Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Egypt/Archive 2

For current discussions, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Egypt.

Names of kings and other issues

I was invited by Llywrch to leave a note here. I confess I should have read the discussion here before I started, though frankly I didn't think about it either. My apologies if I stepped on some toes; it was not intended.

I did want to justify some changes I made with regard to this group's adoption of the "standards" in Shaw's Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, specifically my changing of Sheshonq to Shoshenq and Pasebakhaenniut to Psusennes. I will justify the Sheshonq vs. Shoshenq issue on the Shoshenq page (or the Talk page there) within a day or two as it may be of general interest. As for Psusennes, while I am completely sympathetic to wanting to use Egyptian instead of Greek, the reality is that the vast majority of people coming to Wiki are not going to use "Pasebakhaenniut" as a search term, even if they know how to spell it; even Shaw uses Psusennes, as does every other encyclopaedic-type source (British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, Lexikon der Ägyptologie, &c).

Regarding Shaw, I would add a plea that he not be relied on over much. For example, his chronological list leaves out a number of now generally recognised rulers of the Third Intermediate Period (Shoshenq "quartus" and Iny for example); I have added Shoshenq "quartus" where appropriate, but have yet to include Iny. I would emphasise that both kings are regarded as factual by both mainstream Egyptologists and the folks supporting the New Chronology, so this is not something that is highly debatable.

Shaw also has some rather idiosyncratic spellings (Piy instead of Piye being one of them, though it is thankfully not Piankhy). Moreover, he is not consistant about using Egyptian instead of Greek. For example, he does use Ahmose II for Amasis and Hakor for Achoris, but still has Nectanebo I and Nectanebo II, even though the actual Egyptian names of the Nectanebos are completely different (they just happened to sound the same to Greek-speakers). Of course, following my own advice on Psusennes, most people are going search for Nectanebo, Amasis, Necho, etc., and not the Egyptian version.

I will try to get my own user page up in a day or two as well. --Nefertum17 09:40, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It may not be clear from the above discussion, but the whole point of standardizing on Shaw was to avoid edit wars over how to properly represent a given ancient Egyptian's name, e.g. Amenhotep, Amunhotpe, Amenopsis, etc. Shaw clearly has some holes & idosyncratic spellings in this book, but he was picked as a standard because we all had heard of this book, the usual quality of the releases by Oxford U Press, & that to accept a divergence from the standard one has to make a plausible argument. I've done precisely that with the entries concerning the 1st & 2nd Intermediate Periods: where our authority fails, offer the best text of the primary source, & differ the various arguments about where this primary source errs to the specific article.

I've been in one or two flame wars over precisely what the "consensus of Egyptologists" believe (for example see the pages connected to David Rohl, & other exchanges I've had with the most likely candidate), so I'd rather be in a position of reporting what one authority says & making exceptions, rather than endlessly arguing over every specific point because "every" Egyptologist has his/her own opinion -- even if their opinions differ by only a letter or a year -- because everyone is entitled to her/his opinion being heard, no matter how unreasonable.

In other words, if you have a better candidate for a standard, please share it with us. Or even if it merely substitutes what we have for certain parts of our current standard. (But I seriously doubt anyone will much care about certain items like the proper order for the kings of the 13th or 14th dynasties.) Nothing is written stone, & this standard right now is accepted more by default than after extensive discussion; I for one would like to see more criticism of what we have done & ideas for making it better (e.g., where the hottest disputes are & why). -- llywrch 20:55, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I understand completely. However I think it it needs to be kept in mind that people other than Egyptologists and well-read "amateurs" (for lack of a better term) use Wiki. As I stated above, I am completely sympathetic to using Egyptian versions of names, rather than Greek. In cases where the Egyptian is well-known, this is not really a problem (i.e., Khufu vs. Cheops, etc.). Where it is a problem, IMO, is with less well-known names such as Nesubanebdjed vs Smendes, Pasebakhaenniut vs. Psusennes, Nekau vs. Necho, Ahmose II vs Amasis, Nefaarud vs Nepheritites, etc. Very few people are going to come to Wiki and search for 'Ahmose II' when they want to know about Amasis (and despite the claims of the article at Ahmose I, Ahmose I was never known as "Amasis I"). Of course redirect pages are essential regardless of what is chosen.

