User talk:A. Parrot/Archive 6

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ABOUT Penguin History OF ---

Should the correct ARTICLE name be The Penguin History of Europe or Penguin History of Europe like Penguin History of Britain ?--Htmlzycq (talk) 07:21, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

@Htmlzycq: If there's a specific guideline at Wikipedia:Title about this, I can't find it now. But titles of books seem to usually include the "the", and I would expect that to be true of book series as well. Many of the more obscure articles about nonfiction books (e.g., Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt) omit the "the", but given that articles that receive more editor attention (The Lord of the Rings, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) include them, I think it's conventional to include the "the". But I'm not 100% certain. A. Parrot (talk) 07:43, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Code of Hammurabi

Hello! I saw that you recently reviewed the Sennacherib article and helped get it to FA. I have just (re)written the Code of Hammurabi article, which deserves FA if anything does. I was wondering if you'd be interested in mentoring for FAC? I'd be very grateful but of course understand if not!

I've been editing anon for a bit but this is my first time nominating an article for anything. Unless major work is needed I’d like to bypass GA and go straight to FAC.

Emqu (talk) 00:43, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

@Emqu: I'd be willing, and at a glance the article looks comprehensive and reasonably well-referenced. But, if I may ask, how long were you editing anonymously before you made your account? I wouldn't recommend any new editor to go straight to FAC, no matter the quality of the article in question. A. Parrot (talk) 02:11, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Many thanks indeed!

I feel I could respond quickly to suggestions. I was editing for three–four months; I hope that would be sufficient for FAC? Emqu (talk) 09:36, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

@Emqu: Well, if you've read other FACs and familiarized yourself with the process, it should be doable. My learning curve when I started on Wikipedia was very drawn-out, so much so that two and a half years elapsed between when I first buckled down to rewrite an article and the passage of my first FA, but I know a lot of people adapt more quickly than I do. One of the problems with FAC (as with all of Wikipedia) is that it's a lottery of what types of personalities show up, so you never quite know what to expect. I've never been an FAC mentor before, but I'll help you as much as I can.

Regarding the article itself, I think it needs just a bit of polish before FAC. After giving it a once-over, I see a few potential problems:

• The writing style is a bit too discursive—sentences and section headings written as questions, sentences written in the first person ("We might reasonably expect these in prescriptive legislation", "Much has been written on what the Code tells us"). Wikipedia's house style is very detached and doesn't directly address the reader with questions or commands (for example, by saying "Note…") or use the first person.
• Perhaps as an extension of that tendency, there are a lot of parenthetical remarks. Parenthetical remarks may be useful in discussion comments like the one I'm writing at this moment, but in articles, they can usually be incorporated into the main text. In contrast, parentheses that do not contain actual remarks, such as the date ranges, Old Babylonian words, and references to particular lines of the Code in this article, are entirely appropriate.
• You may not need me to tell you this, but in any subject dealing with the preclassical ancient world, old sources (certainly anything from before World War II) should be treated with great caution. As far as I can tell, you use such sources appropriately (for descriptions of the artifact itself or as examples of how past scholars interpreted the Code), but be on the lookout for any bit of interpretation that is cited to an old source without being marked off as an interpretation from a particular time period.
• As a specific instance of the above point, I wonder about Driver and Miles, which is old-ish and cited many times in the text. But if current scholars treat it as a standard reference work for the Code, and you don't assert any positions based on it that current scholars reject, it should be fine. (One of the things nobody tells you about Wikipedia editing is that if you want to bring an article up to the highest standards, you don't just have to cite sources. Ideally, you'll be familiar with the terrain of the scholarly field, as it were, and know which positions are current, which are obsolete, and which are held by a minority or by that one scholar who is hugely influential but has some crank tendencies, etc. Your rewrite of this article gives me the impression that you do know the terrain, so you're in good shape.)
• The see also section should be limited to relevant articles that aren't linked in the body of the article itself. There are certain highly respected Wikipedians who think that a fully developed article shouldn't need a see also section at all, as any links that are truly relevant should be possible to integrate into the article proper. I don't entirely agree, but I think it's true most of the time, and in FAs that I've written, I've only ever linked to lists (Egyptian temple#See also and Ancient Egyptian deities#See also).
• There are a few passages that lack citations, e.g., the third paragraph of the Prologue section or the last sentence of the Legislation section.
• There's some kind of error in Citation 16. There's a script to warn you of errors like this; to use it, create a page titled User:Emqu/common.js and paste into it "importScript('User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js');". If you're worried about the edit notice you get when creating that page, my common.js page has that same code, as do those of many other Wikpedians.

That may seem like a lot, but the substance of the article looks excellent, and I do think the whole thing is close to FAC-ready. Good luck, and let me know if you need anything! A. Parrot (talk) 20:11, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: That’s a generous reply, in quantity and sentiment. I appreciate it.

You’re quite right, I do like parenthetical remarks. I have removed almost all of them, but have kept several Wikilinked "(see below)"s. Would you support that?

"Legislation" paragraph four should no longer need a citation. I was wondering, where did you feel one was necessary for “Prologue” paragraph three? If it was about the nominal sentence, I was under the impression that non-contentious, non-text-specific grammar points didn’t need citations. anāku is the Akkadian equivalent of Egyptian ỉnk here. Or would the citation be for the final sentence?

You’re right to query Driver & Miles, of course. However, in their huge two-volume work, there is actually very little expounding on the general nature and moral importance of the laws: most of the text is edition and commentary. What general statements there are are inoffensive and factual. Every serious commentator on the laws has read it, and despite its stature and length I don’t recall seeing it picked on for any but the most niche philological points.

In terms of other big sources: Martha Roth is a great commentator. Her Law Collections (1995a) is the standard edition of this and other such texts. She’s in the "sceptical about actual use" camp, so takes more of a side than Driver & Miles, but always argues with due caution. Should fix her a Wikipedia page some day.

Van De Mieroop’s Philosophy Before the Greeks (2016) has a lot of fans, and I consider myself among them. It is at points a little excitable, but mainly with cross-cultural parallels. I would ascribe that to his trying to straddle the academic/popular line with the book. I felt it would be a good cite for this very reason: it’s highly legible for non-Assyriologists, despite very much having its own theory. He’s very good on the facts of the Code, and where he gets more speculative, in "Jurisprudence", I tried to spell out his arguments rather than citing them as fact.

On a side note, I almost didn’t read Kraus’ paper (1960), but it’s incredibly astute and full of pithy summaries of the problems with this text and others like it. Worth reading if you’re interested and are OK with German/Google Translate.

Will the article have your blessing for FAC when those two issues have been cleared up? Emqu (talk) 14:42, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

@Emqu: The sentence in the prologue section that needs citing is "This gives a feeling of overwhelming length to the list." I also notice "Therefore, ethical concerns, even individual rights, may have contributed to Hammurabi's view of his laws' legitimacy. In this respect the document calls to mind theories of natural law" at the end of Underlying principles; check for other uncited passages. Opinions, impressions, and the like must be cited. In fact, there are very few circumstances on Wikipedia where things don't need to be cited (fiction plots, which can be verified simply by reading the book or watching the film or episode, are the best-established example). In this article you can summarize the Code itself without a citation, but even there, it wouldn't hurt to cite one of the translations of the text. Also, quotations must be attributed in the article text, in addition to being cited; I spotted a couple of unattributed quotations but forgot to mention it in my previous comment.

"See…" commands are generally frowned upon. It's generally assumed that readers will be able to navigate the article using the section links, or read the whole thing. (I'm not sure that's necessarily true, but that's a discussion for another time.) A. Parrot (talk) 17:24, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: I’ve removed the intra-page section links, and dealt with the quotations where the author was given only in the citation.

I’ve scrapped the "length" sentence. As for the comments on ethical foundations: yes, those were my own thoughts. I have made it closer to a recounting of the stele’s "plot"; is it now acceptable?

I've added some more citations. I feel that the sentences without a citation at the end are now either self-evident, or very basic facts, or qualified by the sentence(s) immediately following. Emqu (talk) 15:40, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

@Emqu: What about the last sentence of the "Law report" section, or the end of the second-to-last paragraph of "Jurisprudence"? Passages that simply summarize cited text, such as the opening paragraph of "Theories of purpose", are OK, but everything else needs support from the sources in an article like this. I know it's a very constricting way to write, but it's necessary because of the way Wikipedia works, where articles are mostly not written by experts who can speak ex cathedra, and every passage is—and needs to be, to maintain accuracy in the face of drive-by editing—open to challenge.

Also, regarding passages that summarize cited text, it's conventional for the lead section to have no citations, because it's generally expected not to say anything that isn't found and cited in the body of the article. A. Parrot (talk) 08:13, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Those instances and several others are now cited.

