their state. Solomon, for his part, was then permitted to permanently secure his kingdom's southern borders by occupying Gezer, which henceforth, remained a part of Ancient Israel. The alliance was consecrated by a royal marriage between Solomon and a daughter of the Egyptian king.[15] Amarna letter EA 4--Amenhotep III is quoted by the Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil I in firmly rejecting the latter's entreaty to marry one of this pharaoh's daughters: "From time immemorial, no daughter of the king of Egy[pt] is given to anyone."[22] Amenhotep III's refusal to allow one of his daughters to be married to the Babylonian monarch may indeed be connected with Egyptian traditional royal practices that could provide a claim upon the throne through marriage to a royal princess, or, it be viewed as a shrewd attempt on his part to enhance Egypt's prestige over those of her neighbours in the international world.

Akheperre Setepenre Osorkon the Elder was the fifth king of the twenty-first dynasty of Egypt and was the first pharaoh of Libyan extraction in Egypt.(Reign 992-968 BC) He is also sometimes known as "Osochor," following Manetho's Aegyptiaca. Osorkon the Elder was the son of Shoshenq. He would not know or care about the claim to the throne by giving his daughter in marriage. Solomon's wife is probably of Libyan ancestry, but the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.12.171.60 (talk) 17:40, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Is Menes on the Palarmo Stone?

On the article about Menes it is stated "However, his name does not appear on extant pieces of the Royal Annals (Cairo Stone and Palermo Stone), which is a now-fragmentary king's list that was carved onto a stela sometime during the Fifth dynasty." This is written in the introduction. Yet on the wiki for the Palermo stone it states "The text begins by listing several thousands of years of rulers — presumed by many to be mythical — predating the rise of the god Horus, who, according to the text, conferred the kingship on Menes, the first human ruler listed. The text credits Menes with the unification of Egypt.[1] (Another name for Menes is though to be Narmer, but this could be the name of the next ruler."

Therefore, the two articles have directly contradictory information. I do not claim to know which is correct, but I would be very interested to find out, if someone with the education to provide such a response would please correct the issue.

Thank you,

Jonathan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.222.49.76 (talk) 06:26, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Needs checking

An anonymous editor has made a bunch of suspicious edits concerning names of Egyptian hieroglyphs[14][15][16][17][18]. Please, can someone knowledgeable check whether they are correct? — Emil J. 14:50, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

They weren't correct. Someone changed the Egyptian symbols' phonetic values to be the same as the title of the page. Perhaps that was reasonable to someone uninformed in Egyptology, but it's incorrect. 97.127.34.184 (talk) 21:09, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Hyksos Questions

There are about 6 named Hyksos Kings.

By the text their names are given but what in that text identifies any of them as Hyksos?

Archaic.egypt (talk) 18:51, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Request

Wasn't quite certain where to post this question but would it help the project if I drew in plans/blueprints of the Pharaohs tombs and added them to finished Pharaoh pages. I can also add pages on styles of tombs and such (I'm new to the project and a student Archaeology looking to help out a bit when I can) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cardolan (talk • contribs) 16:06, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Tomb plans would be rather tangential to the articles on the pharaohs, but in the articles on the tombs themselves (KV1, KV2, etc.) they could be quite useful. A. Parrot (talk) 16:31, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

The Great Pyramid: Ramp Theories

Besides the fact that we don't normally start articles with 'the', this article was evidently created by an editor who didn't realise it duplicates material in Egyptian pyramid construction techniques. The latter doesn't seem long enough yet to warrant a content fork. I've tagged them both for merger but so far no one has commented on the talk page. Does anyone here have any suggestions as to what to do? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 19:07, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

New Chronology (Rohl)

Concern about the above article has been raised at WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard. Apparently this article is about a (fringe?) theory that revises the dating of events in Ancient Egypt. It seems that the proposer of this theory David Rohl is a contributer to the article, and may be pushing his theory. May I suggest that members of this project check it out with NPOV and WP:FRINGE in mind. Thanks. Blueboar (talk) 14:47, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

merger proposal

Merge Egyptian influence in architecture and visual arts into Egyptian mythology in popular culture, discuss at Talk:Egyptian mythology in popular culture. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Eye of Horus - arithmetic, where from??

Newbie here, in the Eye of Horus article there is a large section In arithmetic with not a footnote to be found. Did someone make this up out of whole cloth on a lazy Saturday morning? Trudyjh (talk) 01:33, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

No, it's true. A. Parrot (talk) 03:30, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

There are several footnotes listed on the Eye of Horus entry. For example, Tanja Pemmerening's paper is listed. Tanja shows that the main medical text, the Ebers Papyrus scaled a binary unit 1/64 to a dja as marked it as a healing unit. Tanja did not know how to link the separate binary units, written as 10/n hin, 64/n dja and 320/n ro to the Akhmim Wooden Tablet and its division of a hekat unity, 64/64, that was divided by 3, 7, 10, 11 and 13 as Hana Vymazalova showed a few years ago.

The truthof the contents and dating of the Old Kingdom Eye of Horus topics need to be discussed in terms of Middle Kingdom weights and measures and other issues. One view is that a binary numeration system dominated Egyptian prior to 2050 BCE. At that time round-off errors plagued the system, threw away 1/64 of a unit (the dja when speaking of the medical texts) when fractions of a hekat volume unit were discussed. In the Old Kingdom, Eye of Horus used a doubling method for multiplication, and/or for a proof method to return answers (say the five Akhmim Wooden Tablet (AWT) division problems) to the its initial value (64/64) by multiplying an Eye of Horus answer plus a ro scaled remainder (when speaking of the AWT) by its initial divisor (3, 7, 10, 11 and 13 in the AWT), returning the initial rational number: unity, written as 64/64. This proof method continued in the Middle Kingdom.