In essence, therefore, I agree with you that there should be one standard treatment of the names. If you want Shaw to be it, that is fine, but I would urge that more familiar forms be favoured whenever possible. I would suggest, however, for the Third Intermidate Period that the "Bible" on that particular period, Kitchen's Third Intermediate Period in Egypt be used as a "standard"; its importance to that subject cannot be underrated. I offer this only as a suggestion, however.

Finally, as for Oxford Uni Press, their Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (Donald Redford, ed.; 3 vols) uses different spellings than Shaw's (thus Ramesses vs. Shaw's Rameses, Piya vs Shaw's Piy, and Amenhotpe vs. Shaw's Amenhotep, &c.), so they hardly have a house style. No one does. In fact, Shaw has himself adopted the system used by the British Museum (cf. British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt). —Nefertum17 10:49, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Dealing with Afrocentric bias

Does this group have some sort of policy or response to Afrocentric bias? Clearly it is not at all in the spirit of a NPOV, but on a practical level, what is to be done? The reason I ask is there is currently an anon. individual replacing the existing Thebes, Egypt article with Afrocentric material. (You may have to check the article's history as I have replaced it twice now with the old version; look for articles by 24.209.250.134) While I certainly don't want to have it degenerate into an edit war, I really don't think that sort of biased material has a place here. I did leave a note on the Thebes, Egypt talk page as well. --Nefertum17 09:49, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm not aware that we needed a policy conerning Afrocentrism, not having encountered it until now. But then there's a lot of topics on Wikipedia where disputes are waiting to emerge. :(

I took a look at the history of the Thebes page, & I have to agree with you about these edits. It's one thing -- & the right thing -- to add some material explaining Dr. Chancellor Williams' opinion about Thebes; it's another entirely to replace one POV with only his. Let's see how this anon will respond to your inviation to talk. -- llywrch 20:29, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Templates for hieroglyphs

Amun in hieroglyphs

I stumbled across the work of the Finnish user Kompak, and borrowed the hieroglyph templates. They are:

{{Hiero/pharaoh|1=Senwosret I|2=

|3=

}}

1. Template:Hiero — right-margin general hieroglyphs
   • Variable 1 = English name
   • Variable 2 = hieroglyphs (with tags)
2. Template:Hiero1 — same as previous, but left-margin
3. Template:Hiero/pharaoh — right-margin pharaonic names
   • Variable 1 = English name
   • Variable 2 = Praenomen in hieroglyphs (with tags)
   • Variable 3 = Nomen in hieroglyphs (with tags)
4. Template:Hiero/pharaoh1 — same as previous, but left-margin

I hope these little boxes will be useful. Gareth Hughes 17:08, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

in principle, I like the idea but I have to admit I am not exactly crazy about the yellow. What about something along these lines? (The Pharaoh example does have a coding error in it, but you get the idea. A few comments:

• I think the templates should be renamed to something like Template:HieroL, Template:HieroR; Template:PharaohL, and Template:PharaohR
• The Finnish templates for the cartouches already have nsw-bity and s3-ra encoded. I really think this should be stripped out. The orthography is quite variable depending on the period (i.e., Middle Kingdom writings are not the same as Ptolemaic ones).
• What should be done with kings who lack one or both cartouche names, but may have, say a serekh-name recorded, or only a nomen, etc.?
• is the link to hieroglyphs actually necessary? In any event, I don't think the word in should be part of the link.

comments? —Nefertum17 20:05, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Amun in hieroglyphs

Shoshenq I in hieroglyphs

praenomen or throne name

nomen or birth name

I think the change of names would be good. If we wanted, we could include the position of the box on the page as a variable, rather than having a different template for each position. Concerning colours, we might end up like newly-weds choosing curtain fabric! I thought the orange colour was reminiscent of sand and sphinx, and that grey is just too grey: perhaps this'll need arbitration! I feel that it is good to have a generic link on the box (I agree that 'in' should not be linked). We might want to create an article called Egyptian names (or something) that would be a handy companion to personal, divine and place names. I just glad that someone worked out how to get the signs inside a cartouche. Most of the better known pharaohs are known by praenomen and nomen. How important is it that Kheperkare Senwosret (I) was the Horus Ankhmesut? Certainly, we can create specific templates for pharaohs with different naming systems. If you fancy falcons in boxes, I would like to find a fun way of representing the names of the Ptolomys. Gareth Hughes 00:11, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A few further comments

• Colour: I can appreciate your not wanting to get into arguments over colour, and I assure you I don’t want to either. I just felt that it ought to be visually compatible with Wiki as it is now. The colours I used in my dummy versions are from the Template:Egyptian Dynasty list. (The dummy versions I placed here do have coding errors (such as the black line below the heading box) that need to be worked out if they were to be used.)