What do you think about these sentences at the end of the second paragraph of "Language"? "In both protasis and... -ma can also have..." This is a non-contentious linguistic point, and I felt that the most convenient way to demonstrate it was to point to examples already in the document. However, I know you said that intra-page directions are generally frowned upon. Do you think it's OK here since it points to specific quotations? If not, what would you suggest? Emqu (talk) 14:50, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

@Emqu: It may be an uncontentious linguistic point among scholars of Akkadian, but most people don't know Akkadian. Is there a source you can cite that discusses this use of the suffix? Given the nature of this sentence, it doesn't need to be one that discusses its usage in the Code of Hammurabi, but just generally how the suffix is used in Akkadian. A. Parrot (talk) 00:04, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Done. In the same vein I have added a citation for the nominal sentence construction with anāku, in "Prologue". Emqu (talk) 10:22, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

@Emqu: My apologies for not replying to this sooner, but I should be able to give the article a thorough looking-over this weekend, and if all looks good, you can nominate at FAC. A. Parrot (talk) 16:04, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: No worries. And thanks! Emqu (talk) 18:48, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Have you had a chance to look it over? Emqu (talk) 09:02, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

@Emqu: I'm very sorry, I haven't. I'm trying to address some unexpected comments at an FAC of my own, and I'm dealing with some nuisances IRL as well. I'll get to it as soon as I can, which I hope will be sometime this week, but I can't be more precise. A. Parrot (talk) 15:54, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Of course, those have priority. Take care. Emqu (talk) 19:34, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

@Emqu: OK, I have time at last. Here are my final comments:

• There are a lot of duplicate links. The rule is that a term should be linked once in the lead, once in the body, and once in image captions and other supplementary stuff. (There is a script you can install to detect duplicate links, here.)
• "Writing on law" sounds strange. "Legal text" sounds more natural and seems broad enough to cover all the theories about its purpose.
• The body text doesn't state that the Louvre stele was taken as plunder; if it's significant enough for the lead section, it should be cited in the body, not in the lead. The other citations in the lead section are unnecessary, as they support text that is already supported in the body.
• "All these preoccupations surface in the Code, especially in the prologue and epilogue" is uncited. I know this sentence based on the text of the Code itself, but a citation is always preferable. If nothing else, you could cite it to a translation of the text, finding points where those preoccupations appear in the text.
• The sentence mentioning Urukagina should briefly say who he was and when.
• "Its dimensions are as follows" is a bit awkward. Rosetta Stone#Description has a good example of a fluid way to list the dimensions of an object.
• Is "Anum" is the spelling of the deity's name used in the Code? Wikipedia's article is at Anu, and it doesn't list "Anum" as a variant spelling. If the Code does use that spelling, keep it, but you might want to add it to the possible spellings listed in Anu's article.
• Ideally, even the summaries of the Code's text would be cited to a translated version, at least in the running text in the "Frame" section if not in the table of laws.
• "There was also inequality within these classes: law 202, for example, shows that one awīlum could be of higher rank than another" is unsourced.
• The timeframe of the "late Babylonian list of literary and scholarly texts" is worth specifying.
• "Commentators have contented themselves with observing similarities and differences…" This makes it sound as if there's a more thorough approach that they could take, but the commentators settle for this approach. I assume you're implying that the influence of the Code upon Mosaic and Graeco-Roman law is the ideal option but is infeasible because of the gaps in our knowledge, but it isn't entirely clear.
• "The horned crown shows that the relief was based on the figure of Shamash on the stele, not of Hammurabi" is unsourced. Yes, it's obvious, but we as Wikipedians are not allowed to assert something that secondary sources have not brought up. A. Parrot (talk) 04:13, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Thanks for this, and for all the edits. Just a handful of things:

• I would query an "Unneeded comma" edit you made a week ago. Without the comma it looks like the modern reaction comprised a) admiration at the Code's perceived fairness, and b) respect for the rule of law. The comma clarifies that both are objects of the "admiration", and that the perceived respect for the rule of law was Hammurabi's.

@Emqu: I don't read it that way, but feel free to undo that edit if it seems to cause ambiguity.

• Plunder was mentioned in the body.

I see. I missed it because it wasn't in the section on the Louvre stele, where I expected it to be.

• "Anum" is indeed the Old Babylonian version. The entry Anu does give it as a variant in the gloss at the start of the lead, correctly citing mimation.

Aha, I see the Anu‹m› now. It might be worth adding Anum in bold in the lead sentence of the article on Anu; that's where variant spellings are listed if they're used in English.

• How would you suggest citing the line numbers? I have a footnote explaining that they reference the CDLI edition. Would you suggest linking to the footnote more frequently, or citing the edition in an sfnp after every line number citation, or perhaps hyperlinking each number to it?

I'd say use an sfnp citation. Given that everything from CDLI is on a single webpage, it's not necessary to add that many footnotes, but it's generally good practice to have a footnote after every paragraph. So, for example, the two paragraphs of the epilogue section should each end with a citation to the CDLI page.

Looking further, I still have some concerns about the translations. In some places it's ambiguous where your translations of the text come from. For example, do are quotations in the jurisprudence section drawn from Van De Mieroop, or are they passages that Van De Mieroop cites but that you quote from the CDLI page? The same with the quotations in the example column in the table of laws.

One final concern is that the CDLI page renders phrases in a different order from the translations you give in the article. I'm assuming that the page is rendering the text very literally and reflecting Akkadian word-order, and that you're rearranging the phrases to sound more natural in English. I would say it's possible to get away with that if it's all you've done to modify those passages, but others at FAC might be more strict than I am. Wikipedia:No original research can be rough, especially at FAC level. A. Parrot (talk) 17:15, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Addressed these.

All the translations are my own. I thought this was consistent with the "no original research" translation policy?

@Emqu: Hm. It's acceptable, but as that page says, "Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians." Does a text as well known as the Code of Hammurabi not have a standard translation into English that you could quote? Or were you worried about copyright problems? A. Parrot (talk) 00:36, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Roth's is in my view the best of the translations, and probably the closest to a "standard". I chose to translate myself to ensure there was no inconsistency or licentiousness. Nonetheless, I understand why having a sourced translation is desirable (and hadn't seen the verifiability article which recommends this). I have replaced my translations with Roth's, citing page numbers in each case for ease of reference.

Might the article be nearing FAC standard? Emqu (talk) 11:52, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

@Emqu: Yes, I think it's ready for FAC. A. Parrot (talk) 00:29, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Excellent! Thanks for putting so much effort into this, I've really enjoyed the process. Emqu (talk) 12:06, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Mysteries of Isis GA Reassessment

Mysteries of Isis, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Charles Bélanger Nzakimuena (talk) 07:54, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Promotion of Mysteries of Isis

Congratulations, A. Parrot! The article you nominated, Mysteries of Isis, has been promoted to featured status, recognizing it as one of the best articles on Wikipedia. The nomination discussion has been archived.

This is a rare accomplishment and you should be proud. If you would like, you may nominate it to appear on the Main page as Today's featured article. Keep up the great work! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) via FACBot (talk) 00:40, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Four Award

		Four Award
		Congratulations! You have been awarded the Four Award for your work from beginning to end on Mysteries of Isis. Kingsif (talk) 15:01, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Tibesti thanks

Hey, I just wanted to leave a quick note of thanks re the Tibesti FAC. It was archived, but the sting is rather muted because I honestly had no idea what I was doing. When you came along and reviewed it I was like holy shit, we're big league now! But seriously, I really appreciated the review. I'm not sure my writing style nor the paucity of the sources on the Tibesti will ever be amenable to FAC, but I think we've at least got a decent article out there now. Cheers for all that and I look forward in admiration to your next article in which I have to click every single link to understand it :) Brycehughes (talk) 11:13, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Egyptian god "Shay"

The Coptic etymological dictionary mentions in its entry on the Coptic word šai/šoi ("fate") the existence of an Egyptian god "Shay" ("šy fate, demon, the god Shay"). I can't find this god on Wikipedia and was wondering if you knew anything about them.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:00, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: Yes, the article is at Shai. I really don't know more about Shai than the article says, though; he was a pretty minor deity. A. Parrot (talk) 16:41, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Mysteries of Isis scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for May 29, 2021. Please check that the article needs no amendments. A coordinator will draft a blurb - based on your draft if the TFA came via TFA requests, or for Featured Articles promoted recently from an existing blurb on the FAC talk page. Feel free to comment on this. We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks and congratulations on your work. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:20, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you today for the article, introduced: "The Greco-Roman mystery initiations dedicated to an ancient Egyptian goddess may be little-known today, but they seem to be indirectly responsible for the vague pop-cultural impression that ancient Egyptian religion was something secretive and mystical. And what other religious tradition has to be studied by reading a bawdy novel about a man who's been turned into a donkey?"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:10, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for May 23

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Eye of Horus, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Nazar.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 05:57, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Eye of Horus

On 2 June 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Eye of Horus, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that in Egyptian mythology, the god Horus offered his own eye (symbol pictured) to be eaten by his father Osiris? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Eye of Horus. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Eye of Horus), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (i.e., 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:02, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

		Hook update
		Your hook reached 7,905.5 views (658.8 per hour), making it one of the most viewed hooks of June 2021 – nice work!

theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 01:04, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

AfD for Ambrose and pagans

If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying I was wrong in interpreting P.Aculeus' approach to merging, then blanking, as gaming the system. (It's a. few paragraphs above your comments.) If you agree with him, and that is a legitimate approach, then I would be happy to go ahead and expand the section in the main article on Ambrose, then go and get the page up for deletion, and either before or after merging, blank its content, but still merge it. Its contents need deleting imo. It is heavily non-NPOV, and ignores the last 50 years of scholarship. I can fix that - if that's the right thing to do. In fact, I had already begun reworking the article when I was notified of the AfD. I do agree with Avilich that there really is nothing worth keeping in this article, and it really does create a problem in the meta-data on WP. I assumed he was right in saying the only viable approach was deletion, but I do also think it's an important enough topic that it needs to be somewhere. I want to merge the topic and delete its content, and it looks like you are saying that's fine. R U? I've never been involved in a deletion before. I don't have enough experience on WP to know what's right here. Help! Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:17, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

