Talk:Tell es-Sultan

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Location

Hi, The coordinates cited are not correct, I believe the right ones are 31.837778,35.348611, but I'm not 100% sure.

Jotjot (talk) 20:13, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I make it 31.871150,35.443903 as per the star in my map when I went sightseeing. Will update. TrickyH (talk) 06:40, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 1 June 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved — Amakuru (talk) 22:33, 17 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Tell es-Sultan → Tel Jericho – I wish to change the title of this article to "Tel Jericho". I suppose "Tell es-Sultan" is favorable for many, but I want to first try to achieve a consensus for simply "Tel Jericho":

"Tell es-Sultan" is a local name, given by people who probably didn't know this is the ancient site of Jericho. People don't really care about the "Mound of the ruler", they care about Ancient Jericho. Calling it "Tel Jericho" is more straight forward.
The name itself is a transliterated name from Arabic, but it can be written in many variants (Tel a-Sultan, Tall es-Sultan, Tell al-Sultan) and there is no real correct way. I find it a bit confusing, for English and non-English speakers alike. "Jericho" on the other hand is a universal way of translating both Hebrew Yeriho and Arabic Ariha.
A search I made in Google has revealed that the name "Tell es-Sultan" yields more results than "Tel Jericho", but from my own personal experience, academic sources rarely use the term "Tell es-Sultan" or its variants, and commonly just call it "Jericho". Also, using a Wikipedia page-view analysis, we can see that the article about "Jericho" an average of 1,400 views a day while the article about "Tell es-Sultan" receives only 52 views on daily avarage, which is a shame. I don't think the modern city of Jericho is known for more than date palms. The reason it is a tourist attraction globally is because of Ancient Jericho, located on Tel Jericho.
A similar thing was done with Tel Megiddo and "Tell al-Mutesellim", Tel Hazor and "Tell el-Qedah", Assur and "Qal'at Sherqat", Ur and "Tell el-Muqayyar"

This is NOT a POV motivated move, with the aim of removing the Arab name of a Palestinian place. I am well aware that UNESCO has chosen this name to represent the site, but in spite of this, 50 views a day for one of the most significant sites for humanity is heartbreaking. It bothered me the most when I saw that the article Walls of Jericho gets almost three times more daily views than the actual article about ancient Jericho! (See here)

Please respond with !Support or !Oppose only with relation to the name "Tel Jericho". Bolter21 (talk to me) 14:36, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, but of course other reasonable spellings and Tel Jericho should be present as redirects so that more people are drawn here. This is the usual name used by archaeologists (in my archaeology collection, over 50 items use Tell es-Sultan and only 4 use Tel/Tell Jericho of which 3 use both). The official excavators call it Tell es-Sultan. It is also the name that appears on British maps, Israeli government maps at least into the 1960s, and some Israeli maps today [1]. I agree with your motivation, but I don't think the case for renaming is strong enough. Zero^talk 15:48, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A redirect is mandatory. Another task is to see in the pages that direct to Jericho, what should be linked to the modern city and what should be linked to the site, but I still think that the majority of readers, mostly Christians probably, would be attracted to the name "Jericho" rather than "Tell Es-Sultan". I believe that had Jericho been an Israeli city within the Green Line, the site would have probably been called Tel Jericho today by UNESCO, just like Tel Hatzor and Tel Megiddo.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 18:25, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Having redirects for the names likely to be searched for and using direct links as appropriate will solve most of this problem. I started. Zero^talk 17:02, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - per Zero. The name used by sources is what we base the article on, not the name that makes the most sense to editors. nableezy - 21:33, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, mostly per Zero. Zoeperkoe (talk) 07:10, 3 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Fwiw, something like Ancient Jericho would work but the formal name of the tell itself is ... es-Sultan. — LlywelynII 20:28, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Identification

To editor Onceinawhile: Robinson (Biblical Researches, 1838) says "Towards evening we took a walk to the fountain, whose waters are scattered over the plain; it is the only one near Jericho, and there is every reason to regard it as the scene of Elisha's miracle. It is called by the Arabs 'Ain es-Sultan...". So it wasn't Warren's idea first. Zero^talk 13:30, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Zero0000, thanks for pointing this it out. I have amended it, to say that Robinson made the connection between the Spring and Elisha, and Warren made the connection between the Spring and City. Note that the Biblical story in 2 Kings 2 does not give any geographical information to connect the location of the spring to the city, other than it being "outside". Onceinawhile (talk) 14:31, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed merge

Although both the wall and tower at Jericho are notable structures in themselves, I don't think that there's so much to say about them that they need to be separate from the article on the archaeological site they're part of. Merging would make it easier for readers to understand the context of both structures since they would be described alongside the background to the site itself. – Joe (talk) 15:10, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support; by WP:NOPAGE it would seem that both articles do not establish significant context, or that this article provides greater context for both proposed merges. Halfadaniel (talk) 22:34, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

* Support. There's no need for these two articles, they are just elements of ancient Jericho.--Bolter21(talk to me) 23:37, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I agree with merging Wall of Jericho (the page views at that article are surely mostly related to an erroneous connection with the Battle of Jericho). But the Tower of Jericho is thought to have been the world's tallest structure for 4,000 years, which I think justifies its own article. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:11, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Onceinawhile: I can't find any reliable sources for that claim, just a lot of journalists who probably got it from us, and the list is a mess of original research with no citations for any of the prehistoric entries. It's kind of meaningless fact anyway, given that only a tiny fraction of structures from prehistory have survived. The tower does get more specific coverage than the walls, especially in the press, but I still think it would serve readers better to embed it within a description of the site as a whole. We could always spin it back out again if the section in the merged article gets too long? – Joe (talk) 10:43, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. You make an excellent point. It was added there three years ago by an IP.[2]. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:56, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Since there are no objections, I've redirected Wall of Jericho (Neolithic) here. After I trimmed the discussion of later walls, the tower, and unsourced speculation, there wasn't actually anything to add to the existing section. – Joe (talk) 11:18, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The tower seems notable in its own right, and I don't see a need for merging everything to a single article. Dimadick (talk) 16:29, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Dimadick: Thanks for reviving this discussion. I don't think there's any question that the tower is notable, but that does not mean that we have to have a standalone article on it. I have given several reasons why I think it should be merged above: could you perhaps explain why you disagree with them? – Joe (talk) 16:34, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Because I don't want articles on buildings merged into cities. Dimadick (talk) 16:36, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support mostly per above editors and the tower article in its current state does not really provide a lot of context and would have to copy from this article to achieve that. Zoeperkoe (talk) 18:22, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose there is absolutely no reason for this there is no reason why a relatively well known structure wouldn’t warrant its own article and merging would set a dangerous precedent. 2601:405:4A80:B950:6C00:7189:6867:7AFA (talk) 06:00, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for the Tower of Jericho merge; the current structure, in WP:SUMMARY format works well (with the summary at Tell es-Sultan#Tower of Jericho), and the further discussion of the tower separately is sufficiently referenced. So, readers are well-served by the current structure. Klbrain (talk) 11:14, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I take back my original Support. There's a considerable amout of research on the tower it self.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 06:19, 24 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sources for future article expansion

I know it's in Italian but there's a lot of good stuff here

Nigro, Lorenzo; et al. (2005), ROSAPAT 01: Tell es-Sultan/Gerico..., Rome: University of Rome, ISBN 88-88438-02-5. (Italian)

including some good photographs that are now out of copyright. — LlywelynII 20:33, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]