Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sentait

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This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete. Eugene van der Pijll 16:03, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sentait

I think this article results from an accidental misinterpretation of french.

I can find absolutely no mention of this goddess anywhere, and I think its an error resulting from translating a description of Hathor from french (sentait = felt i.e. (one who) felt in French), as much of the description is that of a form of hathor, with the "name" of "sentait" possibly being a title (as the french translation of the title).

"Sentait" also doesn't look very Egyptian as a word. The only translations I can see are

  • "brother-land-father" (i.e. brother of the father-land or brother of the land's father)
  • "kiss-land-father" (i.e. (one who) kisses the fatherland or (one who) kisses the land's father)
  • "sister-father" (i.e. the father's sister or the sister's father)
  • "sister-room" (i.e. the sister's room or the room's sister)
  • "sister-picture" (i.e. the sister's picture or the picture's sister
  • "sister-my" (i.e. my sister), requiring double feminine ending (e.g. bastet rather than bast)

none of which make much sense. [N.b. don't value my ability to translate it well, I'm not a professional Egyptologist].

I'm really not completely certain here, so its really only a

  • Weak delete unless someone can verify it without using Wikipedia mirrors. ~~~~ 17:31, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

This is my first votes for deletion vote, so please bear with me. I vote keep. Doing a Google search of Sentait goddess -Wikipedia comes up with a lot of sites which have this information, although admittedly not much more than that she was an Egyptian cow goddess. Now it's possible that they got their information from Wikipedia, but they don't say so. See http://www.alsirat.com/deathlore/deathgods/sentait.html, http://www.pantheon.org/articles/s/sentait.html, http://www.aurochs.org/cows/famous/, and http://library.thinkquest.org/12865/mray/pegy.htm, just from the first page of the Google results. I did do an image search, but it only came up with one image which is unlikely to be what we're interested in. John Barleycorn 23:58, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

The problem with Google searching is that
  • You also need to do -encyclopedia and -GFDL as some don't cite wikipedia (unfortunately also cutting out encyclopedias with original info)
  • When the article has been up for a while, you run into places where people have read the article on Wikipedia, and published it as part of their own sites, but in their own words
The way to cut this out is to check exactly what they have written. It will tend to be virtually identical in substance to Wikipedia, sometimes refactored a bit, with no new information.
In particular, in this case, with Egyptian words there are usually a variety of spellings - e.g. set=seth=sutekh, nebt-het=nebhet=nepthys, bast=bastet=ubasti=pasht - due to the fact that the vowels are not completely known, and there was sound change over the vast period of egyptian history. However, for this goddess there is only "sentait" which is very unusual, variations should exist, e.g. (this isn't necessarily a legitimate variation - it depends on what the hieroglyphs actually are) "sentejt", "snetajt", "senetajt" and "senetay-te", and there would at least be the greek version & egyptian version which would be two different words (e.g. horus vs. har, isis vs aset, iusaaset vs. saosis).
So these articles are likely just to be from information that originated here, albeit indirectly.
In a way, if I created an article Hoger, about the cross between a horse and a tiger (c.f. liger), and it existed without people questioning it for a few years, then it would appear across the internet on people's own sites, rather than Wikipedia mirrors, particularly if it was difficult to verify - e.g. I said that Hoger's were rare, and only existed in antiquity, as the breeds of horse suitable have since died out.
I have tried searching google for the term (Sentait, and various different guesses at alternate spellings) before I put it up for VFD, but couldn't find a single mention that didn't seem like it had ultimately originated from somewhere other than here. ~~~~ 21:34, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
Essentially, from your list,
so these are all the same source - pantheon.org, like most such articles will be
and many articles from pantheon.org are basic copies from earlier versions of wikipedia articles (or vice versa, not sure which), making the same basic errors (e.g. treating one god as two, despite the fact that when you translate the names it is so obvious that you would never make the error)~~~~ 21:42, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
in fact, google search "sentait -wikipedia -mythica -encyclopedia -le" ("le" to cut out some of the french usage of the french word "sentait") only returns 606 articles, almost all of which are lists of gods copied from wikipedia etc. or french using the word "sentait", sa normal french word. ~~~~

Okay. I obviously didn't do sufficient research, and you sound like you know what you're talking about. I will change my vote to delete based on your comments. John Barleycorn 21:56, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

N.b. it can always be recreated if someone later verifies it and it has been deleted. ~~~~ 07:46, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Pantheon.org is filled with bad information, this was just another example. The page on that site was created in 1997, the one here was only made in 2002. DreamGuy
err, though the pantheon.org page has a lot less information than the one here... hrmmmm.... got me second guessing myself now... won't change vote for now, but let me thikn this over. DreamGuy 03:44, July 19, 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment I would prefer it if more than 3 people voted on this. ~~~~ 07:41, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment I am not a professional and my resources are too limited; a newcomer too. For these reasons, I am not sure I should vote here (would have voted to delete though). But what I did, I additionally looked up Russian sites for religion and mythology of ancient Egypt. For what I was able to dig through in one day, I found no traces of anything even resembling the name Sentait (including whichever variations of "Sentait" in Russian or English I came up with :). For example, http://middleeast.org.ua/history/egypt.htm or http://www.cultinfo.ru/fulltext/1/001/008/036/599.htm seem to contain credible research with numerous quotations and references to the sources such as translations of Egyptian papyri, museum exhibits, professionally reviewed publications or printed books by famous egyptologists. Among those, of older times: M. E. Mathieu (ru: М. Э. Матье) or B. A. Turaev (ru: Б. А. Тураев) or V. S. Golenischeff (see e.g. http://www.cesras.ru/eng/pers/pers.htm); also other sources and more recent ones, as well. I am wondering if this new name for a goddess emerged on the Internet as the result of even newer research, but in this case especially, shouldn't one expect credible references to the sources. Of course I could have missed the obvious (must be well hidden! :) - would be great to have a professional step in. -Introvert talk 08:32, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
You are entitled to vote if you have over 200 edits. If you are uncertain it doesn't matter, essentially, we can always create the article anew if it later proves that Sentiat is genuine, there wouldn't be much lost through deleting it (the article only has about 2 sentences) ?~~~~ 08:59, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete - found no credible supporting research (please see my comment above). - Introvert talk 06:24, 25 July 2005 (UTC) (PS: Please note that I am a newcomer and I don't have 200 edits even nearly but I wasn't aware this to be a requirement for VfD voting. Please discard my vote should it be in violation of the policies. )
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.