@Jenhawk777: Yes, I think you and Avilich are getting tripped up by Wikipedia's technical definition of "deletion". See my latest comment in the deletion discussion, which tries to clarify further. But there's no need to panic. Just work on the Ambrose section at your own pace. If any inaccurate text is merged from the subarticle into the one on Ambrose (which I doubt will happen, considering how hard Avilich has pushed back against the idea), you can just eliminate it there via ordinary editing. A. Parrot (talk) 20:58, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I have read what you wrote here, and there, and it looks like I should just move on with editing the section in the main article on Ambrose, and leave this other one alone, so that's what I will do. It somehow seems wrong to leave what will be contradictory and outdated info, that will make the meta-data on WP disagree with itself, out there with no resolution, but you have shown up on some of my other article reviews and I respect and trust you. So that's what I shall do. I have already begun the research. Thank you for your help. Jenhawk777 (talk) 02:47, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

GOCE June 2021 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2021 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June newsletter, our first newsletter of 2021, which is a brief update of Guild activities since December 2020. To unsubscribe, follow the link at the bottom of this box. Current events Election time: Voting in our mid-year Election of Coordinators opened on 16 June and will conclude at the end of the month. GOCE coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Have your say and show support here. June Blitz: Our June copy-editing blitz is underway and will conclude on 26 June. Drive and blitz reports January Drive: 28 editors completed 324 copy edits totalling 714,902 words. At the end of the drive, the backlog had reached a record low of 52 articles. (full results) February Blitz: 15 editors completed 48 copy edits totalling 142,788 words. (full results) March Drive: 29 editors completed 215 copy edits totalling 407,736 words. (full results) April Blitz: 12 editors completed 23 copy edits totalling 56,574 words. (full results) May Drive: 29 editors completed 356 copy edits totalling 479,013 words. (full results) Other news Progress report: as of 26 June, GOCE participants had completed 343 Requests since 1 January. The backlog has fluctuated but remained in control, with a low of 52 tagged articles at the end of January and a high of 620 articles in mid-June. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Tenryuu and Twofingered Typist, and from member Reidgreg. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors at 12:37, 26 June 2021 (UTC).

Your GA nomination of Eye of Horus

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Eye of Horus you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Cinadon36 -- Cinadon36 (talk) 06:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Eye of Horus

The article Eye of Horus you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Eye of Horus for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Cinadon36 -- Cinadon36 (talk) 07:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Section headings in date pages

Hello, A. Parrot. I saw this edit of yours at March 19, which introduced spaces into a dashed date range. Was that an accident? MOS:DATEFORMAT quite clearly calls for non-spaced endashes in that scenario, and your edit changed the format from a Manual of Style-compliant heading to a non-MOS-compliant format. Sdrqaz (talk) 13:49, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Sdrqaz: I went through a slew of date pages that day, mainly wanting to replace all the hyphens in the date ranges with dashes, and I saw in the edit notice that everything on those pages is supposed to be formatted the same way as Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year/Template. It uses spaces around the dashes, so even though that's not what I'd normally do, it's what I did. If you want to remove the spacing I added, I won't object (though I'm afraid you'll have a lot of date pages to go through, ranging from early March to early July), but it seems like something you may have to take up with WikiProject Days of the Year. A. Parrot (talk) 14:17, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I see. That is bizarre, to say the least. I'll leave a note at the WikiProject, in that case. Because of that template issue, I've had to go through all the day pages: I think I'm still only just halfway through. Sdrqaz (talk) 14:27, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Sdrqaz: Whew. You have my sympathies. I'm sorry if I made that job more difficult! A. Parrot (talk) 16:00, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Nah, not a big deal. Someone else messed up and that mistake just carried on ... like a bunch of dominoes falling over! I think I'm done now; there were some pages that didn't have headings so I didn't have to do anything to them. Sdrqaz (talk) 16:04, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Sweet potato cultivation in Polynesia

Hi there, thank you so much for your review of the Sweet potato cultivation in Polynesia article! I've attempted to fix the main issues you addressed in the review (by either adding additional material or moving text from different sections). Let me know if you still have any concerns, and if so I'd be happy to address them. --Prosperosity (talk) 12:39, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Writing Articles on Deities

Good morning, I was very impressed by your Isis and Hathor articles and I would like to bring some of the articles on deities in my area of interest up to the same standard, especially since many of their pages are extremely lacking. So far I have rewritten Shapash and Shuqamuna and Shumaliya (though there's very little material to work with on the latter), though I'm not experienced enough to know where best to take them from here or whether there's anything more I should do in future articles. Do you have any advice on making a good deity page that you wouldn't mind sharing? StainedGlassSnake (talk) 10:23, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@StainedGlassSnake: I don't know if I have any advice about deities specifically, only about general article writing. The first thing to ask is whether you feel like you've covered all the important points you find in the sources, and whether there are any points the reader might be left wondering about—see the quotation from Ling.Nut at the top of my user page. For an obscure subject, you may have seen all the reliable sources and still not have a very thorough picture, in which case there isn't much you can do about it.

One thing that isn't much discussed by Wikipedians offering writing advice is article structure. Some subjects can be difficult to organize into sections in a coherent way; I recently struggled quite a bit with Eye of Horus. The organization of Shapash is kind of strange—it has sections for Shapash's cult and mythology, but then it has sections about Ugaritic incantations and then about Syria (a geographic division), the Iron Age (a chronological division), and the Bible (a mostly-geographic division that would technically fall under the Iron Age). It seems like you're implicitly treating her as primarily an Ugaritic goddess and relegating other attestations of her to the geographic/chronological sections, but the section on cult mentions evidence from outside Ugarit. If the article focuses on Ugarit, it should be made clear that the main sections on myth and cult are about Ugarit, and other attestations should be put in one or two sections (one for non-Ugaritic cultures that worshipped Shapash and one for the Bible, a product of a culture that didn't worship her). But assuming there isn't much more to say about the Ugaritic evidence than is in the article now, I'd be inclined to have just two major sections, one for myth and one for cult throughout the Near East, with the small section on the biblical evidence standing on its own. In either case, I think the section on incantations should be combined with the one on her cult; invoking a deity in a spell is one of many ways to interact with that deity, and the section on cult seems to incorporate all the other types of interaction with Shapash.

If you're not sure what further improvements you can make, you could try Wikipedia:Peer review, an open-ended process for requesting other editors' input, though unfortunately it always has a long backlog. If you think you've covered all the main points on a subject in a reasonably clear and neutral way, you can nominate the article at Wikipedia:Good article nominations, though be sure to read the good article criteria first. A. Parrot (talk) 02:25, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

These are very helpful thoughts, thank you. I've reorganised the page on Shapash so that sections on Ugarit, Syria, and Iron Age Phoenicia are nested inside the section on Cult, which is followed by the Myth and 'in the Bible' sections. I'm happy that I've brought together pretty much every academic source covering her cult in Ugarit, of which there aren't too many, though there may be sources I am not aware of dealing with the sun deities in Bronze Age Syria and in Iron Age Phoenicia, and plenty of ink has been spilt regarding the sun in the Bible (though I think I've covered the points most relevant to the presumed Israelite solar deity and their possible relation with Yahweh). I would ideally have liked to add media, but I couldn't find any fair use depictions of the seal, bowl, or ivory I mentioned. There's room for an infobox, too, but I am not overly fond of them, as they usually elide a lot of important nuance to reduce a deity down to a 'domain' and particular 'equivalents' and there's very little to say about her family or cultic centres. Still, the paucity of information and the lack of media do seem like obstacles to developing the page into a good article candidate.

Another thought, though-- material on the sun deity in Iron Age Phoenicia does comment on similarities with Egyptian solar iconography. I wonder if this would deserve a paragraph. Do you know of any material about this from the Egyptian side? StainedGlassSnake (talk) 10:42, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

@StainedGlassSnake: Sorry for not replying for a couple of days. I know that the Egyptian winged sun emblem was adopted and adapted in the Near East, but not much more than that without going digging through my sources. I do have a book about Near Eastern use of Egyptian imagery: Egyptian Iconography on Syro-Palestinian Cylinder Seals of the Middle Bronze Age by Beatrice Teissier. It's available here, and given that it's a university website I assume it's available legally. A. Parrot (talk) 22:58, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

No trouble at all. Thank you very much for the recommendation-- there's some very interesting Syrian sun disc and winged goddess iconography, and the usage of the Canaanite-Mesopotamian sun symbol within the solar disc is notable, though it might be too tangential for the article on Shapash. Either way, much appreciated, I certainly know a lot more about Egyptian iconography than I did a few days ago! StainedGlassSnake (talk) 14:57, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Atenism

The ancient Egyptians had no one scripture, but Egyptian religious beliefs and practices usually eveolved by incremental steps, often with syncretistic identifications between old and new (Amon-Ra etc). In that context, Atenism was more of a radical disruption. AnonMoos (talk) 08:11, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

@AnonMoos: Of course it was a radical disruption, but the concept of heresy hadn't yet been invented to describe such a thing. A. Parrot (talk) 14:42, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Talk: Ancient Egypt

I am not sure how to respond to this. I effected the change yesterday on the grounds that no further discussion had taken place and there was consensus in favour of using Kushite kings only. I also removed a citation present as it was a weak, if not outright unreliable, source. This morning Charles manually reverted the change and added a new citation, but left a false edit summary [disguising their revert as 'added citation'] and no talk page notice. It's telling that the whole book is cited, rather than any material in it. I was writing a comment on the talk page, but have scrapped it because... see start of post. Mr rnddude (talk) 04:10, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

