Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Egypt/Archive 1

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Contents

[edit] Pre-project discussion

This WikiProject was created as a result of the following discussion on these talk pages: User_talk: Hajor, User_talk: JCarriker, and User_talk: Llywrch.

I was wondering if you would be interested in starting a wikiproject about Ancient Egypt? It could be useful for creating infoboxes and standardizing spelling in article titles as well as dates. If you are interested, please alert me via my talk page. (P.S. You may want to consider archiving some of your talk page it is 36KB.) -JCarriker 05:06, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

:Hi JCarriker -- sure, I'd be interested in getting a wikiproject about Ancient Egypt started. I've been thinking that the tables that are created for each dynasty, & shown at Conventional Egyptian chronology, Pharaoh, & under each dynasty ought to somehow be drawn from the same template for convenience of maintenance, & this would be a good way to make it work.

And thanks for the heads-up about my Talk page: since I don't often respond to comments there, I'm not always aware of how long the page has become. -- llywrch 03:37, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I was wondering if you would be interested in starting a wikiproject about Ancient Egypt? It could be useful for creating infoboxes and standardizing spelling in article titles as well as dates. If you are interested, please alert me via my talk page. -JCarriker 05:06, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

:I'll certainly sign up, too. Are you aware of m:Egyptopedia over on meta? The guys on w:fr, in particular, have implemented some very neat ideas for standard formats and infoboxes, etc. –Hajor 14:37, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Example article suggestion

Any thoughts about which article should be our example. I already was planning on working Hatshepsut up to featured status. After we finish creating the project why don't we try to implement all of our policies ther and also work it up to featrued status. -JCarriker

Good choice. There's certainly more to be said about here than many of the others. But I think we should break off the section in there about her mortuary temple and start a new article at Deir al-Bahari -- it could cover Djeser-Djesuru in some more detail, but also include the other temples in that valley, the mummy cache, the massacre, etc.
One article we should really, really be ashamed of is Karnak: world's biggest religious complex, and the article's absolutely pitiful. –Hajor 16:12, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I wrote most of it. I'm not sure about breaking off the entire section about her morturary temple, it is argueably her gratest achievement. I have wanted to create an article for the building for quite some time but could not decide under what title to place it. I also have an inerest in architecture and her temple is considered a major building, and in that regard I think it eventually should have its own article and not just be include in others such as Hatshepsut, Senemut or at Deir al-Bahari. I agree about Karnak, I am ashamed. We should probably put it at the top of our to do list when we create it. -JCarriker 17:02, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)
*shrug* Let's put it at Djeser-Djesuru (hyphen or not?) then (with all necessary redirects from Temple of Hatshepsut, Memorial Temple of Hatshepsut, etc. Means we might just be a little longer in getting round to filling in about the other sites in Deir al-Bahari, is all. And, yeah, not remove all reference from Hatshepsut's article -- but probably not expand it much beyond what's already said. –Hajor 21:34, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree. I think that the section on her construction projects has achieved its proper size, I don't see much need to expand it. I also accept those naming conventions. -JCarriker 00:11, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Initial Thoughts

Looking at Hatshepsut, there's only a few items I would tweak, so I'd say it's a pretty solid article at the moment. (I'm somewhat dubious of my ability to rate articles as to "Featured Status", so I hope I don't come over as dismissive here.) The principal items that I would want to change are, as JCarricker pointed out, dealing with the spelling of names & the use of dates. Dates, at the moment, is the itch I'm scratching -- to use Eric Raymond's phrase.

Dealing with dates first. While the article Egyptian chronology currently overstates the situation, there is a fair amount of disagreement over the exact dates for the event of Ancient Egypt, mostly along the lines of moving dates back & forth by a widening amount the further back one goes -- in other words, dates of the New Kingdom tend to vary within 10 years, the Middle Kingdom by 20-50, & most scholars will only date Old Kingdom & earlier events to the century. Because of this, it would be very counterproductive to list every possible pair of dates for Hatshepsut -- unless we either attribute them to an authority, or add a section to every article & discuss the arguments for the varius published dates.