• Names: I agree that most kings should only have the most common version of their praenomen and nomen and not their full titularies. However some kings either do not have both cartouche names known and/or they are mainly known by their Horus name. This is particularly a problem with the Early Dynastic kings and kings from the First and Second Intermediate Periods. If anyone wanted to write an article on, say, Den (Horus name) or Saket (only 1 cartouche known), they could not use these templates. That is not a big problem at this moment, I admit, but I did want to think ahead somewhat. Perhaps a Template:PharaohSerkekh and a Template:Pharaoh1Cartouche (for a single cartouche) could be made at some point. A note in the descriptions of the templates could explain what they are intended to be used for specifically.

• Titles: Regarding the inclusion of titles in the cartouche templates, I really feel strongly that these should not be included. As I stated before, the actual orthography of nsw-bity and s3-ra varied considerably over time (and often even in the same reign), or might vary based on if it came from a hieratic text or a hieroglyphic text, etc. Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, they are titles and not really part of the name. I just don’t think they are needed. I would like to point out that in the main scholarly collection of kings' names (Handbuch der ägyptischen Köningsnamen), they are not given either. Frankly I don’t think the actual cartouches are needed, but I suspect I will be in a minority on that one. :-) As an aside, the glyphs of nsw-bity really ought to have <t>s under the sw-plant and the bee.

• WikiHiero: I don’t know if you noticed it, but in the glyphs of your Senwasret example, the <r> and the <t> are not stacked as they should be. You didn’t make an encoding error. It is a bug in that particular combination. Try entering r:t and then r*t in WikiHiero; you'll get identical results. I tried e-mailing the author of WikiHiero, but may be one of you here knows how to get in contact with him? —Nefertum17 09:44, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

For a perfect example of why the titles should not be used on the name templates, see the article at Psusennes II. They make the box much too large. Additionally, there are instances of High Priests of Amun, the God's Wives of Amun, etc. using cartouches but without the titles (they wouldn't go that far). This is another point against included them in the template. Just a thought. —Nefertum17 12:04, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I find the French Wikipedia articles on Egyptology quite colourful. I suppose we could make colour meaningful: a different colour for each dynasty, perhaps. I had noticed that Senwosret's mouth was having problems chasing the bun, but I couldn't fix it easily. I hadn't noticed that nsw-bity was written without its buns. On reflection, I think that the removal of the titulary would be an improvement: I think the sedge may be pushing the top and bottom of the cartouch too wide anyway. As you suspected, I am in favour of keeping the cartouches as they are a distinctive part of most royal inscriptions, and may aid the beginner in the understanding of inscriptions. If we can produce a broad and flexible range of templates, we may be able to make better use of hieroglyphs. I'll try a revision of the two-cartouch template for starters. Gareth Hughes 13:50, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'll live either way with the colour. I just thought a tiny degree of consistency with the Dynasty template might be nice. And the cartouches are not that big a deal. So basically we are down to getting rid of the titles. One other suggetion was to make the text of the cartouche templates in NOT bold and have praenomen and nomen in italic. This keeps keeps the emphasis on the glyphs themselves. (See my dummy example.) —Nefertum17 14:28, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Okay, here are two new templates. The in-page wikitext for each is:

praenomen or throne name nomen or birth name
Ahmose I in hieroglyphs

{{hiero/2cartouche|align=right|bordercolour=red|bgcolour=yellow|name=Ahmose I|praenomen=<hiero>ra:nb-F9:t*t</hiero>|nomen=<hiero>iaH-ms-s</hiero>}}

nomen or birth name
Djefahapy in hieroglyphs

{{hiero/1cartouche|align=left|bordercolour=blue|bgcolour=orange|name=Djefahapy|nomen=<hiero>D:f-A-X4-H-p:N36</hiero>}}
Any thoughts? Gareth Hughes 16:54, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What a good idea. I prefer the smaller and more colourful options, as opposed to the larger and greyer ones. I'm not sure that the template is the right place to be distinguishing between praenomen and nomen. I agree that coordinating with the Dynasty template is a good idea - this is an opportunity to make the Dynasty template more colourful, not the name templates greyer! A different colour for each of the 30-odd dynasties may be a bit much, but a colour for each period ought to be achievable (a dozen or so distinguishable reds, oranges and yellows).