@Mr rnddude: I don't know either. The problem is that while I stand by my reasons for wanting to remove the phrase, I don't see any policy we can appeal to for resolving this argument. It's a matter of editorial judgment, which an unreasonable editor can easily ignore. And after Talk:Ahmose-Nefertari and Talk:Mysteries of Isis, where Charles was clearly arguing against sources and policy and didn't suffer much hindrance, I'm not eager to be involved in another dispute with him. I suppose you could try Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard if you want more outside opinions, though I've never been involved in a discussion there and don't know very well how it works. A. Parrot (talk) 05:23, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I mean the policy basis is going to be WP:CON, that is what dictates most content. I saw the Mysteries of Isis thing, I'm grateful that the FA co-ords saw through it. I don't know, I'll come back to it. I may request DRN or open an RfC. The outcome of the latter would be binding. Mr rnddude (talk) 06:00, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Nine years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:33, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

September 2021 Guild of Copy Editors newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2021 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the September GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since June 2021.                  Current and upcoming events September Drive: Our current backlog-elimination drive is open until 23:59 on 30 September (UTC) and is open to all copy editors. Sign up today! Drive and Blitz reports June Blitz: From 20 to 26 June, 6 participating editors claimed 16 copy edits, focusing on requests and articles tagged in March and April. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. July Drive: Almost 575,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 24 people who signed up, 18 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. August Blitz: From 15 to 21 August, we copy edited articles tagged in April and May 2021 and requests. 9 participating editors completed 17 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Other news June election: Jonesey95 was chosen to continue as lead coordinator, assisted by Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. New maintenance template added to our project scope: After a short discussion in June, we added {{cleanup tense}} to the list of maintenance templates that adds articles to the Guild's copy editing backlog categories. This change added 198 articles, spread over 97 months of backlog, to our queue. We processed all of those articles except for those from the three or four most recent months during the July backlog elimination drive (Here's a link to a "tense" discussion during the drive). Progress report: As of 18:26, 24 September 2021 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 468 requests since 1 January and there were 60 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 433 (see monthly progress graph above). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Telephone numbers

Hey I am sorry about those telephone numbers. I don’t know I think my device is glitching or something. Thanks for reverting me.CycoMa (talk) 00:42, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@CycoMa: No problem. I thought it might be something like that. A. Parrot (talk) 04:26, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Re: URFA/2020

Hi A. Parrot, in an edit summary at WP:URFA/2020, you stated that you were not sure if you should declare FAs you wrote as "Satisfactory". I want to reassure you that the project encourages FA writers to review and mark "their" FAs as Satisfactory. This tells future reviewers that someone is maintaining the article, and they might ping you if they have any questions or concerns in their review. Would you like another reviewer to assess the articles you marked as Satisfactory and ping you when they leave notes on the article's talk page? Z1720 (talk) 23:39, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

@Z1720: Not necessarily; I mostly want to keep other editors from expending their time on articles that are being maintained (and that haven't changed much since their FACs except when being improved to better reflect the sources) when there are so many others that need attention. I was mainly unsure about whether I should add these articles to the table at Wikipedia:Unreviewed_featured_articles/2020#2010–2015 Kept or FAR not needed. Should I? A. Parrot (talk) 23:44, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

No, please keep them on the list for now. Articles are moved to the "Kept or FAR not needed" section after three reviewers mark them as Satisfactory. It's great that they don't need to be reviewed right now; since these are post-2010 promotions, they probably won't be reviewed anytime soon anyway so there's no worry that they will take attention away from other articles. If you have time, we'd really appreciate it if you could review other articles. Here are some Ancient Egypt articles that might interest you: Abuwtiyuw (promoted 2012), Ancient Egyptian literature (promoted 2009), and Shepseskare (promoted 2015). Z1720 (talk) 00:23, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Question

Can I ask you a question?--Ahmed88z (talk) 19:54, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ahmed88z: Certainly. What do you want to ask? A. Parrot (talk) 20:22, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Are u African? Are U Egyptian? Ahmed88z (talk) 21:25, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ahmed88z: No, I am not Egyptian or African. Why does it matter? A. Parrot (talk) 21:27, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I thought you were Egyptian because almost all of your edits are about Egyptian history. After that, I thought that you were affiliated with the Afrocentric group, after you unjustly objected to my latest Edit Ahmed88z (talk) 00:57, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ahmed88z:: I objected to your edit because it was clearly meant to imply that Seti I was anatomically "Caucasian". You didn't supply reliable sources supporting that claim, and you won't find any if you look. It was once widely believed that people could be classified into separate "races" based on the shapes of their skulls and other physical features, but the consensus of anthropologists for several decades has been that divisions between "races" are artificial and arbitrary; one culture will perceive and categorize race in a different way from another culture, and there's no way of objectively measuring such a subjective concept. See Historical race concepts#Decline of racial studies after 1930 for some of the history of how anthropologists changed their views about race. Moreover, the ancient Egyptian race controversy article is dedicated to discussing the history of the controversy, not to stating what racial category the Egyptians belonged to. It can be a finicky distinction, but it's one that Wikipedia editors decided on many years ago. Please do not use that article to argue that the Egyptians belonged to any particular "race". A. Parrot (talk) 02:02, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Okay, Thanks Ahmed88z (talk) 12:01, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

the map

Do you have a problem with it too?--Ahmed88z (talk) 15:53, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ahmed88z: That map is from 1913. It is not based on current scholarship. See Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Age_matters. No current source that I'm aware of would claim that Punt or Khartoum were within the Egyptian Empire. A. Parrot (talk) 15:56, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

what?????? You say There is no evidence????? There is no evidence !!! Brother, what did you study about Egyptian history? I just want to know--Ahmed88z (talk) 16:01, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I have formatted your comment. You do not need to ping a user on their own talk page, they receive a notification automatically. Our own article, citing Nicolas Grimal, a respected Egyptologist, says that Thutmose III invaded Nubia no deeper than the fourth cataract, which is nearly two hundred miles north of Khartoum. That is supported by Betsy Bryan (2003) on p. 236 where she says that the furthest south that evidence of Thutmose III's activities exist is Jebel Barkal, near Meroe. Punt itself wasn't a part of Egypt, citing Kenneth Kitchen, a historian: [m]ilitary action in Punt was probably logistically unrealistic, and could offer no advantage over peaceful trade. Do you have a scholarly source that would dispute either claim? Mr rnddude (talk) 16:30, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Mr rnddude: The Egyptologist, Zahi Hawass, said that Thutmose III reached the sixth waterfall, which is located north of Khartoum - there is also a documentary for Al Jazeera Documentary Channel documenting the work of an archaeological team in the city of Khartoum that discovered military activity in the north of Khartoumdating back to the era of the new kingdom of Egypt

I have a link to this documentary if you want it--Ahmed88z (talk) 12:21, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

If I give you evidence that Egypt ruled Punt and reached Khartoum, would you accept the map?

If I give you evidence that Egypt ruled Punt and reached Khartoum, would you accept the map?--Ahmed88z (talk) 12:15, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ahmed88z: There needs to be widespread agreement among scholars that Egypt's rule extended that far before Wikipedia can treat it as fact. If a minority of scholars support the idea while others disagree, our article text should say that the disagreement exists. But this map doesn't express that kind of uncertainty, so including it would still mislead readers. A. Parrot (talk) 17:18, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

No problem Ahmed88z (talk) 21:20, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

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December 2021 GOCE Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2021 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the December GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since September 2021.                  Current and upcoming events Election time: Our end-of-year election of coordinators opened for nominations on 1 December and will close on 15 December at 23:59 (UTC). Voting opens at 00:01 the following day and will continue until 31 December at 23:59, just before "Auld Lang Syne". Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. December Blitz: We have scheduled a week-long copy-editing blitz for 12 to 18 December. Sign up now! Drive and Blitz reports September Drive: Almost 400,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 27 people who signed up, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. October Blitz: From 17 to 23 October, we copy edited articles tagged in May and June 2021 and requests. 8 participating editors completed 26 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. November Drive: Over 350,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 21 people who signed up, 14 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. Other news It is with great sadness that we report the death on 19 November of Twofingered Typist, who was active with the Guild almost daily for the past several years. His contributions long exceeded the thresholds for the Guild's highest awards, and he had a hand in innumerable good and featured article promotions as a willing collaborator. Twofingered Typist also served as a Guild coordinator from July 2019 to June 2021. He is sorely missed by the Wikipedia community. Progress report: As of 30 November, GOCE copyeditors have completed 619 requests in 2021 and there were 51 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog stood at 946 articles tagged for copy-editing (see monthly progress graph above). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

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GOCE April 2022 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors April 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the April newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2021. Election results: Jonesey95 retired as lead coordinator. Reidgreg was approved to fill this role after an 18-month absence from the coordinator team, and Baffle gab1978 was chosen as an assistant coordinator following a one-year break. Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu continued on as long-standing assistant coordinators. January Drive: Of the 22 editors who signed up, 16 editors claimed 146 copy edits including 45 requests. (details) February Blitz: This one-week effort focused on requests and a theme of Africa and African diaspora history. Of the 12 editors who signed up, 6 editors recorded 21 copy edits, including 4 requests. (details) March Drive: Of the 28 editors who signed up, 18 claimed 116 copy edits including 25 requests. (details) April Blitz: This one-week copy editing event has been scheduled for 17–23 April, sign up now! Progress report: As of 11 April, copy editors have removed approximately 500 articles from the backlog and completed 127 copy-editing requests during 2022. The backlog has been hovering at about 1,100 tagged articles for the past six months. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

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Disambiguation link notification for April 18

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Tomb of Tutankhamun, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Kohl, Ay and Theodore Davis.