A standardized name is another issue. Fortunately, the form Hatshepsut is fairly widely accepted in the English-speaking world, so we don't have a problem there. But I think we all agree that as one moves into the lesser-known Egyptian personages, there is far more variation in the transliteration. (At tiems I wonder if there aren't more systems than there are Egyptologists.) The German Wikipedia wisely decided to follow the practice of one authority, so they've avoided this problem.

One minor detail, & this mostly because I am in the middle of reading Week's The Lost Tomb: any thoughts about adding the symbols for the archeological sites to the article? I don't know if this adds information, or just creates the impression that we are trying to show off our erudition. -- llywrch 22:26, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No one else has asked, so I'm afraid I'll have to show off my lack of erudition: what exactly do you mean by "the symbols for the archaeological sites"? And: which authority did the Germans choose to follow? Any chance of our being able to hit a consensus source? –Hajor 19:07, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm sorry not to have to responded earlier but I have been busy with back to school related activities. I believe Hajor that Llywrch is refring to hieroglyphs, in respect to pharonic names the cartouche such as that at Djoser, something I think would be good, albeit in a less conspecutive manner. I'd don't know what source the Germans have used but might I suggest the t we use The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, ed. Ian Shaw, ISBN 0192802933. Its what I have previously used for dates. Rather than explaining it in the article, perhaps we could created some sort of superscript similar to that at Geographic references.
As to wheter or not is Hatshepsut nearing WP:Fac status I would say no. I extensively edited, two featured articles; Marshall, Texas and Great Mosque of Djenné. Hatshepsut needs more info and at least three more pictures, and musch more info I'll get to work on it right away. -JCarriker 00:11, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

So I haven't sounded like a blowhard & scared everyone away! Good.

Hajor, "the symbols for the archaeological sites" is my way of referring to the abbreviations for the various tombs around Egypt -- like KV5, KV55, & all of the rest you made into links at Valley of the Kings. (Eventually, it'd be nice to have a map of Egypt showing the location of all of these archeological sites, the location of the ancient nomes, etc. Right now I'd be happy if we coul dget an article on each of the dynasties & as many kings as possible.)

Jay, you misunderstood what I was trying to say (which is likely my fault), but I like your idea: it would be great if every Egypt-related article had a cartouche or the relevant words in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Unfortunately, I gave away or sold what few books I owned that had that material in it, so I can only beg someone else with a scanner to do all of the work.

As for Ian Shaw's book, I've been reading that for the last few weeks, & agree with Jay that it would be an excellent book to use to standardize on for names & dates. Not only is it up-to-date, it covers the whole history of ancient Egypt better than the other books I've looked at so far.

Did anyone notice that I added the one template that has been used so far, specifically with the articles on the individual Pharaohs? Any comments about it? (Admittedly, it's not the template I originally created, but I'm looking for a consensus before I make any changes.) -- llywrch 20:51, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK, matters arising:
  • Thanks for the clarification about the tomb numbers. Definitely they should be added (you already guessed this, no doubt, from the KV6 article I hacked out over the weekend -- I am currently working up the courage to tackle KV34).
  • So, we weren't talking about hieroglyphs, but we may as well (for pharaohs' names, cartouches) -- see Khufu (pharaoh): the syntax extension is already there: at m:WikiHiero. I'm still a little foggy on how to use it, but it looks like a lot of fun.
  • Book, standard dates, Shaw: I don't have that one, but I do have Shaw & Nicholson's Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, which boasts the imprimatur of the British Museum. Presumably Shaw follows the same dating system in both; presumably authoritative if it's got the BM's backing. A definite maybe, then.
  • Infobox template: quite acceptable. Perhaps a bit more padding alongside the names to give them a bit more room?
  • Anyone going to be in Egypt late Sept / early Oct? I've just bought my ticket </brag mode off>.
–Hajor 21:41, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
For those who haven't had a chance to extensively peruse Weeks' site, Theban Mapping Project, there's a ton of useful stuff there, and more being added all the time. I wonder if we would get permission to use any of their stuff?
Also, there is a hieroglyph font now, but for most users of the Wikipedia, unless they load it in it won't display properly on web pages. I have a scanner, and books with the appropriate stuff, but I'm unclear as to whether copying stuff like that would fall within Vnu license. It's almost certainly "fair use" (based on the amount of material, and our non-commercial status) but alas there is no "bright line" test for fair use. Although I suppose we could always re-do them by hand, and scan that in, which would be 100% clear. Noel 08:36, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Oops, strike comments above abour hieroglyphic font and scanning things. Clearly m:WikiHiero os the right thing to use. We should try and get organized with the other language wikis to create a common database of pharonic names, etc. Noel 08:55, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Pharaoh

Oh dear - I've only just stumbled over this.