By 2050 BCE, the Eye of Horus system was replaced by an exact method of converting rational numbers to unit fraction series when proofs were not involved. Does anyone wish to discuss this topic? Best Regards, Milogardner (talk) Milo Gardner, 11/1/09

Second opinion about Fictional Pharaohs

What do people think of the Fictional Pharaohs section in List of pharaohs. I don't think it belongs on that list. The list is large enough as it is. I removed the section but was reverted. Garion96 (talk) 11:28, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm an inclusionist by inclination, so I would say keep it. There's also precedent in the individual pharaoh bios on WP that mention fictional takes on their lives or interpretations in the movies or TV. Captmondo (talk) 11:59, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Give it its own article. Dougweller (talk) 14:08, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Also a good alternative. Captmondo (talk) 15:38, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Did some checking and there used to be a List of fictional Pharaohs article but it was merged/redirected. I wouldn't mind of that becomes a list again (although I see little value). At least this way it will be removed from a list which already is too long. Garion96 (talk) 17:34, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Another fictional guy, though not a pharaoh: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amennefernebes please vote. Thanks. – Alensha ^talk 01:32, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

'Dynasty list' templates

While working on a couple of Predynastic period cultures' articles I noticed that the category Category:Pharaonic dynasty templates contains four different templates. I am wondering why can't we just use the main one —{{Egyptian Dynasty list}}. It has a drop down menu which is excellent for usability. I understand the the three other templates highlight the corresponding period but I still don't see that as a good reason to keep them. Some editors may get confused while others may use them inappropriately. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 17:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Just use the main template everywhere and eliminate the other three. However, looking at the different templates, I decided that I liked the simple header for the "Small" dynasty template better than the one currently used on the main template. May I suggest that the main template be changed to something like this [19]? A. Parrot (talk) 18:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks A.P. I agree with you. Incidentally, I was thinking about the same yesterday. The 'Ankh' symbol seems a bit 'heavy'. Probably better wait for other people's opinions to see what they think? -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 18:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi - a long time ago I pointed all articles at the {{Egyptian Dynasty list}}, so the problem is really one of orphaned templates. I have just reformatted the header of the template to be smaller, so could some check it looks OK? Cheers Markh (talk) 18:02, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I still prefer the design I linked to above, but it's an unimportant niggling thing, so I won't change it unless someone else agrees with me. The main thing is not to have too bulky a template. A. Parrot (talk) 19:22, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Colossus of Ramesses II duplication

It appears to me that the Colossus of Ramesses II and the Statue of Ramesses II (Mit Rahina) are about the same statue. I've started a discussion at Talk:Statue of Ramesses II (Mit Rahina)#Merge Colossus of Ramesses II here?. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 02:02, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Category deletion nom for Category:Ancient Egyptian scribal works

Nominator's rationale: Redundant to Category:Egyptian inscriptions and Category:Ancient Egyptian literature (not a parent of this). There mnight just be a case for a rename to Category:Ancient Egyptian texts, but I doubt it. The AE project has been notified. Johnbod (talk) 21:32, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Please comment here Johnbod (talk) 21:38, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

translations

Hello, I have done a list of all the featured and goods articles about the Ancient Egypt of all the wikipedias on this page : meta:Egyptopedia/Translation. We can sew more quickly the articles we can translate ! Thanks for update this list. Tpt2 (talk) 20:31, 19 January 2010 (UTC) (A french contributor).

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

The Totem of the Neteru (ancient Egyptian divinities)

The ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses are best known in the world since the Hellenic times for their anthropomorphic forms and visages. The ancient Egyptians themselves may not consider this as the actual appearance of their many gods, but they do believe that the respective animals of these deities are the best representation of their divine traits. Perhaps it would be best if we added a "totemic animal" section to all the Infoboxs of the Egyptian gods and goddesses concerned with (if any) totemic representation. EX: Ptah = bull, Wadjet = Egyptian cobra, Osiris = geron etc...

Then again, there has to be a better word than "Totemic". 110.55.181.106 (talk) 10:06, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not enthusiastic about infoboxes—they look good on the side of the article, but it's difficult to squeeze the complexities of Egyptian mythology into their parameters (e.g., listing all of a god's mythological relatives, some of whom were related to them in some myths but not in others or only vaguely seen as relatives at all). Still, listing a god's symbolic animals is relatively uncomplicated, and for gods like Ra or Amun with many different symbolic animals, it might be useful to provide a unified, brief list. A section for "symbol" already exists, but I'm inclined to use that sparingly, for cult images like the fetish of Abydos

for Osiris or the Min emblem

for Min, and perhaps for the hieroglyphs that some gods wore on their heads. A. Parrot (talk) 22:37, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I hate infoboxes, they force editors to oversimplify, they sometimes contradict the article, etc -- see my userpage for more. on infoboxes.

Merneptah

Wikipedia says that the pharaoh Merenptah was "drowned".

What and where is the proof on this drowning being actually being true? Lungs and brains are not in the mummy.

I think it should be said that he died, not drowned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.153.140.156 (talk) 18:32, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I've changed it, it related to a claim that Merneptah was the (almost certainly non-existent) Exodus Pharaoh. Dougweller (talk) 18:42, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Can someone please look at the edits of this editor?