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You've got mail

Hello, A. Parrot. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.Doug Weller talk 09:05, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		Dropping Discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in one edit session must have been pretty hard. I'd like to give you this to commend the effort that went into it. Kirbanzo (talk - contribs) 02:57, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

@Kirbanzo: Thanks! Though I can't say I wrote it in one edit session; I've been working on it offline for, well, years. A. Parrot (talk) 03:00, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

I see. Doesn't discredit how much work you put in though - working on it for years is still being a tireless contributor. Kirbanzo ^{(talk - contribs)} 03:01, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks and questions :)

Hello,

I've been following (not to confuse with stalking :) ) your work on Wiki for quite some time now and I feel obliged to thank you for your meticulous and relentless work regarding ancient Egypt :) It gave my interest in egyptology a truly powerful second breath :)

As for now, your article about temples is almost ready to launch on Polish Wiki and it was really fun and engaging to work with. I hope more will follow in the coming years (my translating capacity is roughly one article per year). I will of course inform you when it makes it to the public :)

What are your plans regarding Ancient Egyptian religion article? You wrote that one day, when you feel knowledgeable enough, you will improve it and I'd really love to see that :) Can you estimate how far from this day are you now?

And the second question - is it possible to get in touch to share this book: Dodson, Aidan; Ikram, Salima (2008). The Tomb in Ancient Egypt: Royal and Private Sepulchres from the Early Dynastic Period to the Romans. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-05139-9 ? If someone like you says it's "Hard to improve upon", then it definetely deserves high attention but my egyptology budget is already empty this year :)

Regards, Bambosz Karate (talk) 18:36, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much! That's a very flattering message.

Regarding ancient Egyptian religion, I'm afraid I can't provide any kind of estimate. When I stopped working on the article, my plan was to research and write about its major sub-articles, then come back to the main article when I felt I understood things better. For a variety of reasons, I got sidetracked for several years into working on other articles that were less relevant to the main one, but I never stopped researching those subtopics, as you can tell if you've read my book reviews. But there are some subtopics that I feel I don't fully understand, often because the Egyptological sources haven't covered them as thoroughly as they should—hymns and oracles are two examples. So I honestly don't know when or if I'll be able to rewrite the AER article to my own satisfaction, though I do hope to soon refocus on the sub-articles that I do know enough about, such as ancient Egyptian funerary texts.

Regarding Dodson and Ikram, it may be possible for me to share it with you, though in a rather awkward format. If you have an email account and can connect it to your Wikipedia account, I can give you the details via email; see Wikipedia:Emailing users. I don't know if it's possible to do this on the Polish Wikipedia, as that page doesn't have an interwiki link to pl.wikipedia. A. Parrot (talk) 21:24, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

What do you understand by "sources haven't covered them as thoroughly as they should"? Is it some kind of general negligence in source material interpretation on the part of the authors you encountered so far? Or is it like in the case of Akhenaten, where lack of evidence produced massive amount of poor quality speculations?

I have added and activated my e-mail to the account here on EN Wiki - I believe we can give it a try :)

Bambosz Karate (talk) 18:27, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, I just mean that I don't feel I have a full, intuitive understanding of a topic from the sources that I've read, and I don't know where to find further coverage of it. In some cases, those problems are being addressed—an Egyptologist named Terry Wilfong has been working on a book about oracles for years—but waiting for those gaps to be filled can be a little frustrating.

I remember now that it's not possible to add attachments to emails that originate on the Wikipedia system. However, once you email me through the Wikipedia system, the email account that you connected to Wikipedia will be listed on the email I receive. So once you've sent me a message (by clicking "Email this user" on one of my pages), I will be able to email you directly from my own personal account, from which I can send attachments. A. Parrot (talk) 19:17, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Article Assistance

Hello!

I just wanted to reach out and ask if you would be potentially interested in helping me improve my Wikipedia article Tenta, Cyprus? In particular, any further information about the 1947 excavation, architectural remains, artefacts, and protective shelter sections of the article? I have seen the advice you have given other articles such as the Egyptian temple and would really appreciate your knowledge, perspective and assistance if you are free and keen to learn more about other ancient Mediterranean sites.

Just a bit of background about me - I study at the University of Sydney and the article Tenta, Cyprus that I am working on is for a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment.

Cstylus (talk) 02:00, 17 May 2022 (UTC) Cstylus

I'm afraid I know next to nothing about the archaeology of Cyprus. I can give you general pointers about article improvements, but I'm going to be very busy this week, so I may not be able to get around to it for several days. A. Parrot (talk) 14:37, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Comment from TPS: Cstylus - you may want to leave a similar note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Archaeology since the article you are working on is of interest to their project. Mr rnddude (talk) 03:09, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice! I will leave a similar note on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Archaeology. Cstylus (talk) 02:06, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for even offering to just give general pointers, that would be great whenever you have the time thank you! Cstylus (talk) 02:01, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Tomb of Tutankhamun

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Tomb of Tutankhamun you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Merytat3n -- Merytat3n (talk) 10:40, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Tomb of Tutankhamun

The article Tomb of Tutankhamun you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Tomb of Tutankhamun for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Merytat3n -- Merytat3n (talk) 10:21, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Modius/polos

Hi Parrot! Nice to see you're around. Saw your edit summary for Hathor in passing. Yes, they're essentially the same object, more or less but if the source says modius, stick with it. Always stick with the source. Sincere regards, Haploidavey (talk) 07:00, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! It's good to see you're around, too. A. Parrot (talk) 14:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Request for input

Hi there!

I have finished an article for quite some time about an ancient necropolis in Byblos showing direct links to Ancient Egypt. It totally escaped me to ask for your expert input earlier; I have since submitted a FA nomination and I only got one review. The nomination will be shelved if it doesn’t receive more attention. You have reviewed at least one of my previous FA nominations and I am asking if you could be so kind to help me improve this article too. el.ziade (talkallam) 19:59, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I hope to contribute a review, but I'm trying to finish up a first round of comments on a big GA review (Bible), so I may not be able to get to it for a couple of days. A. Parrot (talk) 20:32, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

No worries! Your input is more than welcome at any time. el.ziade (talkallam) 23:51, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Bible

I am sorry to do this to you, but I am getting ready to add something on the impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the section on the Septuagint. There is currently nothing there that indicates the changes that have been wrought, and there needs to be. The old views no longer stand. I will try to keep it to a paragraph. I am even happy to bring it here, or to the talk page, for a preview before publishing it. It shouldn't be controversial, but there is so much in the article asserting the superiority of the Masoretic text, it might become controversial. If it does, it might become a problem for GA. Hmmm - what if I waited until the GAN review is done and add it afterwards? What do you think? I think the section is incomplete without it personally. The DSS have texts that disagree with the Masoretic text and agree with the Septuagint version - or sometimes the Samaritan Pentateuch or Greek OT. This indicates the Septuagint was not a careless translation, but was from a different Hebrew form of certain books. Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:44, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I'd say just go ahead and add it. I can look over the Dead Sea Scrolls additions while you're responding to my comments on the GAN, which I'll be ready to post later today. A. Parrot (talk) 23:44, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Cool. They are all done, including the addition to the Septuagint section, except for the Talmud which I am getting ready to add now. Thank you! Jenhawk777 (talk) 03:45, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

All  Done Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:17, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Hey! I saw you did a bunch of work that is really important, but I am out of town right now without access to anything but my phone. If you can give me this week, it didn’t look like anything that would be too difficult to take care of. It needs doing and I am happy to do it but I do need access to my computer at home where records are. If you don’t mind waiting I promise I’ll get it by this time next week. Sorry! Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:27, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Did you get this? Is it a problem? Jenhawk777 (talk) 15:25, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

No problem. I'll wait. A. Parrot (talk) 15:41, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much for waiting on me. I have done all that was listed or mentioned on the review page. I am concerned about the bot's statement that I had a week to be on hold or be failed. We have already taken longer than that. Is that going to be a problem? Anyway, do you have an idea where we stand with this review now? Do you want to do more citation checks? If you do, I suggest the Hebrew Bible or the Development sections. Refs have been checked to some degree, but those sections are what I revised the least - not that I can't make mistakes too - but that is where I found errors when I and ActivelyDisinterested went looking. I did fix them then of course! I feel pretty good about this article all in all. At any rate, it's how you feel that matters, so let me know. I am ready and willing to do more, move on, whatever, and finish this up. Jenhawk777 (talk) 17:39, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Hi! You haven't given up on us have you? Jenhawk777 (talk) 17:27, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

