Talk:Cities of ancient Egypt

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Ancient Egypt

This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject Ancient Egypt, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Egyptological subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Ancient EgyptWikipedia:WikiProject Ancient EgyptTemplate:WikiProject Ancient EgyptAncient Egypt

WikiProject Ancient Egypt to-do list:

Needed articles.

We should have an article on every pyramid and every nome in Ancient Egypt. I'm sure the rest of us can think of other articles we should have.

Cleanup.

To start with, most of the general history articles badly need attention. And I'm told that at least some of the dynasty articles need work. Any other candidates?

Standardize the Chronology.

A boring task, but the benefit of doing it is that you can set the dates !(e.g., why say Khufu lived 2589-2566? As long as you keep the length of his reign correct, or cite a respected source, you can date it 2590-2567 or 2585-2563)

Stub sorting

Anyone? I consider this probably the most unimportant of tasks on Wikipedia, but if you believe it needs to be done . . .

Data sorting.

This is a project I'd like to take on some day, & could be applied to more of Wikipedia than just Ancient Egypt. Take one of the standard authorities of history or culture -- Herotodus, the Elder Pliny, the writings of Breasted or Kenneth Kitchen, & see if you can't smoothly merge quotations or information into relevant articles. Probably a good exercise for someone who owns one of those impressive texts, yet can't get access to a research library.

Cities

This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject Cities, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of cities, towns and various other settlements on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CitiesWikipedia:WikiProject CitiesTemplate:WikiProject CitiesWikiProject Cities

Text and/or other creative content from this version of Cities of the ancient Near East was copied or moved into Cities of ancient Egypt with this edit on 19:05, 25 June 2009. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

Merge discussion

Since this article has been stripped of the coordinates and the page List of ancient Egyptian sites is much more comprehensive I suggest these two pages be merged. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cush (talk • contribs) 16:46, 3 August 2009

Comment – The above editor (Cush, I retroactively signed his edit) also created this page without providing attribution. An edit summary of "new page" is not sufficient. I also retroactively placed the {{copied}} template above. – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:59, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed Shaun (talk) 19:14, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This page in its current state doesn't appear to contain any content not found in List of ancient Egyptian sites, unless I'm missing something. I'll redirect if there are no objections. MisterGoodTime (talk) 00:48, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you are missing something. I checked the first item in Cities of ancient Egypt – Pikuat (Canopus, K) – and didn't find either Canopus or Pikuat in the "list of ancient Egyptian sites." I've only checked one, but I suspect it's not the only "city of ancient Egypt" that is not redundantly mentioned in the "list of ancient Egyptian sites." – Wbm1058 (talk) 15:24, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just added the {{merge}} tag to List of ancient Egyptian sites in an attempt to draw more attention to this proposal. Any serious Egyptologists here? – Wbm1058 (talk) 17:02, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is a hole in the Cities of the ancient Near East Egypt section (where this article was carved from) that's just filled with a {{Main}} template. It would be easy to transclude this back into the hole—just lower the section levels a notch and remove the {{Ancient Egypt topics}} from the bottom. Is there an attempt here to make a distinction between a city and a site? I suppose that all cities could also be considered sites, they're all located somewhere, at some site. But the reverse isn't true, there could be a site where just a couple families settled, or a site of a pyramid, or a site on a mountaintop where some guy gave a speech. I think by "site" the authors mean a Category:Archaeological sites in Egypt site. Everything here should also be in Category:Cities in Ancient Egypt, right? If there's justification for two distinct categories, then perhaps distinct lists too? This "article" has no lede, and no prose. It's just a list that could easily be converted into a template. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:45, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You're quite right--I was missing several somethings. Thank you. I also appreciate your point about the distinction between cities and sites, and that there's also a difference between archaeological sites and sites that were important to the ancient Egyptians. I'm not sure which meaning of "sites" is intended in List of ancient Egyptian sites since I'm far from an expert on the subject. And since I'm not, I'm not going to claim there's any weight to my opinions; but, I would lean toward keeping the lists separate and cleaning them up with the city/site distinction in mind. Each list could point to the other with a phrase like, "This is a list of archaeological sites in Egypt. For a list of cities founded in the ancient and classical periods, see Cities of ancient Egypt." If, however, List of ancient Egyptian sites does not refer to archaeological sites and just refers to sites important in Egyptian history, the distinction seems less clear. It would be awfully handy if an egyptologist would weigh in!