Mychele Trempetich (talk · contribs) is creating new AE articles and editing old ones, removing recent citation tags, adding unreferenced claims as though they are fact, etc. I'm not a specialist and don't have the time to deal with all of them (most seem not to have been reverted). Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 19:15, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not much more of a specialist than you, Doug, but while at first glance it appears that she's doing nothing more than translating articles from the Hungarian language Wikipedia to the English one, I find it odd that someone in Croatia pick the Hungarian Wikipedia instead of, say, the Croatian one. Anyway, to prevent a paranoia which might prove embarrassing, I have tagged several with the useful {{Unreferenced}} & {{stub}} templates. Let's see what happens. -- llywrch (talk) 22:54, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. That explains some of her edits, but not the removal of recent citation tags, changes in cited text so that they no longer reflect the source, changing statements that are tentative to statements that are certain, etc. It's that sort of edits more than the creation of new unsourced ones that I find particularly problematic. Dougweller (talk) 08:05, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

In my review of her edits I didn't see any material removed -- but I limited myself only to her more recent ones. Can you provide a few so I know what you are concerned about? -- llywrch (talk) 22:48, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Query about websites as sources

I see a lot of websites being used as sources and wonder if we should try to form some sort of consensus on which should be used and which not. Some are personal websites, some like touregypt are not.

I've just run into the use of a website developed by Anneke Bart Associate Professor Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Saint Louis University. Now while maybe she could be a RS for AE mathematics (see [20], should we be using her site here on Abydos tombs]? Some are sourced to digitalegypt so we could use that (a website we can probably agree upon as a reliable source), others are not sourced. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 11:57, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I almost always refer to printed sources myself whenever possible, as the information is "more stable" as compared to a typical Web site. Could you maybe list out a number of candidate Web sites (you mention a couple above) and maybe suggest some criteria for what's good and what's not-so-good? Cheers! Captmondo (talk) 15:01, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

There are reliable websites on Egypt such as http://www.pyramidtextsonline.com/ and http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/ but almost anything on religion is hopelessly bad. Touregypt is banned because of commercial aspect even though its a pretty good source of accurate info.Apepch7 (talk) 15:14, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Did Touregypt get blacklisted again? After all of the stink I raised two years ago -- & which led me to understand one former Admin's quality of reasoning? When did that happen? -- llywrch (talk) 22:48, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Touregypt is a great site but I'm not at all convinced it's a reliable source. For a start, it's a very commercial site, full of ads, a shop, selling tours,etc. How often would we accept a site that ad heavy as either a RS or an EL? Secondly, what's the editorial control? Wouldn't we look for that in a website full of articles by different people? Take a look at this [21] - sheer crankery, but if we just gave Touregypt a blank check...

Aldokkan.com is used for quite a few articles. [22]. It's a nice site, but I don't think it's an RS - run by one person with an MA in architecture.[23].

Can someone find an alternative to atlantisquest.com for footnote 2 on List of Pharaohs?

Phouka.com is used quite a bit also. [24].

Isn't there a Russian site that people user?

The criteria should be the usual ones we use for reliable sources. If it's basically a personal website not by an acknowledged expert, we shouldn't use it. If it has no editorial oversight, we shouldn't use it. Etc. Dougweller (talk) 19:29, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm addressing touregypt.com specifically, & my concern is limited to whether or not it has been blacklisted. (I have no knowledge or opinion about the other sites Dougweller lists above.) The flap about that -- which may have ran its course before Dougweller joined Wikipedia -- was that because its pages had "too many ads" the entire site should be blacklisted. (Despite the fact that it had been linked to by at a dozen editors independently.) And that the person I assume was responsible ignored the fact that many media websites -- e.g., NY Times, Newsweek, etc. -- all have lots of ads. If you can find a better source for anything currently sourced there, please make the change; I have no doubt better sources exist. (And far too many editors rely solely on material on the Internet, IMHO.) But to arbitrarily blacklist a site because someone doesn't like it for questionable reasons -- that I strongly object to. -- llywrch (talk) 17:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Touregypt has almost 500 links on Wikipedia, so it's not blacklisted. It's not so much the ads as the fact it is clearly a commercial site as well as an informative, and the informative side seems to have no editorial control given that it has at least one completely crank article and the other writer I checked seemed to be ok, but no clear sign of expertise such as publications in journals, references in books, etc. But it is better than a lot. Dougweller (talk) 18:35, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Ooops sorry for opening the Touregypt controversy again - its just that I remember it being rather forcibly removed on the basis that it was commercial. Some of the articles are good quality and referenced - so the question is ... if you reference a site is that the whole site or just the bit which is relevant to the subject?Apepch7 (talk) 19:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

My preference, and I think in line with policy, is to say that the site itself is not a RS, but articles written by people who are known experts in the field can be used, just as they could be used if they were on, for instance, the expert's personal website. Dougweller (talk) 20:57, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) No harm done. Dougweller & I weren't really arguing -- at least I didn't think we were -- just defining our opinions on a specific source. He doesn't think it is a reliable source & I don't think it should be blacklisted; they aren't conflicting opinions. (And if every link to touregypt.com was replaced with links to other sites or print sources, I would not object -- as long as they improved the articles.) And to answer your question, IMHO a link to a specific page on a website doesn't mean the whole site is necessarily reliable. Even peer-reviewed journals -- thought by some to be the acme of reliable sources -- publish articles that are, bluntly, garbage. Some sources are clearly useless for Wikipedia, & because of repeated abuses are blacklisted from Wikipedia; other sources are considered, by default, reliable & can be cited without discussion beforehand. The whole ideal of Wikipedia is that we can discuss all of these conflicts & disagreements, & this process will lead to more nuanced & better content. Unfortunately many editors forget this. -- llywrch (talk) 20:59, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

We weren't arguing. Here's another source I'm not happy about [25]. Take a look at the last two paragraphs of Merneith for a section relying entirely on dubious sources. Dougweller (talk) 20:40, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Not trying to be intentionally dense, but I see nothing there that is questionable -- although I admit the information in those paragraphs could be either obsolete or just plain wrong. (Maybe it's a problem with my browser.) Could you elaborate? -- llywrch (talk) 21:36, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

We have what I think is an unreliable source - footnote 8 - which doesn't seem to say anything about the claims it is used to substantiate. Source 9 is an anonymous personal website, belonging to someone who uses an email alias. The 3rd source, however popular it claims to be, is also by an anonymous author.[26]. Dougweller (talk) 22:23, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

