Talk:Akhenaten

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Name

There are 2 entries for him: see also Akhnaten. User:Olivier

Yes but: Akhnaten is the play isnt it? User:Es02

This guy is also Amenophis IV (see, for example History of Egypt). Amenophis doesn't sound at all like Amenothep to me, why the two spellings (or names).

Amenophis is the Greek version of Amenhotep ... which in itself is just a rough transliteration of the hieroglyphic. User:Ffabris

Lead section

The lead section fails to properly summarize the article, particularly the most important elements of the speculative theories section and others. Viriditas (talk) 11:58, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Too many spellings!

There are too many spellings (transliterations, really) of the name, especially in the lede. Like many non-English words (Q'uran, Khadhaffi, K'bala, Algebra, etc. (and I likely misspelled them)), there are many possible spellings. After a quick search engine run, I can add eight or nine more spellings to the list but that's not good writing. The other spellings are not common, so the list needs to be culled and moved into the article body. Any comments? — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 13:26, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I do not see the list as detracting from the lede in any way. Akhenaten/Akhenaton results in some 54,000 hits in google books, Ikhenaton may result in less (ca 250), but Ikhnaton has 16,400 results, Khuenaten has close to 2000 results and Echnaton 18,700. In google scholar you see similar distributions: Akhenaten (5050), Echnaton (1650) show up fairly often; Khuenaten(114) shows up reasonably often; For instance Ikhnaten (20) is not mentioned in the lede and is one I would consider to be not as common. Having the spellings of these names serves a purpose to alert people who are searching for someone on Wikipedia that they have found the correct individual in case they entered one of the other spellings. Furthermore, people looking to research this individual need to know what other spellings to look for. I think deleting the list does more harm than good. But that's just my opinion. --AnnekeBart (talk) 14:45, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal

I still think the lede is fine as it is, but if others do not agree, would an introduction mentioning the following be better?:
Akhenaten (pronounced /ˌɑːkəˈnɑːtən/; alternative spellings include Echnaton, Ikhnaton, and Khuenaten; (meaning Living spirit of Aten)

A separate section in the article could be used to mention that the Aten is sometimes written as the Aton, leading to versions of the name like Akhenaton, and Khuenaton. Separate mention can be made that Khuenaten is an old transliteration of the name used by Petrie. Ikhnaton appears more often in German literature, etc. all of these statements properly sourced of course. But that is not so hard to do.

I chose the phrase "alternative spellings include" to indicate these are not the only alternative spellings. --AnnekeBart (talk) 15:34, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that's an excellent solution to the problem. Are you willing to do it? My only suggestion would be to put the "(meaning Living spirit of Aten)" phrase before the "alternate spellings include" because it seems to flow more smoothly--and gets rid of the parenthetical. Something like:

• Akhenaten (pronounced /ˌɑːkəˈnɑːtən/). Meaning "living spirit of Aten", alternative spellings include Echnaton, Ikhnaton, and Khuenaten.

Wasn't "Okhnotan" used in some older European literature? Doesn't matter and I can't find it, so I'm probably mistaken about that. Memory gets foggy sometimes. I'd never heard of "Khuenaten", so ya got me there. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 16:34, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Cush added the following to my talk page:

May I make the suggestion to remove the rather pointless list of various transliterations from the lead and create a new section that deals with the king's name. I wonder why this article does not feature the full titulary of the king as is customary for articles on Egyptian kings. The new section should give the full names used by the king in various periods of his life and also the various transliterations that occurr in modern literature about him.

Neferkheperure Waenre Amenhotep Netjer Heqa Iunu Akhenaten ♆ CUSH ♆ 17:10, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Dougweller (talk) 17:48, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that what Cush is bringing up is a related issue. The article as it is right now only pays limited attention to the name change from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten. Almost 25% of his reign was spent as Amenhotep IV in Karnak and probably deserves a little bit more attention than it gets right now. The titulary is mentioned (partially) in the infobox. It would be nice to include the complete 5-fold titulary of the king as Amenhotep IV as well. My suggestion right now would be to:

* Change the lede to UncleBubba's version

* Rename the section "Early life" and call that "Early reign as Amenhotep IV". That section can be expanded to include some mention of his building program in Karnak and the appearance of Amenhotep IV in the tomb of Ramose (Vizier) and Parennefer in Thebes

* Insert a section called "From Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten" and mention in the text that there is a full change of the 5-fold titulary, mention what the 5 names are and include a short discussion about the transliteration of the name Akhenaten at that point.