I have been cleaning up Pharaoh for a while (just got back to it) - see Pharaoh/Temp - and have created Template:Egyptian Dynasty list to standardise references (the plan was to create subsidiary templates for each "period" to include in the relevant period and dynasty articles, so there would be a tempalte called {{New Kingdom Dynasty list}} to include in New Kingdom, and in the artices for the 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties.

I am now cross-referencing the list of Pharaohs in Pharaoh/Temp with the individual dynasty articles, but not being an expert I am not sure which should take precedence - e.g. 26th Dynasty Psammetichus I (Wahibre) versus Psamtik I, and the dates do not always add up. Allocating Dynasties to Periods also seems to be difficult.

It would also be good to standardise the articles for the dynasties - [[Xth dynasty of Egypt]] appears to be the most common.

Comments/help gratefully received. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:38, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

(also posted to (Talk))
I'm not surprised that this Wikiproject has been going on without your knowing -- a lot of discussions, agreements etc. take place without many of us knowing about it. I've contributed to WP for about 2 years now, & I'm still surprised at what I find has taken place long after a decision was made.
Anyway ALoan, about the points in your post:
  1. Concerning your work on Pharaoh (which is badly needed), I've been spending the last few weeks pulling together a list of kings of Ancient Egypt & their reigns per the ideas the few of us have tossed out. It can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt/Temp. Consider this a "proof of concept", something tangeable that we all know just what we mean by standardizing our names & dates after Ian Shaw's book mentioned above. Unfortunately, there were some issues in adopting that work for our purposes (e.g., holes in the list of rulers, tracking down some well-known alternative transliterations, etc.), so I had to make some modifications. My methodology will be published on the talk page to that article, but my goal was to favor no one interpretation while making the end product as useable as possible.
  2. As for your template, I'm not sure where & how that will fit into Wikipedia. Would you edit a few relevant articles & show us what you intend?
  3. And as for the articles for the dynasties -- you're reading the words of the man who has been writing the content of most of them, & I admit that they are uneven. My primary intent was to simply get some kind of content up (in the hope that material will attract more contributions) & as I proceeded, the standard I began to follow was to (a) include a table of rulers for that dynasty; (b) mention in the article the more important rulers of that dynasty; & (c) try to include some non-political history in the article. I'm sure more needs to be done. -- llywrch 21:15, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Names: I've previously done some work on the names of the New Kingdom (18th-20th dynasty) people (who are in any case the one most people are most interested in, by and large), and I think we are in mostly pretty good shape there. At PJamesCowie's impetus, I switched the Wiki to use Ramesses, which is the academic standard, and we already use Amenhotep, also the standard. The only fly in the ointment is Thutmose - check out Talk:Thutmose for the background to that. Noel 08:36, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the post in my talk page - I'm reading here too. I've moved Pharaoh/Temp to Pharaoh, which is the only place Template:Egyptian Dynasty list sits at the moment. That is how I anticipate the template looking/working, as a sidebar/navigation tool. I would put that template, suitably reduced in size, in the articles for each kingdom and dynasty to make it easier to navigate around. I think each dynasty also needs a table of pharaohs - work that you have started on, as you say. Each pharaoh needs a "follows/succeeded by" box, again, work that you have started.
One idea I considered demonstrating in my creation of Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt/Temp was to place some of the Dynasty tables into their own templates, much as the various candidate pages are listed on VfD; then in turn they could be linked to from the articles on the individual dynasties or other articles that wanted the info. Maintenance would be much simpler since there would be only one place where the information is kept. Besides being a distraction from my proposed standard, what convinced me not to do this was that the material shown in the tables in Pharaoh & in each dynasty article differs a bit. -- llywrch 21:29, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
No that does sound like a good idea, although I doubt that there are that may articles that would need a list of, say, 6th Dynasty pharaohs, other than Sixth dynasty of Egypt and Pharaoh. -- ALoan (Talk) 23:58, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Besides formatting issues, some content would be good too :) I haven't had a chance to cross-check the pharaoh lists on Pharaoh to the pages for the individual pharaohs or dynasties, nor to create sub-templates, but it is on my list. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:37, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK - I have started cross-checking the lists in Pharaoh with the individual pharaoh and dynasty pages - there seem to be some inconsistencies in the Ptolemaic Dynasty, particularly as Ptolemy IX Soter seemed to be confused with Ptolemy X Alexander (they are brothers, so perhaps the IX and X are interchangeable?).