(unindenting) Okay, I see where I got lost in Doug's examples: I thought he was referring to the source cited, not to the article in Wikipedia. Anyway, I think the problem encountered here is not that these sources are unreliable, per the intent of the policy (which is to keep the obviously crappy & lunatic fringe stuff out of Wikipedia) but that they aren't ideal sources. I'll go on the record to state that they appear sober & reasonable presentations of the material to me; I've used the material on xoomer.virgilio.it in the past. However, this is an example of the problem of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Are they good enough sources for the moment? I think so. Are they good enough for the article to be seriously considered for GA or FA status? I would strongly argue against them should that happen. The best solution would be to find better sources than these to replace these sources with; the worst would be to remove the them & tag the statements as "references needed". -- llywrch (talk) 22:24, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Those reference sites quoted by Dougweller look like hobbyist stuff to me (but I only looked quickly). Of course there must be a caveat emptor approach to info on the internet in the sense that if you are researching then you have to at least triangulate sources if you want to get something authoritative. So is the reference there just to say this is where I got this information from, or is it to say this info is reliable because it comes from a reliable source? I don't understand enough about Wiki rules. If its the second then you would have to be very careful and probably avoid nearly all websites especially the ones about AE religion, if its the first then its just a kind of audit trail to show why you made a certain edit. The scary thing is how many sites just cut and paste from Wiki anyway - which could lead to an article self referencing - and we'll all end up believing Horus is Jesus (ha ha)Apepch7 (talk) 00:01, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

AKAIK, providing a source simply means that it is where the editor found her/his information. It is up to the reader to decide whether the source is reliable or not. Unfortunately the fact a source is cited by Wikipedia ends up making it appear to be reliable for some readers. Which is one reason teachers dislike Wikipedia. -- llywrch (talk) 23:03, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

OK well if that's the case we don't need to be picky about the websites. Mind you the same can be said of 'reliable' books (like the assertion that an Egyptian god could be an ocelot in Wilkinson). There is an awful lot of 'Kemet' style opinion in most articles which should go really.Apepch7 (talk) 23:46, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your point -- especially your mention of "an awful lot of 'Kemet' style opinion in most articles". (Are you refering to the periodical KMT? I thought that was considered a reliable source.) If a given statement is clearly attributed to some source, then it shouldn't be deleted without some form of discussion. If you find a statement supported by a source you don't think is reliable (as Doug Weller stated above), then find a better source to replace the objectionable one with. No one should object to that; if anything, doing that improves Wikipedia. (I remember citing a statement in a non-Ancient Egyptian article with a reference to the magazine Minerva, which I believe is a reliable source; someone didn't like that & replaced my footnote with one to the actual excavation report. I couldn't reasonably object to that, & actually was happy to concede that dispute since it resulted with a better article.) So feel free to be "picky" about websites or sources -- just be ready to do the work to fix the problem. -- llywrch (talk) 21:43, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Hent (queen)

I can't find any sources for a wife of Hor-Aha called Hent. Khenthap, yes, but not this alternate name (or the claim about her being his sister). I think this may have been translated from the Croation Wiki (like a few other recent creations), and either the name was a mistake made there or a local spelling variation although it's hard to figure out how that could have happened. Dougweller (talk) 20:53, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Dodson and Hilton's Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt mentions a "Khenthap" as a possible wife. Ditto Tyldesley's Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt. No "Hent" in Shaw and Nicholson's Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, nor Baker's Encyclopedia of The Egyptian Pharaohs Volume 1. I was able to find a reference to a princess "Hent-tawy" in an article on JSTOR, but she was a Late Period princess of the pharaoh Pinudjem. I think you can safely remove this article. Captmondo (talk) 02:24, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I can't delete via Speedy as I don't think it meets the criteria, so see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hent (queen). Dougweller (talk) 07:52, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

On my language, Khentap and Hent are represented as the same queen. But sure, this is English wiki. I will wrote article about Khentap, if you don't mind. --Mychele Trempetich (talk) 17:49, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Queen Behenu

Given the reports of a newly discovered burial chamber (see [27] as a sample) of what seems to be a previously unknown queen of the 6th Dynasty, we really ought to start collecting what info is out there and throwing together a new article on it.

I've created a stub here.

I also can't help but wonder if the previous discussion on a Queen Hent may have been an early attempt at translating the name. Given the paucity of material in print, this may also prove to be a good test case of what constitutes "good" online source material. Captmondo (talk) 16:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Hapi or Hapy?

On the page, Hapy, The page is "Hapy", but the articles starts with "Hapi". Also, at the very bottom, the setence reads, "The name Hapy can be spelled either Hapi or Hapi,…". Is this correct? As it says the name is Hapi or Hapi, but that's the same word. Thanks, Marasama (talk) 17:58, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I believe it can be rendered either way, and the article text has confused the two spellings. I don't know enough about hieroglyphic transcription to say which would be more accurate or more common among Egyptologists. The article should at least be internally consistent in spelling, so I've changed it. Another source of confusion, though, is Hapy the Nile god versus Hapi the son of Horus. I don't know how to sort that out. A. Parrot (talk) 18:43, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I haven't actually "sorted that out", but have expanded both articles, and added citations from the main book I have in my library on the subject. Captmondo (talk) 20:49, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, thanks, Marasama (talk) 15:49, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Is this accurate?

Pharmacopoeia#History, makes no mention of ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian medicine mentions it. This is way before Pliny the Elder's birth at 23CE.

I mentioned this both in Wikipedia:WikiProject Pharmacology & Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt.