I think the Djefahapy template is the best, simply because it is shorter, and a blue border will contrast nicely with the header fill colours. -- ALoan (Talk) 21:05, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How about a serekh name?

Aha in hieroglyphs

The syntax is {{hiero/serekh|align=left|bordercolour=black|bgcolour=silver|name=Aha|horus=<hiero>D34</hiero>}}

Any good for starters? Gareth Hughes 00:32, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps this is not news to the rest of you, but I've just discovered that you can write a cartouche in WikiHiero syntax. This is not discussed in the help files on the syntax that I've read.

Just in case you don't know, here's an example, you use < and > in the syntax:

<hiero><-ra-mAat-kA-></hiero> is rendered as:

Perhaps I should simplify the templates that use cartouches to use this instead. Gareth Hughes 01:49, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The serekh doesn't view properly in my ancient version of Mozilla, but it did quite nicely at work in Internet Exploder. (It also shows the same bug Nefertum complained about.)

As for HieroWiki, I agree its documentation leaves much to be desired -- although it's a clever little program. I've taken a look at the source code, & it appears to be straightforward enough php. If we don't hear back from the author, I may break down & learn enough php to see if I can fix the problem. -- llywrch 04:28, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what bug you are referring to. We had identified that WikiHiero interprets r:t as r-t. The serekh is a badly drawn JPEG (by me). I'm sure another format would do a better job of it. The template creates a box by defining the dimensions of table-cells around the WikiHiero syntax. I've left out the Horus, as some Horus names are introduced by Horus and Seth. I'm not sure whether the serekh would look better rotated through 90 degrees: so as look more like a real serekh inscription.

Please have a good look at the WikiHiero code, and see if you can fix any bugs in it. It would be nice to know if it can do anything else we haven't been told about. Gareth Hughes 12:31, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The templates look fine to me. I have no problem with the serekh one at all (using Safari on a Mac). Regarding WikiHiero, it generally follows the Manuel de Codage system. However, it does have a few problems. It cannot rotate signs, nor overlap them. It doesn't indicate damage or rubication (red). It's library of hieroglyphs is fairly limited. It can draw hwt-names (i.e., names in palaces) but can't draw serekhs (as the current version of MdC does allow). I just wish it was possible to have inline glyphs on Wiki, but that doesn't seem possible unless you use a table.

• regarding the cartouches: I was aware that you can code them yourself in WikiHiero. However, it might be best to have them "hard" encoded in the templates
• Orientation of serekhs: ideally they should be verticle, however WikiHiero doesn't allow for that. Also, I would leave off the Horus for the same reason I suggested leaving off the other titles (orthography changed over time, some use Sutekh instead, etc.)

all in all, they are looking good! Thanks Gareth! —Nefertum17 13:46, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Further template issues

praenomen or throne name nomen or birth name
Psusennes II in hieroglyphs

I tried out the new template. As you can (hopefully) see, when the actual hieroglyphic text is longer than "praenomen or throne name", hit the left side of the box. Is there any way to pad this?

If this second template is used, (the hiero/2cartouche) I think it would be best to change the pages using the old one and request its deletion for the sake of consistancy.

(I deleted a request for directions in the template from here in the Talk; they already exist) —Nefertum17 08:06, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There were a few problems with cellpadding. The original template uses tables nested inside tables nested inside tables for each cartouche. I've changed the markup from HTML to pipes and added comments throughout: I hope this makes the templates easier to work with. I'll see if I can tweak the cellpadding in the right place to prevent the cartouche colliding with the border. Gareth Hughes 11:31, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've tweaked the cellpadding: the cartouches no longer touch the left border with long names. I've set top and bottom borders to 4px, and left and right to 10px. I think some more tweaking is in order. The nomen cartouche is a little too close to the bottom border, and there is a little too much blank space in the middle of the table. Gareth Hughes 11:54, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As you say, it could be tweeked a bit for the spacing issues you mention, but all in all, I really like it! —Nefertum17 16:04, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Period	Background colour	Border colour
Pre-dynastic	plum	red
Early dynastic	sandybrown	indianred
Old Kingdom	gold	royalblue
First IP	crimson	gold
Middle Kingdom	palegoldenrod	crimson
Second IP	red	palegoldenrod
New Kingdom	aquamarine	black
Third IP	lime	red
Late period	fuchsia	orchid
Ptolomys	skyblue	steelblue

Back to the issue of colour: it was suggested that we use different colours for different periods, and use the same colour scheme for the pharaoh and hiero templates. Here is a suggestion for a scheme: feel free to edit it, the colours are not meaningful. Any thoughts on this? Gareth Hughes 18:12, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good work on the cell padding - excellent.