No, I'm going to look over it again very soon. A. Parrot (talk) 17:35, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Okay. I'll try to be patient. Hey, did you know I have a quote from you on my user page? It's been cool meeting you - if you know what I mean. Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:21, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm getting very discouraged. This is dragging on so long, and additions just keep being required; it seems like no request will be turned down, but the truth is, no matter what we add, this article is never going to satisfy everyone. I've been fighting for this article for two years, but I am ready to give up. I will make a last ditch effort at adding some more on the Bible inspiring violence - though in truth, there is very little out there in good sources. I found one source that claimed the English Puritan revolution was influenced toward violence by the biblical texts, (J. J. Collins) but once I got into actual history, I find that it was misbehavior by the King and the church hierarchy that caused it. Biblical justifications were used to sanctify behavior that had already been decided for other reasons.(John Morrill) That doesn't satisfy the requirement for examples of the Bible actually inspired violence imo. Unless you advocate being a pacifist, some violence is sometimes justifiable, but in truth, it's almost impossible to separate the strands of culture and religion and politics and find better examples of the Bible actually inspiring violence. I'm looking at colonialism and indigenous people now. Surely there are some valid examples there. But I am tired. I'm going to take a couple days off from WP I think. I will do this because you asked for it - and not because I think this is about due weight because the scholarship really is lacking - but after that I think I am done. I'll just withdraw the nomination and move on. Thank you for all your efforts. Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:53, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry you're so discouraged, and I completely understand why. It's just a really mammoth topic, one that's hard for anyone to tackle. I apologize if I've made it any harder for you. But even if it doesn't reach GA status, you have made it better, and that's no mean feat. A. Parrot (talk) 05:23, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate your kindness, thank you. I should no doubt take a clue from your user page that "to write rapidly about the Bible is impossible". I have added some more to influence. You and she were right that more explanation of the negative needed to be included. My heart sank at first because, from the beginning, everything I have attempted to do on this article has garnered conflict with that one other editor. I have done my best to address her concerns, but I do not think it is possible for me or anything I write to satisfy her. So, you will have to decide if you think this is done in spite of her, or if I should just withdraw because of her, knowing that she will continue to stir up controversy no matter what I do. On that basis, this article will never get the recognition it deserves. And that's just sad. Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:41, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

My husband has been working hard to talk me out of giving up. I'm trying. You have nothing to apologize for btw. None of this is your fault. I started working on this article on November the second 2020. It has pretty much been one problem after another the entire time. Part of that has now become my own fault. I never start with no patience, and I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt. I assume good faith, and genuinely believe in the value of collaboration, but this has been a difficult project for a long time, and I am worn down by it. It has not brought out the best in me I'm afraid. Some of that is not me. Some of it is just the topic itself. For now, I think the bickering has stopped, but I will give it a few days, and if it hasn't, I will go ahead and pull the nom rather than put you or anyone else through any more of it. A year and a half ago I very much wanted to see this project through to the end - the end being getting it to be good enough for a higher rating - but I don't know if I believe in that as possible anymore.

I do agree the article is in fact improved over what it was a year and a half ago. Others have helped, including you. I would never have added an influence section on my own, but now I think you were right. It should be there. I should have anticipated the response, however, and that's on me. I should have posted it on the talkpage first - that's what I usually do with controversial stuff - but I was focused on getting the GA done and wasn't sensitive to the others I knew very well were out there. That's my bad and not on you or anyone else. I'm sorry.

I assume you have read and have no further comments or you would have made them, so all that is left at this point is to wait and see if there is more controversy or not - and whether or not I am able to rise to the occasion and cope with some good grace. Thanx again for all your work. It is an article of importance. It should be good. It needed you. You made the article better. I am so very grateful for that. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:22, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

June GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June 2022 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since April 2022. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Blitz: of the 16 editors who signed up for our April Copy Editing Blitz, 12 completed at least one copy-edit, and between them removed 21 articles from the copy-editing backlog. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: 27 editors signed up for our May Backlog Elimination Drive; of these, 20 copy-edited at least one article. 144 articles were copy-edited, and 88 articles from our target months August and September 2021 were removed from the backlog. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: our June Copy Editing Blitz, starting at 00:01, 19 June and closing at 00:59, 25 June (UTC), will focus on articles tagged for copy edit in September and October 2021, and requests from March, April and May 2022. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 07:12, 14 June 2022 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 209 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 1,404 articles. Election news: Nominations for our half-yearly Election of Coordinators continues until 23:50 on 15 June (UTC), after which, voting will commence until 23:59, 30 June (UTC). All Wikipedians in good standing (active and not blocked, banned, or under ArbCom or community sanctions) are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:38, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Help with Bible

I am trying to guarantee all the citations in the article, but things have deteriorated to a place that I don't know what to do. [1] I think we need a third opinion, and since you were part of this, I am hoping you will be willing to wade in. Come and tell me what's my fault, that's fine, but then tell me how to fix it. I am at a loss. I don't know how to proceed forward with the process of verification. Please help. I want to do this well and I am trying. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:55, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much for trying. She is still claiming her multiple sources are superior. I have thought from the beginning that the real problem here is too much ownership. She doesn't want any changes, and has wanted to go back to "her" version from the very beginning - 6 months ago, not a year and 6 months - I apparently can't count anymore... I attempted to do a replacement of the bundle recently, and she reverted it and put the bundled group back, but hopefully your intervention will make a difference. All we can do is wait and see now I guess. Thank you again. I am genuinely grateful. You're a very reasonable person. I love that. Totally. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:54, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Some sign of progress today. Bless you! Jenhawk777 (talk) 05:55, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Some, I meant some progress... and now it seems we are backwards a bit, but I will wait and see if she reverts me again before reaching any conclusions. She has, as she said, stated from the start that she can't guarantee text-source integrity because I moved things, but neither will she suffer through attempts to prove where exactly such a problem might actually be located. The way they are bundled makes it impossible to tell, but so far, whenever I attempt to replace them with something I can and have verified, she reverts me, and then says they are verified after all. They aren't, they are??? Regardless, I can't promise you text source integrity the way they are. I knew I should have finished dealing with these and her claims, before GAN, so I deserved the smackdown, but I was reluctant to prolong what seems to me like a truly pointless conflict. When someone objects to one of my sources, I just get another one. I don't quite understand her investment in this group. Perhaps I am the weird one - I often am! I am rechecking every citation as much as I am able, but a slow process is going even slower with this ongoing conflict. It will take a few months at this rate. And of course, then, I will want your feedback. This article never lets go once it has you in its grip! Jeez, here I am posting chatty updates, without asking, just assuming you are still interested. If not, please say so. Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:15, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Yup, she reverted my changes, putting her bundled 8 back, still making no attempt to connect which source connects to which statement, giving as her reason that: "it's better to summarize multiple sources, rather than just picking one source and conveying only what that one source says." Those sources can't be depended upon, yet they are superior and apparently irreplaceable. I don't know what to do with this. I don't want an edit war. Text-source integrity must be established, but how can I ever hope to do that when I get reverted every time I try? It may have been 4 years ago that we first met, I don't remember, but I haven't been active on WP that whole time. I left for almost 2 years. I do not have your experience. It's distressing enough to lose the GA because of this nonsense, but to then be unable to fix it is just about making me weep. Please tell me how I should proceed. I am at a loss. Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:31, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, A. Parrot. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.Doug Weller talk 08:38, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Northern gods in Egyptian sources - modern publications

Hello! We met before (on the Anat page's bibliography) and I wanted to ask, do you by any chance have any recommendations for publications about the reception of Haurun/Horon and Resheph in Egypt, especially after the New Kingdom? I think I have enough sources to tackle Anat and Astarte (as well as Yam, though there isn't much to talk about here, I believe there is a total of two Egyptian attestations of him...?) more or less properly, but these two seem a bit more elusive in that regard, and they are also less commonly discussed in the literature I have more experience with (Horon in particular, to be fair he is pretty obscure in the Ugaritic corpus too). Since you are well acquainted with relevant topics judging from the bibliography on your user page, I figured you would be the most appropriate person to ask on Wikipedia.

Thank you in advance! HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 18:47, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

In fact, I recently bought a book that should be useful on that subject: Syro-Palestinian Deities in New Kingdom Egypt: The Hermeneutics of Their Existence (2009) by Keiko Tazawa. It hasn't arrived yet, though, so I don't know exactly what it says. A. Parrot (talk) 01:25, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

While I am not familiar with this monograph, I read the author's contribution to this volume and I have mixed feelings; specifically I am... not sold on quoting Johanna H. Stuckey of "I think these two goddesses are the same because of a gut feeling" fame approvingly, and more generally the piece relies a bit too heavy on dubious comparisons, ex. vague similarly between Osiris myths and the Ugaritic Baal cycle is enough to suggest a connection between Isis and Anat, completely different iconography, position in the pantheon and general character notwithstanding (no specific primary source is brought up to support this view, either). HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 22:51, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, I know of a couple of monographs about Resheph, but they seem to be from Near Eastern experts (Edward Lipiński and Maciej M. Münnich), and not having read them, I don't know how much they say about Egypt. Hauron seems to be very little studied. Egyptological sources mostly seem to talk about these deities in general terms, which is why I wanted the Tazawa book. I hope it proves to be more substantial than you seem to expect. A. Parrot (talk) 02:33, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I think I have access to both, though I have yet to go through them. Got no high hopes for Lipiński because his work, to put it lightly, lives in the past and has a penchant for biblical literalism and completely baffling equations (typically fueled by the former, I'm pretty sure his need to see Dagan in Baal Hammon is tied to the need to prove the biblical Dagon is historical despite there being few, if any, non-Ugaritic attestations of the god outside the Middle Euphrates region and Mespotamia in the strictest sense), though. There is also Cornelius' The Iconography of the Canaanite Gods Reshef and Ba'al which like his other iconography monograph, which I used in the Anat article, does cover material from Egypt so I can always just fall back on that. I'm actually somewhat in awe of the amount of material about Resheph available, most other gods largely exclusive to Syria seldom get monographs dedicated to them if they are not present in myths (Dagan has a total of two and one is a century old, for instance, Wer typically ends up as a disgression in books or articles about weather gods, and the Eblaite deities are probably still too "new" for monographs save for Ishara). Since Ebla and Ugarit and their versions of Resheph, as well as the dispue about Resheph or lack of him in Emar, are well documented, this will mostly leave me with more esoteric matters to investigate, like Hurrian "Irshappa" (who has a separate page on the German wiki, not sure yet if I should follow this approach) or Resheph in Akkadian names from the third millennium BCE.