Thanks, Marasama (talk) 15:59, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Added mention of Egypt, Edwin Smith Papyrus. Thanks, Marasama (talk) 16:04, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Capitalisation of ancient

In an attempt to get a project wide consensus and WP:MOS standard I've started a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#Capitalis(z)ation_of_ancient - eg the correct form of "Pottery of A/ancient Egypt". Please contribute if possible.77.86.119.83 (talk) 21:39, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Chronology

I got a copy of The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (from 2000) from the library yesterday, and got it into my head to do as the to-do list above suggests. Despite the tedium, I went through the articles on dynasties and pharaohs and adjusted their dates to match OHAE's chronological table. In most of those cases the existing articles had no more information than the bare dates (often not even cited), so I felt comfortable replacing them. The articles on the early New Kingdom pharaohs have more detailed and well-cited chronological information that I wasn't comfortable replacing, but their dates were only a year or two off from OHAE's, so I left them alone. Problems came up when I reached the Third Intermediate Period, because for those pharaohs someone added information from the Handbook of Ancient Egyptian Chronology. The information is more recent and more detailed, so I didn't want to remove it, but it clashes with OHAE's dates. I was pretty tired by then, so I quit. (Fortunately the dates after the Third Intermediate Period seem to be firmly dated.)

So, I mostly standardized the dates for periods, dynasties, and pharaohs before the Third Intermediate Period, as well as the major pyramids. I didn't work on the articles for individual centuries and decades, or look at most of the other ancient Egypt articles to see if their dates were inconsistent, because I was worn out. I'm not sure that my big effort has improved things that much. Until historical articles get thorough individual attention (as the early NK pharaohs did), or some crazy person decides to deal with all the Egyptian chronological issues using the most recent sources, I think the inconsistency problems are going to persist. I'm going back to my snail's-pace religion work. A. Parrot (talk) 01:54, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Salutations and kudos for doing this work, I'm not surprised you are tired! In the best possible of worlds I think consistency would be more important that pin point accuracy (given some dates will be disputed) but what is important to most people (I think) is what cam before what and how long for. Its unlikely on here, I would have thought, that we will get agreement on one dating system but the more consistent the dates are the better. Apepch7 (talk) 14:45, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree. This has been niggling me for some time. Many thanks. Dougweller (talk) 05:09, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

In this context, this week's carbon dating results (Science 328. no. 5985, pp. 1554 - 1557) are presumably relevant, they seem farily well accepted and tend to go for the earlier end of accepted chronologies. Not my field, but I thought it worth drawing to your attention. Le Deluge (talk) 14:45, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

DEAR ISIS

HEY UM I KNOW ON THIS PAGE YOUR SUPPOSED TO KNOW STUFF BUT I WAS WONDERING IF ANY OF YOU COULD HELP WITH SOME MAJOR RESHERCH ON THE GODESS ISIS. I ABOUSLTLY ADORE HER BUT KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HER SO IF YOU WOULD REPLE THAT WOULD BE A LOT OF HELP THANKS! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.35.171.114 (talk) 18:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi! What do you need? Akirn (talk) 09:00, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

The original poster might want to read WP:HOMEWORK - this project is about making Wikipedia articles better, not helping individual "with some major resherch". Reading the Isis article might go a long way to helping "know something about her"??? Le Deluge (talk) 14:06, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't trust our Egyptian deity articles, as I've found awful errors in them before. I suggested some books for that person to consult, but did no more than that. Let him/her do his/her own research. A. Parrot (talk) 02:32, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

The British Museum wants to give you money and help you write articles!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend the Backstage Pass event at the British Museum. It was part of a wider project of engagement with Wikipedia (see WP:GLAM/BM) that has seen them take on a temporary Wikipedian In Residence, User:Witty lama. They see Wikipedia as sharing many of their aims, and they want to encourage involvement by Wikipedians with the museum, and vice versa. They have even offered 5 prizes of £100 at the BM shop for featured articles on BM topics - in any language, Arabic included. The Rosetta Stone would be an obvious one for this Project, an article that is already in reasonable shape.
Most Wikipedians probably don't know that the BM has curators dedicated to answering phone/email questions about their specialist areas, and most of their department libraries welcome visitors doing bona fide research - and they now seem to recognise that editing Wikipedia articles, especially about items in the BM's collections, counts for those purposes. I know that the first question most people will have is "Can we have images of all their stuff?" and I'd just ask people to be patient on that front. Let's just say that the museum are well aware of our hopes there, there are staff who see advantages to the museum in doing something, and it's being discussed at the highest level. On the other hand it's a very complex area that needs to be handled diplomatically. Literally in some cases - foreign governments can get very touchy about the dissemination of images of artifacts relating to their cultural history, and the museum needs to respect those concerns.
So for the moment the focus is on using the BM's huge resources of books, expertise etc to improve article content, and hopefully that will include articles being peer-reviewed by BM staff. Some of them are quite nervous about doing stuff on Wikipedia, a mixture of fear of professional ridicule, nervousness about the technical aspects, stories of rapid reverts of good-faith edits and just general culture shock - it's a very different world to the one they come from. So I'd ask everyone to look after any BM people that you see around the place, Wikipedia can gain a lot from their involvement and it would be a shame if they're discouraged for any reason. As I mentioned above, WP:GLAM/BM is the clearing house for the BM's involvement with Wikipedia, and I suggest that further questions/comments are directed there. Le Deluge (talk) 14:08, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Malfunctioning quality-rating template

If you look at the table of ancient Egypt articles by quality and importance, you'll notice that there are no B-class articles listed. Instead, it seems that all our B-class articles show up as C-class. Sometime in the past few months, Template:WikiProject Ancient Egypt started registering articles as C-class when their quality rating is entered as B. Even on the discussion pages, the template indicates these articles are C; only if you look at the edit window can you see the original B entry. Has something gone wrong with the template syntax? A. Parrot (talk) 17:32, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm just passing by, I don't "live" here - but I can point you in the right direction. It sounds like somewhere along the line it's started behaving like the WPMILHIST banner, where an article is only allowed to count as a B if all the B-class checklist items are completed. The eg {{WikiProject Greece}} banner is slightly more user-friendly in making this obvious. You need to work out how you're going to treat B class - personally I think the full B-class checklist goes a bit over the top, it makes B class into more of an unreviewed WP:GA, but once you've worked that out you might want to ask over at Template talk:WPBannerMeta for help on the nuts and bolts of changing things. If you edit Talk:Peloponnesian War you'll see a B-class checklist in action. Off-topic, but I'll just remind people that the British Museum action is still going strong over at WP:GLAM/BM. Le Deluge (talk) 14:00, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Ipuwer Papyrus