On colours, some consistency would be useful - for example, how about having all of the intermediate periods in red tones, and the "kingdom" periods in yellows? I don't like the brighter greens or blues very much. I've changed the colours around a bit - is this better? -- ALoan (Talk) 19:20, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Period	Background colour	Border colour
Pre-dynastic	plum	red
Early dynastic	sandybrownskyblue	indianredsteelblue
Old Kingdom	goldsandybrown	royalblueindianred
First IP	crimson	gold
Middle Kingdom	palegoldenrodgold	crimsonblack
Second IP	red	palegoldenrod
New Kingdom	aquamarinepalegoldenrod	blackcrimson
Third IP	lime fuchsia lightcoral	red orchid red
Late period	fuchsia lime palegreen	orchidred
Ptolomys	skyblueaquamarine	steelblueblack

Personally I find most the colours all rather garish (the red, lime, and fuchia in particular). I realise of course this is just a matter of opinion. My suggestion is to use either light earth tones or greys/light blues. The bigger question in my mind is just how this is going to be consistantly carried out. There will be a need for a seperate template for each period. I personally think that just one, for all periods, is a lot easier and less confusing in the long run.

If some sort of colour code is to be used, I would suggest 2 other changes. I have added a Protodynastic Period of Egypt article (i.e., the so-called Dynasty 0), which deals with the Predynastic kings (Narmer, etc.). "Protodynastic" (as term) should be used rather than "Predynastic" (a much longer period). Secondly, if there are to be colour definitions for each period, one will be needed for the Roman emperors. They did rule Egypt as pharaohs (at least as much as the Persians, and they built widely in Egypt), and many did have full Egyptian titularies. —Nefertum17 20:23, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have now coded the revised colour chart and introduced the {{{era}}} parameter to call the correct colours without having to look them up. I've put the templates and list of colours and their codes on Template talk:Hiero.

praenomen or throne name nomen or birth name
Hatshepsut in hieroglyphs
Era: New Kingdom (1550–1069 BC)

Here is an example of the codes in practice: Hatshepsut was a New Kingdom queen, and so we give her era=nk:

{{hiero/2cartouche|align=right|era=nk|name=Hatshepsut|praenomen=<hiero>ra-mAat-kA</hiero>|nomen=<hiero>i-mn:n-W9:t-F4:t-B7</hiero>}}

as can be seen to the right. Gareth Hughes 01:03, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Very good. Now all we need to do is decide on colours. Does anyone have any suggestions of specific colours? I agree with Nefertum17 re light earth tones rather than the more garish colours used at present (particularly, lime and fuchia). Is there a list of colours somewhere, or do we just make them up? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:59, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've changed fuchsia to lightcoral and lime to palegreen in the table above. I'll also implement these in the {{{era}}} templates. Gareth Hughes 11:30, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've replaced all occurrences of template:Hiero/pharaoh and template:Hiero/pharaoh1 in the main article space with template:Hiero/2cartouche. The latter is far more flexible, as it can take the {{{align}}} and {{{era}}} parameters. As the colour schemes are set by parameters, the entire scheme for one period of Egyptian history can be altered in one place. The default colour scheme (silver/black) does not default yet: if you want to use it, use era=default when calling the template. I've tweaked the padding on the templates so that they a more presentable, and I've written full instructions on the template talk pages. Gareth Hughes 17:08, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Very good. I've tweaked the main page and Template talk:Hiero a little.

Would it be possible to add an alignment parameter to Template:Hiero, to make Template:Hiero1 redundant too?

