Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2024 January 22

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January 22[edit]

Symbols in encyclopedia bios[edit]

Ok refdesk, what's the square/cube mean in a bio article? See eg this DHS article on James Guillaume. I can't copy the icon into this text editor, but like the * for born and the cross for died, there's a box before "​à Paris, prot., des Verrières, Français en 1889.". Any ideas? -- asilvering (talk) 18:02, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It means place of burial, see [1]. ---Sluzzelin talk 18:37, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Sluzzelin Thank you! I went looking through the help page but somehow missed this drop-down option on the left side. -- asilvering (talk) 18:39, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And ∞ means the limit of numbers increasing without bound. (Or also possibly the spouse(s) -- a knot of marriage and all.)
Interesting that their bio of Napoleon is so long that I suppose they decide to spell out details like spouses and place of burial in prose. (Also there are multiples of both, with interesting stories.) Browsing other bios I can't find the box symbol hardly anywhere. Makes me wonder why the symbols are needed in an online encyclopedia at all. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:14, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Germany uses them for all of their normdata, so I assume it's just force of habit. -- asilvering (talk) 20:08, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RAS Macalister - votive altars[edit]

votives
votives 1

Thanks for your help on my earlier question, it's led me to this. Does anyone have more on these? Supposed votive altar fig 525, and the Eunelos inscription. "The feast of Yahweh inasios" Temerarius (talk) 19:16, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Eunelos inscription
Temerarius (talk) 02:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]