I could use some help on this. An editor has added about a dozen citation needed templates recently, and has also added what I consider far too much on possible biblical/Exodus links. I agree it needs more citations (although I also think the number was over the top and the editor could have done more of the work). He also insists that the article call Breasted the 'Dean of American Egyptologists' which I think is not relevant or even correct as it looks as though he still is. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 16:14, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Avaris and Pi-Ramesses

I've done some editing of these two articles recently, and as I'm not an expert in the subject someone who is might like to take a look - especially, to see if the Disputed tags can be removed. PiCo (talk) 02:14, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

JSTOR access

Just so people know, I have access to JSTOR for the next nine months or so. If anyone needs a journal article for Wikipedia work (especially Egypt-related, of course), ask on my talk page. JSTOR's main Egypt-related journals are the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, the Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, and Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur. A. Parrot (talk) 05:05, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

My local library system supports access online to JSTOR, so I am on this as well. A terrific resource, especially for primary source content, and it is constantly being added to. Captmondo (talk) 01:48, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Importance Ratings

As I was doing some work on Middle Kingdom of Egypt, I noticed that most of our top-level periods have an importance of "mid," which I thought odd. I'd like to change Predynastic, Early Dynastic, Old Kingdom, First Intermediate, Middle Kingdom, Second Intermediate, New Kingdom, Third Intermediate, and Late Period all to Top importance, since they are the major divisions that Egyptology divide all Egyptian history into, after all. Any objections?

Oh, and speaking of top level articles, congratulations are in order for the editors who brought Rosetta Stone up to FA. Thanatosimii (talk) 17:48, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

One problem is that the Top importance rating on our scale is defined by a "high probability that non-Egyptologists would look this up". That means that some articles whose subjects are extremely important to actual understanding of Egypt, but not very well-known among laymen, might not get a Top rating. Unless we want to change that criterion, I'm not sure that all of those periods should be rated Top; laymen are generally less interested in historical eras than a few well-known individuals (Ramesses, Cleopatra, Hatshepsut, Tut). Still, I think that at least the three kingdoms can safely be rated Top. The other periods you listed might only warrant High status as long as popular interest affects the Top rating. A. Parrot (talk) 19:11, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with A. Parrot on this. (And thanks for the kudos on the Rosetta Stone article). I also note that the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom and the Protodynastic Period of Egypt all currently rank on the expanded vital articles list which further supports A. Parrot's point (though am not sure that I would include the final listed period with the others). Captmondo (talk) 01:44, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

So top for Old, Middle, and New, and high for the others? Thanatosimii (talk) 02:05, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry nobody answered you, but that did seem to be the consensus when we left off… so I went ahead and changed the ratings myself. A. Parrot (talk) 07:12, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Ancient Egypt articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Ancient Egypt articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 00:09, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

The link doesn't work. The last time I looked at AE articles there, I found quite a bit of nonsense in some. Dougweller (talk) 13:09, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Might want to try again -- sometimes the toolservers are down, presumably when fixes/updates are being made. I can access them without any problem at the moment. Captmondo (talk) 14:22, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, working for me now too. Dougweller (talk) 14:48, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Mentuhotep II

An IP has added a claim that he was a 'black African', by which the IP seems to mean Nubian (he's editing various articles from this pov. A quick search didn't turn up any sources stating he was Nubian although he obviously campaigned in Nubia (and according to his article had 5 Nubian wives). Anyone know more about this? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 13:06, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Safe to say that it is not a verifiable claim, at least not from reputable sources. Not saying that the idea isn't without possible merit, but whenever I have seen this sort of thing it invariably is someone pushing their own unsubstantiated POV. The case is clear-cut for the Nubian pharaohs of the late period, which is well-attested, but that is not the case here. Captmondo (talk) 14:21, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Archiving

The current archive page, number 6, has gotten enormous. If we started a new archive, would MiszaBot II adapt to that, or would we have to adjust it somehow? I know nothing about bots. A. Parrot (talk) 17:22, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Help needed

Any chance of some input by someone else at Talk:Egyptian pyramid construction techniques? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 13:42, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Just responded there. Not an article I had on my watchlist, so thanks for mentioning it here. Hopefully my suggestion will help. Guess we will see. ;-) Captmondo (talk) 16:27, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Over-categorization?

I noticed the addition of the Category:1st-century BC African rulers. Isn't that a bit of overkill? The pages used to categorized as Category:1st-century BC rulers. I don't see it as a really big deal, but I thought it might be worth looking at. --AnnekeBart (talk) 17:14, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Kapi (Egyptian God) up for deletion

This article was created a few months ago, but I've nominated it for deletion because I don't believe its sources are reliable and have seen no corroboration of the article's content from other sources. If anyone has input on the subject, the deletion discussion is here. A. Parrot (talk) 20:27, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

New hieroglyph template

I have created a new template at Template:Infobox hieroglyphs based on its German wiki equivalent which enables article titles to be displayed in hieroglyphs and other scripts as desired. In addition there is a temporary one at Template:Infobox Hieroglyphen to facilitate the copying of existing infoboxes from German Wikipedia with minimum knowledge of German and display them in English Wikipedia. Please check out the infoboxes; if they are felt useful I am happy to fine tune them. --Bermicourt (talk) 18:25, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