Would it be worth adding an {{era}} tag to Template:Pharaoh for consistency (ideally sorting out the default colours first, though, to avoid breaking the current usage)? -- ALoan (Talk) 17:47, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thank you: I had got to the stage where everything was tolerably tidy, but lost the will to keep on tweaking it! I am having problems understanding parameter defaults: some of the literature says you can set them, but it's not working for me. The colours all seem to default to white at the moment, which is bearable. I'm going to redo template:hiero so that it's in line with the other templates: it'll get the align and era parameters. However, this will temporarily break the template on the pages that call it, so I'll have to go around fixing them all. I may introduce an extra colour scheme as non-period-specific alternative to default. I think it would be possible to add the era colours to template:pharaoh: I'll present a suggestion here before I wreck it! Gareth Hughes 19:07, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Okay, that's done: hiero1, hiero/pharaoh and hiero/pharaoh1 are now obsolete, and are only being called by talk pages. We could list them for deletion. The new colour scheme is called egypt, and I've implemented it on templates for Egyptian deities. It's all looking pretty together; is there anything else we can do with the templates? I was wondering if we might need some odd templates for the Early Dynastic Period with the Horus name, praenomen and nomen. Gareth Hughes 21:20, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Excellent - since you and I were the only editors, I have been bold and deleted them. -- ALoan (Talk) 21:57, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for deleting those. I've added another template: template:hiero/3name allows you to put a Horus name, praenomen and nomen into one template. I hope you like it. Gareth Hughes 15:59, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A request: would it be possible to be able to add the standard titles of the king (i.e. the sedge and the bee, golden horus name, etc) in the semi-standard fivefold titulary form? Have just finished expanding a new article on the Fivefold Titulary and was frustrated in my attempts to add anything more than the initial symbols. In the Thutmose I example, it would have been great to include his full titles instead of just the pronunciation and rough translation. Captmondo 03:17, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

• Didn't hear back from anyone, so I spent some time learning the syntax and have hopefully come up with a decent working example, which has been template-ified and can be found at: Template:Hiero/5Fold. Have also added it to the standard ancient Egyptian template pages as well, explaining how it works. If there's anyone out there still monitoring this, my question now is: should such things as the Horus "prefix" be added as a standard to the serekh template as a matter of course? Captmondo 02:26, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The nebty name and the horus of gold shouldn't been in cartouches - dont want to just change this as it would affect everypage that uses the template ? Markh 17:46, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
    • Quite right about the nebty/horus of gold names. Will change the 5Fold template when I get the time to reflect this. Shouldn't prove to be a problem -- that's the beauty of a template after all: a change made at source will automatically be updated elsewhere. Thanks for the providing the full example in the Fivefold Titulary page by the way!

List of Pharaohs and Conventional Egyptian chronology

Why is there a list of pharaohs at both of these pages? john k 02:57, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

They both use different dates, as well. john k 02:59, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I belive that there are two lists because the conventional chronology now is considered outdated by many scholars. There is not a single modern chronolgy yet, but this wikiproject has selceted the chrology in the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt by Ian Shaw as the standard here. Some dynasties overlap and some such as Dynasty zero, were unknown when the list was compliled by Manetho in antiquity. Hope this helps. -JCarriker 03:36, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

Have you looked at the two articles? The Conventional Egyptian chronology cites sources, including Shaw. List of Pharaohs doesn't cite any sources. john k 13:37, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also, the two lists don't mention each other - a sure sign of independent development. john k 13:39, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

List of Pharaohs was originally at Pharaoh before I hived it out to its own article on 29 October 2004 - some of the references in Pharaoh may be relevant.

Conventional Egyptian chronology has referred to Pharaoh since soon after it was created in July 2003; List of Pharaohs has referred to Conventional Egyptian chronology in its "see also" section since it was created in October 2004. Even so, I suspect that you are right that they were created separately and independently (there is some discussion in /archive1). -- ALoan (Talk) 13:57, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Okay - at any rate, the two articles do the same thing, we shouldn't have two lists. Personally, I think conventional Egyptian chronology ought to discuss various dating schemes, and so on, and that List of Pharaohs ought to give the list currently at Conventional Egyptian chronology, which looks better than the list at List of Pharaohs, at least in terms of dates. (Although for some reason it doesn't give dates for Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV). john k 15:07, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And then there is the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Ancient_Egypt/Temp, which I compiled to replace these two. I've been distracted with other work on Wikipedia (our coverage of Ethiopian history makes ours on Ancient Egypt exhaustive & well-researched in comparison!). I hope folks can make use of what I've cone there. Or, if someone feels it's VfD material, let me know & I'll just move it to my personal userspace; I don't want to lose all of this labor. -- llywrch 22:32, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That looks really good, although I think that for each dynasty we should provide the source for our dates, at least up until the 26th Dynasty, when it becomes solid. john k 00:15, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The dates come (without corrections) from Ian Shaw, ed. Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (pub. 2000). K.S.B. Ryholt, whose material is used for some of the dynasties, offers his own dates for the Second Intermediate Period which I did not include. I guess I should have made that more explicit. -- llywrch 23:12, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