* Add the 5 fold titulary for Amenhotep IV to the infobox

I'm willing to do some/ most of it. But do others think this is the right way to improve the article? Any thoughts? --AnnekeBart (talk) 12:40, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I changed the first sentence. I put the alternative spellings as a parenthetical remark. I think the sentence flows a bit better that way. I added the 5-fold titulary for Amenhotep IV as CUSH suggested. The Article still could use a section about the name change and transliterations, but I thought I would wait for some feedback before doing that. --AnnekeBart (talk) 17:40, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Hatshpepsut

Hatshepsut was born in 1300 BC and was married to Rameses 11 however he left her for someone else and then moved onto antoher 6 wives. This was considered as normal according to the Ancient Egypt laws — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.106.24.166 (talk) 09:01, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Kiya and relationship to Tut

Look, 89.159.247.193, you are not allowed to make substantial changes to the text of any WP articles unless you cite [[WP:RS|reliable sources] that corroborate your assertions. One of the things newcomers sometimes don't understand is that the criteria for acceptance of material here are verifiability (see WP:V) and notability (see WP:N). It doesn't matter that you know it's true; if you can't/don't reference sources, it'll get flagged as citation needed and removed, either by me or someone else.

Please stop your edit-warring! If you make a change and another editor removes it, STOP! Don't put it back without discussing it.

Also, please do not say "see (Talk)" in an edit summary unless you put something there for others to read. The Talk page shows no History of you editing it recently so, unless I'm missing something, your claim is disingenuous, at best. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 00:53, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

The link that the IP put in the edit summary was in fact to User talk:Calabe1992, where the IP had already explained his or her reasoning. The articles on Kiya and The Younger Lady (mummy) seem to indicate that the Younger Lady is probably not Kiya, so the DNA test makes it less likely that Kiya was his mother. In any case, it was never regarded as certain that Kiya was Tut's mother; it was only a reasonable conjecture. I don't think the article should ever have said she was his mother with such certainty. I agree entirely with the IP's removal, although given how many reverts there have been already, I'd rather not change it unilaterally. A. Parrot (talk) 01:09, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up. Your argument appears sound and, considering the amount of work you've done on the Egypt pages, I'll defer to your judgement.

This may be a good example of how communications can get all fouled up. Could you tell I was nearing the end of a loooooong vandal patrol and was quite tired of typing "Rv unexplained, unsourced alteration of factual data"?

I reckon that's why we have the rule admonishing us to, "Talk about articles on the article's Talk page, not on personal pages." I wish s/he had followed it. Again, many thanks! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 03:31, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

89.159.247.193 here.

I'm am not aware of all the rules of WP, such as "Talk about articles on the article's Talk page, not on personal pages", but I did explain my changes in the edit summary and then on the user page. If I did err, it was a honest mistake.

Julien (talk) 22:04, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Me again, I wasn't thorough enough, since the article also still reads "A secondary wife of Akhenaten named Kiya is known from inscriptions. Some have theorized that she gained her importance as the mother of Tutankhamen, Smenkhkare, or both."

And now I'm afraid of changing it because I don't want to cause a fuss.

Julien (talk) 22:08, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

The "fuss" yesterday (yesterday on my side of the planet, anyway) was an unfortunate misunderstanding. It won't happen here again. A lot of editors look through the list of recent changes for edits by Wikipedia's constant stream of vandals. Most vandalism comes from people with IP addresses rather than registered accounts, so if an IP address makes a change that isn't obviously constructive, vandalism patrollers can sometimes overreact. Frankly, you have a much better chance of being taken seriously now that you have an account.

I wouldn't complain if you removed the remaining passage about Kiya, but I don't advocate its removal, either. As far as I know, we're not absolutely sure that the Younger Lady is not Kiya, and no one knows who Smenkhare was. A. Parrot (talk) 00:12, 3 December 2011 (UTC)