A brief survey of sources pertaining to Horon/Hauron/etc. I have since undertaken indeed would indicate there are few, if any, dedicated studies: some articles on Ugaritic incantations, a vintage article by William F. Albright (which I will not use, obviously, since it's dated), further brief overviews by Jacobus van Djik from 1989 and Christine Lilyquist from 1994, and a more recent article by Nicolas Wyatt which got republished in Word of tree and whisper of stone and other papers on Ugaritian thought where he argues for a deep connection with Horus (the discussion starts around page 160 if you want to see for yourself) but some of his assertions do not match other sources (ex. I do not think the alleged theophoric name from Mari is accepted by other authors, though I only have access to two surveys pertaining to this matter and they are a bit older than his article, though newer than the sources he cites). I've noticed that in general treatments most authors stress that even in Ugarit he was a fairly minor deity (have yet to see him in an offering list myself) so the lack of focus is probably not unexpected. I'm just a bit nevous because I am not all that well versed in Egyptian mythology and do not want to accidentally contribute to similar problems as I try to mitigate in articles about Mesopotamian, Hurrian or Ugaritic deities, chiefly the need to conflate deities against all odds and simplify ancient religions (flashbacks to horrifying composite family trees which were common in Mesopotamian deity articles until recently; I was able to replace most with more nuanced discussion but they still persist here and there).

I forgot to include her in my initial question to you but there is also Baalat Gebal (whose poor wiki page is still suffering from strange renaming). She is usually not grouped with Resheph and co. from what I've noticed. There is a very recent article about her so I planned to start from that point and see where it will direct me.

Sorry about the wall of text, there are very few Wikipedia editors knowledgeable about religions of the region so I have relatively few opportunities to ask when similar issues arise. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 08:00, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

No problem; I appreciate your expertise. (I know what you mean about composite family trees; I've had to kill family tree of the Egyptian gods twice.) Van Dijk's article mentions Rainer Stadelmann's book Syrisch-Palästinensische Gottheiten in Ägypten, whose existence I was aware of but had forgotten. It's old (1967) but might still be a useful survey of the Egyptian evidence for these deities, if you can read German. But it looks like you've dug up quite a bit of material already. If you have a specific question about the ancient Egyptian side of an article, feel free to ask. A. Parrot (talk) 13:37, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I now have Tazawa's book. It looks like a pretty valuable source for this subject. About a hundred pages are dedicated to cataloguing the individual artifacts on which the six deities appear, and the book also traces the relative prominence of the six deities in royal inscriptions over the course of the New Kingdom. Tazawa's hypotheses about these deities may be more speculative than you'd prefer, but she also refers extensively to previous works on the subject and describes other scholars' hypotheses. A. Parrot (talk) 05:34, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

That's great to hear. I am indeed not a huge fan of unfounded speculation but I was able to put up with Nicolas Wyatt so I should be able to handle this too. I sadly cannot tell when I will be able to work on the Resheph page, though. I am currently dealing with all the redlinks my other recent ventures left in their wake, and the immediate next goal is the Teshub article (the talk page is... unresponsive, though) which I put on the backburner to work on Anat earlier. I've been planning to expand the Resheph article since forever - I even made a page for his obscure wife from the Ebla texts, Adamma, long ago - so I hope 2-3 more weeks of wait will be fine.

Additionally, a problem I've noticed is that in the meanwhile a number of really awful edits were made to the Resheph article, which makes me worried about eventually working on it. Sadly I am familiar with the source of them, long story short, since there are basically no editors watching over most ANE deity pages currently a single hyperdiffusionist (Alexander Hislop meets... Sicilian nationalism? That's the best way I can describe the problem, see the bottom of my talk page for some samples if so desired) is exploiting this to add original research wherever they can and I am not sure if I am ready for having to directly oppose them yet again since they made such attempts in the Anat article and in a few others I worked on already. There seems to be no easy way to counter their actions since they change their IP multiple times a day.

I think the Horon and Baalat Gebal, awful changed title aside, articles (as well as some fixes in Qetesh, since rn a lot of the information is sourced from a pre-publication of a brief article courtesy of Izak Cornelius' and probably should be replaced with more precise statements ex. from his monograph) should be possible to complete much faster, though - I do not think there is more information on either of them than about Itūr-Mēr, and it took me about two days to write his page from scratch after a similar material gathering session as I performed in the case of those two. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 22:08, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Sorry about a self-response with another wall of text but I am done with preparations for the Hauron/Haurun article and will be able to update it today. I've encountered two problems: first, the spelling used on English wikipedia seems to actually be rare in literature, with "Hauron" used in most Egyptological publications (and even elsewhere on Wikipedia, in the Giza pyramid complex article) and Horon (or various vocalizations of the Ugaritic form) in these pertaining to his "earlier career" so to speak (that is the form I used in articles about Ugarit myself); I am not sure which one to switch the title to, leaning towards the former since it's used more consistently, and ultimately the god is more prominent in Egyptian sources than Ugaritic ones. Additionally, it seems that due to the French wiki ending up with two articles about him somehow (due to the variable spelling?), the English article is not linked on wikidata to the entry where the majority of articles in other languages about him can be found.

An additional, smaller issue: I do not know how to deal with a source seemingly misinterpreting the data. A book quoted in the article already, which I see no reason to remove, namely George Hart's The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, seems to assign unheard of importance to a plant being called the "tree of death" in an Ugaritic (mislabeled as "Canaanite" which is not entirely correct following research of authors like Na'aman or Pardee but I do not think an Egyptologist necessarily needs to keep up with esoteric semantics debates in another field tbf) text, arguing that it means Hauron/Horon was a "god of doom." However, no treatment of the text in mention (KTU 1.100) makes much of a deal out of it, for instance Dennis Pardee's commentary on the passage indicates that it pertains to gathering plants far away from Ugarit, perhaps in Mesopotamia as the text also mentions the date palm. Another recent translation (2014, del Olmo Lete) renders the term as "deadly plant" and doesn't dwell upon it at all. Furthermore, this is actually the Ugaritic text which provides the most information about him as a positive figure (if anything I feel the skull-cracking qualities alluded to in curses would be better evidence in favor of Hart's suggestion), and neither of the recent translations (Pardee's or del Olmo Lete's) interpret his role in it negatively. Do you think I should just ignore this as an outlier?

As a final note: I must confess I found the Ugaritic section of van Dijk article I mentioned earlier insufferable - someone could tell me it was written 50 years earlier than it actually was and I would believe it (ignoring that the discussed text was only discovered in the 1960s, obviously). Typical quest for scandalous sexual undertones ("harlot's fee," "fertility," dubious etymologies based on incorrect reading of a name) coupled with trying to simplify as much as possible by seeing every vaguely female figure as interchangeable (the supplicant in the text, who might not even be a deity, suddenly becomes Athirat as soon as van Dijk gets on the case...). I still used it for some information I was unable to locate elsewhere but I feel kind of bad about listing it as one of the first sources I wanted to rely on earlier.HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 12:04, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

"Hauron" is definitely the spelling most often found in Egyptological sources, so if you propose moving the article to that title, I'd support it. And if Hart's strange remark about the Ugaritic text doesn't fit with what other sources say, it's probably simplest to ignore it. He doesn't dwell on the subject, and as an Egyptologist, he's not actually an authoritative source for the interpretation of Near Eastern texts. A. Parrot (talk) 15:08, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

I am done now; in the end I used Hart's argument as a springboard of sorts for presenting the modern consensus on the proposals that Hauron was regarded negatively based on KTU 1.100, since the topic is brought up (though only briefly) by del Olmo Lete. I also already started the discussion about a move on the talk page.

I have about 2/3 of the Resheph article expansion done in a draft document and I've prepared a bibliography for expansion of the Ashtart article (which will probably be a project even bigger than Anat...), but they once again needs to wait since I was able to unexpectedly secure access to the new monograph The Image of Mesopotamian Divine Healers. Healing Goddesses and the Legitimization of Professional asûs in the Mesopotamian Medical Marketplace by Irene Sibbing-Plantholt so I'd like to update the related articles as soon as possible (as recently as last year they were probably the single worst instance of a major deity's wikipedia page I've ever encountered - roughly as if "Helios" and "Apollo" were both redirects to an article stub about Mithras where every image is Sol Invictus). HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 16:37, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Something odd going on with this editor

.[2] I’m off to bed now but I'm busy deleting all their edits as spam. Midden is certainly a self-publisher. See this also. Midden’s owner? Doug Weller talk 20:45, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Need your thoughts - New deity drawings

A user on Reddit I've been speaking with has recently been creating a series of deity vector drawings similar to that of Jeff Dahl's illustrations from 2007, but more accurate in their iconography such as male deities wearing that feathery corselet, some females having patterned dresses, a few having wings, and overall more accurate coloration. Here I made a post on the Egyptian Religion Work Group's talk page a little while ago here but it's not a very frequented page, so I thought I'd ask for your thoughts since you're certainly the most active when it comes to Egyptian religion-related edits. Personally, I think these would suit the pages better as they're more accurate to depictions in antiquity.

Post 1

Post 2

Post 3 Star11308 (talk) 05:18, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about them. Dahl's illustrations were also based on original Egyptian artwork, primarily the tombs of Horemheb and Ramesses I (which were painted in a virtually identical style, presumably by many of the same artists) and that of Nefertari. For every deity who appears in those tombs, all the details in Dahl's drawings can be traced to one or the other. E.g., the male shirt or corselet isn't present in Dahl's drawings because it is often absent in images of male deities in the tombs of Horemheb and Ramesses I.