ALoan, ISTR seeing a few inconsistences in that group of rulers, but never remembered to check them myself. That's probably the next area that needs attention; so do we follow The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt here, or the Oxford Classical Dictionary? -- llywrch 23:42, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

On an experimental basis, I have implemented Template:Late Egyptian Dynasty list in the dynasties from Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt to Ptolemaic dynasty. I would propose to do a similar thing for the other dynasties/periods. Feedback welcome. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:27, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I made one change to the template: what you call "the Libyan Period" is more commonly referred to as the "Third Intermediate Period" -- most famously by the title of Kenneth Kitchen's history of that time. I don't think the first 2 dynasties are called "Predynastic" -- I'll have to take a moment when I get home & see what The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt calls them. -- llywrch 23:42, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I just looked -- The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt labels the period covering the first 2 dynasties "Early Dynastic Period". It applies the label "Predynastic" to the time from the Neolithic (c.5300 BC) down to Naqada III/Dynasty 0. -- llywrch 03:15, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Recent books I have (e.g. Peter Clayton's) use the same terminology. Noel 03:49, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Please edit away - I'm not an expert, just trying to get some consistency in a neglected area. I've tweaked the templates again, and corrected some "Libyan Period" references elsewhere (List of Egyptian dynasties, which seems a bit pointless now, and History of Ancient Egypt; I've corrected some of the references to "Predynastic" too). -- ALoan (Talk) 11:05, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Some books talk about a "dynasty 0", which includes Scorpion and Narmer - do we want to add that too? Also, I could see a sub-category within category:Ancient Egypt, something like Category:Ancient Egyptian timelines, to catch all articles that have timelines in them. But yeah, we probably have too many, and could probably do some rationalizing and cut out a few. Noel 14:53, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'm responsible for List of Egyptian dynasties, & it's purpose is just to help standardize how we refer to the individual dynasties, which was a mess when I took that chore on about a year ago. I'm not really attached to it, but it may be of use as a way to keep the non-Manethonian dynasties from becoming orphans & lost. (Deciding just how we will deal with those subjects is another matter.) -- llywrch 17:27, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Egyptian chronology

As well as making the general articles consistent with the individual dynasties and pharaohs, would it would be worthwhile compiling a list of articles "within scope" (if there is not one already, or is category:Ancient Egypt sufficient?) For example, there are lists in Pharaoh, List of Egyptian dynasties, Conventional Egyptian chronology and History of Ancient Egypt, as well as Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt/Temp - surely the various lists could be replaced by the Dynasty template, and the other information into one article? -- ALoan (Talk) 11:05, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As for Conventional Egyptian chronology, that is Andrewa's submission, & I dropped a note on his Talk page about this discussion. My impression is that he created it as a complement to a discussion of the "Revised Egyptian chronology" promoted by David Rohl & others. While I've used it & editted it in the past, presently I feel the material there duplicates what's currently at Pharaoh. -- llywrch 17:27, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Hmm. My suggestion is that we basically delete the king lists from Conventional Egyptian chronology, and turn it into an article on the subject of the chronological issue (e.g. Sothic cycles), describing the process by which the scholarly community (and us :-) has come up with the dating system we are using, and with only a few illustrative dates in it. For an idea about how to handle dates, see more below. Noel 20:51, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Feel free to list Conventional Egyptian chronology on VfD, & see what other people say. I agree that it is redundant at this time. As for explaining chronology & how dates are reached, I've been working on & off over a rewrite of Egyptian chronology, with the intent of just that. BTW, some of my research has appeared in Sothic cycle; & I've found myself learning more about the subject, at times, than I really can keep a handle on. -- llywrch 04:36, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, I think the one thing we definitely should not do is original research, and e.g. try and use astronomical data in ancient Egyptian records, which Egyptologists haven't yet factored into their work, to come up with an "improved" timeline.