That looks very nice! Using this in the articles will take some time. It will be quite a job to incorporate this? But I must admit that I always liked how that looked on the German wiki. --AnnekeBart (talk) 09:45, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It will also probably need Egyptology experts (not me!) to test and tidy it up. A quick way to enhance articles is to copy and paste the German infobox directly. The temporary template should make this usable, but that also needs testing to ensure it works properly. It did for Aperanat, Imhotep, Khamsin and Nubia. --Bermicourt (talk) 11:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

There is already a pharaoh infobox, and I could not use the new template inside the infobox. I put the 4 known named of Khafre in hieroglyphics, but cannot seem to put them under royal titulary for some reason. The names for Khafre are in my sandbox: User:AnnekeBart/sandbox. I guess we could say something about the 5 names of the pharaoh in their respective articles, but I'm not sure what the best way to proceed is on that. --AnnekeBart (talk) 16:31, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm only a translator and am not familiar with the various "hiero" codes that generate the pictures. I have played with the template using your names, and can get a display in the pharaoh infobox, but not one that corresponds exactly. But that's probably my ignorance of the subject. I notice that German wiki also has a separate pharaoh infobox. --Bermicourt (talk) 19:13, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I used the Template:Infobox hieroglyphs in the Ankhesenamun and Meketaten articles. I did take the liberty to scale the image to a width of 200px. Hope that's ok. --AnnekeBart (talk) 18:19, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Cool! Looks okay to me. --Bermicourt (talk) 19:08, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Rendering hieroglyphs

I am just doing some work on Book of the Dead and wondered if there was any way of representing hieroglyphic text in Wiki markup - short of trying to draw them out in some software package and upload an image.... The Land (talk) 21:33, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I have found the hiero syntax but don't understand it very well! Is there anyone who can help? The Land (talk) 21:45, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Scratch that as well. If someone with a reasonable knowledge of Middle Egyptian could have a look at Book of the Dead an check whether what I've written means anything like "utterances of coming forth by day" it would be much appreciated... The Land (talk) 22:01, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Isn't the "sun" symbol at the end of the phrase being used as a determinative for "day"? If so, shouldn't it go without the stroke that means it's a logogram? I noticed that error even though I'm no expert on Middle Egyptian. I tend to think that non-experts shouldn't try to write Egyptian phrases unless they have a reliable source that says exactly how that phrase was "spelled" in Egyptian. Maybe you should leave out the hieroglyphs until you know for certain what they were. (On the bright side, though, I can't think of a more harmless factual error to make on Wikipedia than to mis-write a phrase in a dead language that hardly anyone understands!) A. Parrot (talk) 23:59, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I do have a reliable source, which spells out the hierogylphs... or I wouldn't be trying... Allen "Middle Egyptian" definitely renders it with a stroke below the sun! The Land (talk) 23:20, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Hm. I stand corrected. A. Parrot (talk) 07:07, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Judaism and ancient Egyptian religion

Do we really not have an article that covers this? If we don't, this needs work. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 18:37, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Egyptian temple article

I thought it ridiculous that this project, which has all kinds of articles on obscure pharaohs and extremely minor gods, didn't have an article on Egyptian temples. So I set about creating one: Egyptian temple. There is more I want to do with it, especially in creating a section on the significance of temples from their abandonment up to modern times. I haven't been able to do that yet, partly because one of the sources I want still hasn't come in at the library and partly because I haven't found any sources for a basic, well-known fact: that tourism is a key part of the Egyptian economy and ancient temples are a key part of the tourist industry. I appreciate any suggestions other project members may have for improving the article, but I would especially appreciate a suggestion about a reliable source to support that fact.

Also, I'd like it if someone else would go on the Egyptian temple talk page and rate the article's importance, both to the Ancient Egypt project as a whole and to the Religion work group. For reasons that the article should make clear, I believe that temples deserve a "top" rating in both cases, but I want to recuse myself from rating my own article's importance.

And one last thing—should it be "Egyptian temple" or "Ancient Egyptian temple"? A. Parrot (talk) 04:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Provision of brief descriptions for each individual on the List of Ancient Egyptians Wikipedia page

To assist a reader get a better idea of who each of the people included on the List of Ancient Egyptians are (particularly given all the similar names and complex naming issues), I have added brief descriptions for each of the individuals on the list. I have tried to include the relevant dynasty in place at the time each indivdual lived and I have also provided a approximate date that each individual lived (sometimes to the nearest century is the most appropriate). All the information in the summaries (including dynasty and dates) is based on the Wikipedia articles. I would appreciate any comments or suggestions (including any errors or omissions) about my changes. Also, I would be interested in any comments on the concept of providing summaries of all the people on a biographical list such as this one on Ancient Egyptians. Thanks --Chewings72 (talk) 11:34, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I personally like the idea a lot. In some cases it can really help an interested reader find the correct individual. It looks good, but I have not had time to look over all the entries :-). Quite an undertaking! --AnnekeBart (talk) 19:02, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

AnnekeBart -- Thank you for the feedback. :) Given your strong interest and numerous contributions to Wikipedia ancient Egyptian biographical articles, when you have the time, any thoughts or suggestions you would like to make to improve the list would be appreciated. --Chewings72 (talk) 00:58, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. I made a comment on the talkpage. I was just wondering if a table format would make entering the information a bit easier. It's just a thought. I gave a short example on the talk page of what I was picturing when I think of a table in this case. I was thinking that a quick visual of what the person's main title/position was and the dynasty they lived in (as well as the dates you provided) might be useful. --AnnekeBart (talk) 14:10, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, putting the information in a tabular format does look much neater and easier to read compared to what I have done. The main reason I did not do that from the start was that I was worried that the table might look uneven where a "note" on a particular person was quite lengthy. Nevertheless, I think you are correct to suggest a table. When I get the time I will look at revising the list into a table format. By the way, I note you added Euclid into the list. I was wondering whether I should include in a list of Ancient Egyptians individuals who were of Greek origin/birth but who lived or worked in Ptolemaic Egypt for some, most or all of their lives.--Chewings72 (talk) 06:53, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I was not sure about Euclid, but then I noticed Demetrius the Fair in the list. I added Euclid because even though he is not Egyptian by birth, he is very much associated with the Library in Alexandria and Ptolemy I. I figured I would add him and if others object, then that would be fine :-) Glad you like the table idea btw. I will see if I can help with that over the weekend. --AnnekeBart (talk) 13:47, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Ancient Near East archaeological sites reorganization (Suggestion)

