Talk:Cities of the ancient Near East

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Hey now, what about this page? Nobody filling it up? Cush 21:57, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I have recently created the Sumerian city articles Kuara, Kisurra, Dilbat, and Marad and have checked and moved all coordinates to their appropriate pages. Thus I have removed the coordinates from the list to look better soon. Thank you. -Kain Nihil 13:45, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

oh, so the page should rather not contain coordinates? Cush 21:49, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Order of cities.

Is there a reason for the cities to be listed from North to South? In Mesopotamia, the order of settlement and spread of civilization was from South to North. I'd like to reverse the order of the Mesopotamian cities, if no one minds. Sumerophile (talk) 18:56, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Why not just have them alphabetically? I will complete my db with the entries here and put out a list (including coordinates). I will also try to generate a map. Btw, are you on NSG? Cush (talk) 06:49, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

• SNIP*

I would rather have them in some kind of order - by state and by geography. Alphabetizing takes away information, the relationships between the cities.

I'm probably not on NSG, because I don't know what that stands for :)

Sumerophile (talk) 18:48, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

But with a map there is no need to sort the cities from north to south or in any other non-alphabetical manner.

NSG is the "General" forum of NationStates ([1])

Cush (talk) 22:34, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

If the map doesn't have links, it would be a good idea to list the cities in order. I mean if somebody just wants to find a specific city (which is the purpose of alphabetizing), they would just search it. Sumerophile (talk) 23:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, sorting the list by the latitude coordinate is not an effort (see above) Cush (talk) 13:34, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

oof I've forgotten about this. Yes sorting by the N coordinate looks good, but let's keep the separate regions separate: Mesopotamia, Elam/Persia, Anatolia, Levant, Egypt. I think North and South Mesopotamia could be combined, though. Sumerophile (talk) 22:18, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

All the Sumerian cities are listed on the Sumer article. All the city articles have up-to-date coords (although they are in DMS, not metric). Three are unknown location, but from what we know of them, the would be in the North to South order given on the Sumer page.

I like the idea of having the coordinates with the cities on this page. :) Sumerophile (talk) 22:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

My complete list can be seen on my user talk page. I could of course create a new section for Elam. The cities with uncertain or unconfirmed coordinates (such as Kish) feature a bold question mark after the coordinates. The link to the GeoTemplate leads to a page that features both coordinates formats (DMS and metric, e.g. Ninua (Niniveh) : 36.359839° N 43.152216° E). Cush (talk) 23:30, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow! No, Elam works with Zagros/Iran. I'd change Iran to Persia though. Maybe add Elam to the title?

Would you mind if I edited the Sumerian cities on your page - some of the names are non-standard, and Akkad is listed twice. Sumerophile (talk) 23:48, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Um, the list is generated from my database with a script, so any editing will be lost at the next export.

Akkad is listed twice because neither set of alternative coordinates is accurate and I wanted to show possible locations.

The names are given in Akkadian/Sumerian/Egyptian/etc. in contrast to "standard" names which have been formed from Hebrew or Greek translations.

Iran had been named thus long before it was named Persia, and I always try to use the most ancient (original?) name.

 :) Cush (talk) 04:48, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Order of cities continued.

Cush, it might be a good idea to take the information in your database from Wikipedia itself - because I'm not sure what your sources are, and, for instance, having several Ur's in northern Mesopotamia is news to me.

Also, if a city like Akkad has not been found, coordinates shouldn't be speculated for it, because then you'll have non-factual situations like a city in two places. Sumerophile (talk) 20:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a good source for coordinates, while knowledge of the features on the ground and Google Earth is. Most accurate coordinates of ancient sites on Wikipedia come from my database. I could of course exclude uncertain placemarks from the list. Cush (talk) 03:27, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the coodinates yet. But just from looking at it over, some of the names are non-standard, and some of the sites seem unfamiliar. Sumerophile (talk) 23:11, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I have updated my user page. My table for Mesopotamia now looks like this (I still have to edit some entries) :

<<SNIP>> (see my user page)