I just read Egyptian chronology, and in my view it has a number of problems (which I'm sure are already painfully obvious to you), among which are:

  • It's very poorly organized (diving off into the detailed issue of the Menophres Era in the middle of the second paragraph)
  • It contains a lot of obscure detailed data which is more properly placed in a paper on dating issues, not an encylopaedia article
  • It doesn't contain a lot of stuff that should be there, such as a brief survey of all the various dating tools that can be brought to bear (astronomical, tree rings, C-14, king lists, diplomatic correspondence to other cultures with known dating, etc, etc)

Etc, etc. I was tempted to dive in and start correcting problems (e.g. the lack of error ranges on C-14 dates, most of which are given to 4 figures with no error bars; "different authorities in different decades offered different figures .. for the half-life of the carbon-14 isotope" - the is the least of the problems with C-14 dating, but we shoudn't be going into details here - merely a brief mention that there are issues with C-14 accuracy, and a link to the approriate article; etc), but I'll wait for your new version to appear.

For the pages, my preference would be to have Egyptian chronology be an overview of the problem and the methods used to work on it, along with some detail on the most important data (e.g. the king lists). Then, Conventional Egyptian chronology would go into more depth on the actual evidence used to construct the conventional chronology (e.g. identify fixed points which are identified by Sostric events), and list known problems and/or question with it.

I was amused by your mention of "I've found myself learning more about the subject .. than I really can keep a handle on" - I know the exact same feeling from looking into the end of the 18th dynasty! Noel 15:12, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Boy, Noel, your idea of what should be in the article is very close to mine. I had a few different ideas, some of which I decided not to pursue. My working outline at present for the article is as follows:
  • Take the comment from the present article about how fluid Egytpian chronology is, & put it into perspective with a side-by-side comparison of date from Breasted's Ancient Records & the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. There are some major differences, but when you conisder Breasted wrote about a century before the Oxford book, they are amazingly consistent.
  • Explain how the chronology was constructed: first from written sources, which give us the name of kings & their length of rule; then the use of historical synchronisms, which come to an end once we reach beyond the New Kingdom; then astronomical methods, first of which would be the Sothic cycle, but also some interesting theories (I have an article from Nature where the author tries to date the Pyramids at Giza based on their alignment with the North Pole) more tas examples, rather than "correct" interpretations; & lastly carbon-14, & other methods related to archeology.
  • Lastly, a method of "alternative chronologies". Whether or not you agree with David Rohl & his fellow Revisionists, they do get mention in the popular press. Ignoring them does not make them go away.
The closest I came to offering original research in this article was when I considered attempting to lay forth a chronology of Egypt as it was formulated before the translation of the Egyptian sources. After some research, I came to the conclusion that for the most part, this topic was ignored by serious historians. Until Champollion, ancient Egyptian history was to most historians much as medieval Cambodian or pre-Columbian Mayan history is to many people: a lack of hard facts, room for much airy speculation, & no real way for someone with a serious interest to advance the topic beyond that state.
I haven't actually written anything, since it would result result in a radical revision of what is currently there, & I've been involved in a few too many flamewars over radical revisions of articles. -- llywrch 21:20, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm very pleased to hear we are thinking along similar lines - that will make it a lot easier!

Do you want to keep two separate articles as I suggest (one on the general problems and techniques of dating in Ancient Egypt, and another describing the specifics of how the particular timeline used in the 'Pedia was worked out, as well as details of what that timeline is), or do you incline to a single article?

I agree that we should mention Rohl and others, and one advantage (from my point of view) of the two-article arrangement is that we can put the Rohl/et-al stuff in yet another page, called Alternative Egyptian chronology or something, with simply a link to it in the main article.