KMT back issues

I just wanted to drop a note and let you all know that I know have access to a fairly complete set of back issues of KMT (including Volume 1), so if anyone who doesn't have such access needs an article scanned in, let me know (on my talk page, not here). Noel (talk) 22:10, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For those of us who aren't up to date with the secondary literature, would you offer a short introduction to KMT, & just what it is? (From the context, I assume it is a periodical about Ancient Egypt, but would you add something about what it covers, its reputation, etc.) -- llywrch 02:05, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This KMT? -- ALoan (Talk) 01:57, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Esna

Can someone more knowledgeable than I fix the Esna article? Missi

It was deleted while I trying to fix it; hmm... pretty ugly it was, but "patent nonsense" was perhaps a bit harsh. I left a geo-stub-plus in its place. –Hajor 21:03, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My apologies, I thought it was a pretty textbook case of patent nonsense - it didn't make any sense, and I couldn't even tell from it what "Esna" was supposed to be. I can undelete if you like... john k 23:06, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Nah, you're all right. It didn't make much sense, but I suspect there was a story in there somewhere -- I think I'll rescue it and put it on Talk; perhaps someone familiar with the mythology'll recognize it and be able to polish it up into something comprehensible. –Hajor 23:16, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Pylon (obelisk)

Could we have a little discussion on relocating that article? I'm not at all convinced by "Pylon (obelisk)", but the blindingly obvious killer-location alternative isn't suggesting itself. See Talk:Pylon (obelisk). –Hajor 22:15, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Templates

I want to complain about the terminology used in the hieroglyph templates.

• Praenomen is latin for forename, and neither Egyptian, nor throne name
• nomen is likewise latin for name and not birth name.

Could these be changed please, as they are quite inappropriate. ~~~~ 20:50, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ril, To the best of my knowledge, these are the exact terms that Egyptologists use when referring to these parts of the name of the Pharaoh. We've had a couple of people who are knowledgable about Ancient Egypt (one is a professional Egyptologist), & they haven't commented on these words. Do you have any cites or authorities that show our usage is incorrect? -- llywrch 23:55, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I was referring to the fact that the average reader is not a professional Egyptologist (wikipedia has the following template explaining the issues around such a situation). I do not feel it is appropriate, particularly as anyone with a basic awareness of latin, or just a good educated guess, will note the meaning of these terms, and reach an inappropriate conclusion (i.e. that the item marked under "praenomen" is the person's first name, and under "nomen" is the next part of their name, rather than it being their throne and birth names). I feel that we should be avoiding jargon where at all possible. ~~~~ 21:29, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

{{technical}}

I honestly don't see how this is an issue. We have the jargon or technical word, which appears because that is the precise term; this is then followed with a phrase that offers a non-technical explanation. If I had to critique the templates, having glanced at a few, they should offer transliterations of the praenomena & nomena, so that the non-specialist reader then knows which cartouche refers to the most familiar name of the ruler. And they are even explained in Pharaoh, where all 5 parts of the Pharaoh's name are covered.

Much as I dislike seeing jargon in Wikipedia articles, this is one case where we can't avoid using it -- & I don't see how these two words hinder a non-specialist reader from understanding the article. Are you sure you're not just picking nits? -- llywrch 23:54, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Nubia

What is the project's policy with regard to Nubia, and Nubia related articles? ~~~~ 20:53, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

AFAIK, we have none. No one has brought the subject up. Would you like to add Nubian topics to this WikiProject? -- llywrch 23:55, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Nubia is an important topic related to Ancient Egypt. The Hittites are the only other rival of Ancient Egypt on par with the Nubians, and Hatti didn't have the strong economic, cultural, and historic ties to Pharonic civilization that Nubia did/does. This project was set up for Ancient Egypt and Egyptian topics should be our concern. If you would like set up a sister WikiProject about Nubia, I imagine you could count on this project's support. -JCarriker 01:46, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

I have no such information available, I was just curious how Nubia fitted into the picture. Sometimes Egyptologists consider it to come under the heading of "Egyptology" in a wider sense. ~~~~ 21:30, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)