Some aspects of EternalSpace1977's portrayals genuinely are more accurate, like the pattern on Seshat's leopard skin, but others I question; what portrayal of the Bennu gives it white plumage instead of grey? Some details strike me as stylistically inferior, such as the disjunction between the wig and forehead in the portrayals of many of the human-headed deities—Egyptian artwork generally portrayed the outline of the wig flowing seamlessly into the line of the forehead. And one of the strengths of Dahl's images is that they use identical stock elements (such as kilts and broad collars) for the elements that generally didn't differ from one deity to another when portrayed by a single artist, so as to focus the viewer's attention on the attributes that distinguished one deity from another, such as faces and headdresses. The EternalSpace1977 images seem more variable.

SVG images can be altered using the right software, such as Inkscape. I've modified Dahl's images myself a few times. If there's an inaccuracy in a particular Dahl image, it can be changed to improve its accuracy. I'd prefer that over wholesale replacement. A. Parrot (talk) 20:23, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Ah, alright. I'll message them with your response. They were all based on paintings from the same tombs you listed, along with several temples, a coffin or two, and a chair from Tutankhamun's tomb. The Bennu being white rather than gray is based on a painting from a Theban tomb, although I'm not sure which but the image is in the article on Bennu but lacks a good description and even says it's from a papyrus but clearly shows a plastered wall with visible damages. The wig line issue could be fixed, of course. Star11308 (talk) 00:30, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Always precious

Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:47, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 30

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Exodus.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 05:59, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I’d virtually never use

Collins or Ogilvie-Herald. Doug Weller talk 12:52, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not trying to use them; I'm trying to describe their assertions as a belief that exists, in the same manner as the beliefs about the curse of Tutankhamun. But if there isn't a way to word the article that makes it clear that that's what I'm doing, the sentence about their claims can be removed. Feel free to do so if you like. I certainly don't want to give the impression that their bullshit is true. A. Parrot (talk) 13:33, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

On second thought, I decided to do it myself. A. Parrot (talk) 15:03, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Home now watching Rings of Power. Doug Weller talk 10:49, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Promotion of Discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun

Congratulations, A. Parrot! The article you nominated, Discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, has been promoted to featured status, recognizing it as one of the best articles on Wikipedia. The nomination discussion has been archived.

This is a rare accomplishment and you should be proud. If you would like, you may nominate it to appear on the Main page as Today's featured article. Keep up the great work! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) via FACBot (talk) 00:05, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for 4 November 2022. Please check that the article needs no amendments. Feel free to amend the draft blurb, which can be found at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 4, 2022, or to make comments on other matters concerning the scheduling of this article at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/November 2022. I suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks and congratulations on your work. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:40, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

November songs

Thank you today for the new article, introduced: "The most famous discovery in the history of Egyptology. This is a story of how archaeology can shape and be shaped by nationalism, fads, and pop culture. The spectacular treasures and the purported curse on the tomb are well known to Western audiences. Recent scholarly sources tend to emphasize the political dispute surrounding the discovery and to treat the actions of the excavators as examples of colonialist attitudes in Egyptology."! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:34, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors' October 2022 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors October 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to our latest newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Drive: Of the 22 editors who signed up for our July Backlog Elimination Drive, 18 copy-edited, between them, 116 articles. Barnstars awarded are noted here. Blitz: Participants in our August Copy Editing Blitz copy-edited 51,074 words in 17 articles. Of the 15 editors who signed up, 11 claimed at least one copy-edit. Barnstars awarded are noted here. Drive: Forty-one editors took part in our September Backlog Elimination Drive; between them they copy-edited 199 articles. Barnstars awards are noted here. Blitz: Our October Copy Editing Blitz begins on 16 October at 00:01 (UTC) and will end on 22 October at 23:59 (UTC). Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 19:57, 12 October 2022 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 303 requests for copy edit – including withdrawn and declined ones – since 1 January. At the time of writing, there are 77 requests awaiting attention and the backlog of tagged articles stands at 1,759. We always need more active, skilled copyeditors – particularly for requests – so please get involved if you can. Election news: In our mid-year election, serving coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Reidgreg and Tenryuu were returned for another term, and were joined by new coordinator Zippybonzo. No lead coordinator was elected for this half-year. Jonesey95, a long-serving coordinator and lead, was elected as coordinator emeritus; we thank them for their service. Thank you to everyone who took part. Our next election of coordinators takes place throughout December. If you'd like to help out at the GOCE, please consider nominating yourself or other suitable editors (with their permission, of course!). It's your Guild, after all! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Reidgreg, Tenryuu and Zippybonzo. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Baffle☿gab 03:06, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Tutankhamun (King Tut)

My edit was made because the supplied references were from the US and did not claim that the term was used more broadly—they're not enormously strong references, if you care to look at them, just instances of US publications using the term "King Tut" without suggesting anything about how widely the term is used. Thus, the only claim that can justifiably be made in Wikipedia based on those sources is that the term was used inside the US. If Wikipedia is to make a broader claim, then broader evidence is required.

In essence, my point is that just because there's evidence the term was used inside the US doesn't justify claiming that the term was/is used more widely—and until such evidence is provided, it's sensible to provide a geographical limitation.

Applying a bit of editorial judgement here: the only time I recall actually hearing the term "King Tut" with my own ears was—erm—from the Joker in the old Batman TV series, when it was broadcast on UK TV sometime in the 1970s and it didn't half confuse me. If Wikipedia is to claim that "King Tut" is a term commonly used outside the US, then sources justifying that claim are needed. US English is far from the only dialect of English which exists. It might be worth bearing in mind that there are far more English speakers in India than there are in the UK and the US combined and I've absolutely no idea what terms Indian nationals use to refer to Tutankhamun when speaking English or any other language. "Terms" in the manifold plural: India has hundreds of languages and thousands of dialects.

Michael F 1967 (talk) 02:35, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

All the sources say is that the term is used. They don't say it's widespread in the English-speaking world, nor do they say it's exclusive to the US. Therefore, all that we can say is that the term is used, without any specifics. That's why I left in place your change from "commonly" to "sometimes": "sometimes" is vague enough that it's equivalent to saying that the term is used, whereas "commonly" goes beyond what the wording of the source supports. But asserting that the term is exclusively American, whether it's true or not, also goes beyond what the wording of the source supports. If you can find sources that specify that "King Tut" is an exclusively American usage, then by all means add them, but otherwise it's OR. A. Parrot (talk) 03:35, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Editor's Barnstar

Discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun is legendary! I was bored and decided to read Wikipedia's TFA and was intrigued the entire way through. Never had I realised that archeology and Egyptology was this fascinating, so thank you for arousing this new interest of mine! The article is written in a magnificent tone and very expansive, with only relevant sections—I also admired the images particularly more than most FAs I have read. Relatedly, I assumed the article, being such a commonly discussed topic, would have been created in like 2006, but nope, turns out it was created by the illustrious A. Parrot only this year! Thank you so much for making yourself tired for Wikipedia, and have a great day :) 𓃦LunaEatsTuna (💬) 00:47, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much! I wanted to write the article for a very long time, largely just to have the chance to tell the story in my own words. Given that ancient Egypt and Egyptology are subjects so close to my heart, learning that I told the story well enough to inspire that interest in someone else is the highest compliment I could receive. If you enjoyed that one, you might be interested in the second-most famous event in the history of Egyptology, which I also wrote an FA about: decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts. A. Parrot (talk) 03:18, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

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Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to our latest newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since October. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Blitz: Our October Copy Editing Blitz focused on July and August 2022 request months; and articles tagged for c/e in December 2021 and January 2022. Seventeen of those who signed up claimed at least one copy-edit, and between them copy-edited forty-six articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: In the November Backlog Elimination Drive, thirty editors signed up, twenty-two of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Both target months—December 2021 and January 2022—were cleared, and February was added to the target months. Sixteen requests were copy-edited and 239 articles were removed from the backlog. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: Our seven-day-long December 2022 Copy Editing Blitz begins on 17 December at 00:01 (UTC)*. It will focus on articles tagged for copy-edit in February 2022, and pending requests from September and October. Barnstars awarded will be available here. Progress report: As of 22:40, 8 December 2022, GOCE copyeditors have processed 357 requests since 1 January, there were seventy-four requests outstanding and the backlog stands at 1,791 articles. We always need skilled copy-editors; please help out if you can. Election news: Nomination of candidates for the GOCE's Election of Coordinators for the first half of 2023 is open and continues until 23:59 on 15 December. Voting begins at 00:01 on 16 December and closes at 23:59 on 31 December. All editors in good standing (not under ArbCom or community sanctions) are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed. Coordinators serve a six-month term that ends at 23:59 on June 30. If you've thought about helping out at the Guild, please nominate yourself or any editor you consider suitable—with their permission, of course!. It's your Guild and it doesn't coordinate itself. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers and best seasonal wishes from your GOCE coordinators, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Tenryuu, and Zippybonzo. *All times and dates on this newsletter are UTC. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by Baffle gab1978 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:25, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter error

The GOCE December 2022 newsletter, as sent on 9 December, contains an erroneous start date for our December Blitz. The Blitz will start on 11 December rather than on 17 December, as stated in the newsletter. I'm sorry for the mistake and for disrupting your talk page; thanks for your understanding. Sent by Baffle gab1978 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:29, 9 December 2022 (UTC)