The idea for doing a side-by-side compare of different timelines sounds good - and we could even list two different modern scholarly alternatives (i.e. not Rohl et al) as well (we have several to pick from :-), to make it plain how unsettled things still are. Since they would be purely illustrative, we wouldn't have to monkey with updating them as we fiddle with the chronology the 'Pedia uses.

I think covering theories with potential is good, but I would like to see them kept in a section labelled "New theories", or something, to make it clear that although they have potential, they have not yet been accepted into the scholarly canon.

The concept of covering the pre-Champollion timeline is interesting, but I have two comments. One, I think it's a bit arcane (history of confused ideas :-), so therefore low priority, and I would suggest deferring it till the main articles are done. Second, it's probably arcane enough to be yet another article (of course mentioned and linked to from the main one).

As far as avoiding flame-wars go - and their even worse cousins, edit wars - I concur with you, I try and avoid them like the plague, at almost any cost. How about we put a note in Talk:Egyptian chronology and Talk:Conventional Egyptian chronology, letting people know that we propose a rewrite, and inviting comment up front? That should radically reduce the chance of a post-rewrite blowup. Noel 23:53, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'll leave you two to sort the articles out, but I agree that a notice in the talk pages should reduce the chances of conflict. Creating the new articles in /Temp pages and asking for comments before they go "live" is also a good idea - it worked well when cricket was completely rewritten from scratch, for example, and it is now featured. -- ALoan (Talk) 00:04, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Oooh, excellent idea. Noel 00:50, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
On that note, I've gone ahead & added the appropriate notices. -- llywrch 20:16, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] List of Pharaohs

Oh, yeah, one more thing: The list of pharaohs should not be in Pharaoh, which ought to be an article about the position, and history thereof. The list ought to be in List of Pharaohs, just like every other monarchy, e.g. List of Emperors of Japan, List of British monarchs, etc. Noel 16:12, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree - that is easily done. List of pharaohs or List of Pharaohs? -- ALoan (Talk) 17:20, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I would go with the capitalized "Pharaohs", since all other royal titles (e.g. King, Emperor - see above) are capitalized here in the 'Pedia.
Oh, done, by the way :) -- ALoan (Talk) 22:31, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] What to do about dates (mechanically)?

This one is a three-piper. Ideally, we would have dates in only one place, so that if we change something, we don't have to go around and edit a jillion articles. The thing is that it would be really, well, bizarre to not have the dates in each individual pharaoh's page, inline in the header para in the canonical form for bios. And I'm sure there are lots of other articles (e.g. Valley of the Kings, etc) that include lots of dates. I think we could probably do something with nested templates, but it might look kind of icky. Well, maybe not - if {{ReignDatesTutankhamun}} expanded to "(1334 BC - 1323 BC)" (or whatever the flavour of the month is this month :-), then if we go to update, all we have to do is go through and update all the ReignDates templates (all linked to from one page somewhere - probably a separate one for each dynasty, actually). Maybe even separate them out into ReignDateStart and ReignDateEnd, if we find that there are articles that use them? Noel 14:53, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Noel, using a template like you suggest looks like a workable solution. However, the dates when kings ruled in Ancient Egypt is still a debated subject. About the only thing the experts seem to agree on is that the margin of error grows the earlier one goes: dates after the Assyrian sack of Thebes are considered exact to the year; dates in the New Kingdom are considered accurate within +/- 20 years; dates in the Middle Kingdom +/- 50 years; and most Egyptologists content themselves with only indicating the century for rulers & events in the Old Kingdom.
Because of that, I've been meaning to suggest that within the biography of a given king we use regnal years to date events. That way, we save ourselves & those after us time revising these articles to fit "the flavour of the month is this month" -- as you nicely put it.
IMHO, it's all a numbers game by the time we get to the Middle Kingdom anyway. While there is evidence of Egyptian contacts with Byblos, Cyprus, Crete & lands along the upper Nile as far back as the Old Kingdom, during those earlier periods Egypt exists in isolation from any other center of civilization with a recorded history; does it really make a difference if Khufu built his pyramid in 2200 BC, 2400 BC or 3000 BC? I can't see the difference. -- llywrch 17:27, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Regnal years! Brilliant! Perfect! (No, I'm not being flattering - I'm just really am excited by this - because it has led me to what I think is an even better idea). We should use regnal dates for all dates in the body of all Ancient Egypt articles.