Please see this discussion here. Yazan (talk) 19:05, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Pepi II Neferkare and Ipuwer Papyrus

I've been having an odd dispute on these two articles with an IP who wants to link the Papyrus more closely to Pepi II than I think is warranted. The talk pages reflect the discussion - note that the IPs quotes there appear to come from "http://oilismastery.blogspot.com/2010/01/ipuwer-and-exodus.html" which is about the Exodus and the IP has been trying to argue that Pepi II is the 'Pharaoh of the Exodus'. I've posted something at WP:RSN about this, could anyone interested in either subject please chip in there? I just want our articles to reflect current thinking. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 10:31, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I looked in JSTOR and there is a 1981 article by Williams that spells out pretty much that this idea that Ipuwer was directing the admonitions at Pepi II is an old idea.

Ipuwer had been understood by earlier scholars to be an attack by Ipuwer on a ruler, probably Pepi II. J. Spiegel reinterpreted this as an attack by a member of the ruling class at the end of the Old Kingdom on a supposed usurper who gained power after the revolution which toppled the Old Kingdom (Spiegel, 1950). This reconstruction failed to gain general support, but is still confidently maintained in an article Spiegel contributed to the most recent encyclopedia (Spiegel, 1975). A fresh and stimulating approach was made by E. Otto in a published lecture (Otto, 1951). He argued that the composition was not a denunciation of a human ruler, but a reproach directed at the creatorgod Atum for the lamentable state of the land. Otto was the first to see the relevance of the contemporary literature of the First Intermediate Period for an understanding of the work.

The Pepi connection looks to me like an old idea that is not generally accepted. There is more in the Williams article, and it seems that even by the 1980s the idea of the admonitions being a letter to Pepi was no longer seen as the correct interpretation. The Ipuwer document is dated to the 13th dynasty and the interpretation Williams mentions is one where The first part of the papyrus actually originally dates to the reign of King Khety, and the second part is a discussion Ipuwer has with a god (not a king). This is from The Sages of Ancient Egypt in the Light of Recent Scholarship, by R. J. Williams; Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 101, No. 1, Oriental Wisdom (Jan. -Mar., 1981), pp. 1-19. --AnnekeBart (talk) 17:06, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I also posted this on the WP:RSN page. --AnnekeBart (talk) 17:11, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Even Encyclopaedia Britannica from 2002 says the following and I quote: "Ipuwer, an ancient Egyptian sage. He perhaps served as a treasury official during the last years of Pepi II Neferkare (reigned c. 2294 - c. 2200 BC)...." -- The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume 6, 200276.216.196.209 (talk) 06:51, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Encyclopedias are never good sources for subjects such as this. We should use proper academic sources Dougweller (talk) 06:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Obviously Britannica is more reliable than Wikipedia76.216.196.209 (talk) 00:28, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I see the IP has just used "Christian self publishing company Xulon Press makes Christian book publishing affordable for Christian authors and writers" as a source for including the Pharaoh as a Pharaoh of the Exodus. Dougweller (talk) 07:02, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I just added a reference to the Pepi II page outlining that this idea is truly outdated. The paper by Otto mentioned above was the first arguments against the Ipuwer vs Pepi II argument and the work by Fecht has shown that the papyrus is a discussion between Ipuwer and a deity. It's from Winnifired Barta, Das Gespräch des Ipuwer mit dem Schöpfergott, Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur, Bd. 1 (1974), pp. 19-33. I would say this issue was already decided in 1974. Shows how unreliable some of the Encyclopedias are. --AnnekeBart (talk) 12:45, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Now citations are being added that do not support the claims made in the article. The editor seems hell-bent to add his POV no matter what.--AnnekeBart (talk) 14:01, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Pepi II Neferkare is associated with the First Intermediate Period, "The end of the reign of Pepi II led into the First Intermediate period...." -- Richard Lobban, historian, Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia, 2004 and also "Once the choice was made for the First Intermediate Period reasons were found to date it to the beginning of the period or even to the last years of Pepi II in the Old Kingdom." -- John van Seters, archaeologist, December 1964 76.216.196.209 (talk) 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for reverting again. Dougweller (talk) 14:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I would not mind if some other editors could check the discussion at User talk:76.216.196.209 and My talk page--AnnekeBart (talk) 00:52, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I've seen it, but I'm not sure what to do about it; I don't have any relevant sources to argue with, except Lichtheim. A. Parrot (talk) 06:37, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Re Lobban Quote: The First Intermediate Period may have once been seen as having its beginnings in Pepi II's reign, but a) that even by the quote (past tense) is no longer the case b) Fecht has shown by using a very careful analysis of the text that the text belongs to the 10th dynasty (or later?). I.e the latter part of the FIP. I have looked at JSTOR and Google Scholar and the more recent research all points to the FIP (not Pepi II) and there are even recent publications (2010) that point to the Ipuwer papyrus as belonging to the second intermediate period. There is also this interesting Masters Thesis online: Thesis. It outlines the ideas and interpretations of the Ipuwer papyrus over the years. --AnnekeBart (talk) 10:50, 19 March 2011 (UTC)