Here's where it gets really clever (IMNSHO :-): we use a templating syntax that turns those dates into clickable things, with initially displayed syntax something like "regnal year X of pharaoh Y", so that when you click on one, it turns into something like "according to the Conventional Egyptian chronology, ruler Y ruled from xxx - yyy". Maybe even as some kind of little Java pop-up, or a tool-tip, or something, if we can figure out how to make the Wiki do that? And the really clever part is that it uses nested templates to pull the regnal dates from the pharonic reign date templates I talked about above! So if we change one entry (for pharaoh X's reign dates, in his reign template), all dates of the form "regnal year 3 of pharaoh X" in all Ancient Egypt articles instantly and automagically update themselves!

To make this concrete, you'd enter something like {{phry|Akhenaten|3}} in the article, and that would display as "Akhenaten's regnal year 3", and when you click on that it displays "according to the Conventional Egyptian chronology, Akhenaten ruled from 1367 BC - 1350 BC". (I guess this only works with this exact syntax if we can delay expansion of template arguments. But anyway, even if not, we can get the same effect with two templates for each pharaoh - still a vast improvement.)

Actually, if we want to get really ambitious, we could have yet another level of clickthrough, which gives alternate dates according to other prominent scholarly schools. (I also thought about possibly doing math, so {{phry|Akhenaten|3}} would turn into "1364", but I don't think you can do math in templates.)

Will someone please stop me before I make this thing Turing complete? :-) Noel 20:51, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, Noel, my idea would be better explained by this hypothetical opening to an article: "Akhenaten (also known as Amenhotep IV) was a Pharaoh of ancient Egypt. He ruled {{pharaoh_reign=Akhenaten}}." Within the article events would then be dated by his regnal year. The Battle of Qadesh would be dated to the 7th regnal year of Ramesses II, instead of 1274 BC. (Just explaining so Noel doesn't blame me for spending hours on making his idea work.) -- llywrch 04:36, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, no, I understood exactly what you meant; using regnal years in Pharonic biography pages. I merely instantly extended your idea - I was talking about dates in other ancient Egyptian pages (e.g. Amarna, Tadukhipa, Karnak, etc), and tried to work out how to key them all off a *single* entry for each king - so that we wouldn't have to touch (e.g.) Amarna if we changed Akhenaten's dates. Noel 16:50, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Egyptian numerals

Could someone please take a look at this article and the question on its talk page? Thank you. Lupo 16:27, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have also created a new page on Egyptian mathematics, based on notes from a lecture I attended a month or two ago. It could do with some more work. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:46, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Ancient Near East

I have created Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Near East, to which this project would seem a natuaral descendant (for definitions of ANE that include Egypt). I suppose the ANE project will have Anatolia and Mesopotamia as further subdivisions, although there was of course more interaction between these two. The most important overlap of the ANE and the Ancient Egypt project would be chronology: See Chronology of the Ancient Orient — it would be my aim to arrive at a clean practice for giving 2nd and 3rd millennium dates: If not consistent use of either short or middle chronology, it should at least be possible to identify each date as to with which chronology it is is in accord. A feel pretty alone in the ANE article space, at the moment (I have tried to tie things together with Template:Ancient Mesopotamia so far), and any help is appreciated! dab 18:11, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Anyone willing to help with the Egyptology aspect of Haman (Islam)?

The Qur'an features a Haman who was a companion of a Pharaoh in ancient Egypt; several Muslim websites contain assurances, with bibliographic support, that the name "Haman" is attested in at least one Middle Kingdom inscription. I'd rather verify this personally, but I'm having trouble finding the two books cited around here - does any of you have them? And if you can find it, it would be really cool to have the original hieroglyphics and the proper transliteration... All the relevant details are in Haman (Islam). - Mustafaa 23:12, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Portal ?

  • I was thinking that we need an Ancient Egypt portal - Portal:Ancient_Egypt - to act as a starting point and central reference. I might try and build a basic one over the weekend - just like the Portal:Archaeology portal. This would allow recent updates, did you know, etc. Any suggestions? Markh 13:22, September 2, 2005 (UTC)