MisterGoodTime (talk) 23:59, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

An example of an entry that may belong on this list but wouldn't on a list of archaeological sites is "Tjeku", which links to Sukkot (place). I googled all three names listed together (including "Tell el Maskhuta") and found sources--that I will in no way vouch for--that link a Biblical city called Sukkot to an Egyptian city or region called "Tjeku" whose location is unknown. I don't know whether or not any credible sources make that link, but there are certainly situations where cities without associated archaeological sites are nonetheless interesting and important. Troy before its rediscovery, for example!

MisterGoodTime (talk) 00:42, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Help requested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Egypt#Need help with proposed merge – Wbm1058 (talk) 16:25, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I'm responding to your note. I'm no Egyptologist, and I haven't edited list of ancient Egyptian sites, but I'm one of the ancient Egypt project's more active members.

List of ancient Egyptian sites doesn't seem to have been created with any clear distinction between archaeological sites and sites that were important to the Egyptians; it list ancient nomes (provinces) as well as archaeological sites. On the other hand, modern divisions of the Memphite necropolis are listed, as are some individual pyramids, and there don't seem to be any ancient cities that we know existed but haven't been located archaeologically, like Thinis or Itjtawy. So I'd say that aside from the nomes, it seems to be a list of archaeological sites and not of ancient Egyptian cities per se. A. Parrot (talk) 19:52, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a list of cities either. Nabta Playa isn't a city. Cities have public buildings, for instance (which is one of the reasons we call Çatalhöyük a settlement and not a city, it has no public buildings). So at the moment I'd say merge, but make sure that everthing in the list of sites is a site, eg no nomes. Dougweller (talk) 19:35, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just took a look at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Stand-alone lists - see in particular the section on selection criteria, which starts with "Selection criteria should be unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources." Neither article has this. Dougweller (talk) 20:22, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If this is a bog-standard merge discussion I would oppose the merger as proposed. I don’t see how LoAES would be improved by dumping the content here into it, and simply deleting this and redirecting there (which might be what the proposal is actually after) creates all kinds of history and attribution problems.

OTOH, Wbm1058 is quite right, this page was hacked out of CotANE, which has a hole where cities of Ancient Egypt should be; if this page doesn’t need to exist independently the most logical thing (I would have thought ) would be to put it back again. Moonraker12 (talk) 16:20, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I transcluded it back again and closed out the merge request. Anyone is still welcome to see how these cities (if the content is accurate) fit into the other article ("sites") and add them as deemed appropriate. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This page still exists?? Why? It's just an export from my database of sites that have WP articles, but the coordinates, which would have made this article valuable as an index page that produces a KML, have been removed long ago. Now this article is completely pointless and I had totally forgotten about it. The sites listed here can easily be added to the List of ancient Egyptian sites if they are missing there. Then this article should be made to redirect to List of ancient Egyptian sites. Maybe List of ancient Egyptian sites should be re-structured then. ♆ CUSH ♆ 21:36, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I see. I just randomly clicked on Beni Hasan, one of the "Cities of ancient Egypt" in this article which you created, only to find that it isn't a city at all, it's an Ancient Egyptian cemetery site! I think the first step should be to separate out the cemeteries from the cities. Glad to see that you belatedly found this discussion. Wbm1058 (talk) 22:47, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think the List of ancient Egyptian sites article should be re-arranged thematically, and that this Cities of ancient Egypt article is superfluous. Maybe even the Cities of the ancient Near East article, which also contains the site list of this article, is superfluous. But of course I will not provide lists of sites (with or without coordinates) for WP anymore. ♆ CUSH ♆ 00:28, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I landed on this page because as a relatively new Wikipedia:WikiProject Merge volunteer, I was helping clear the Category:Articles to be merged from August 2009 backlog. When merge tags sit on articles for over three years, eventually disinterested volunteers get to them (though I do happen to have a peripheral interest in this topic). I'm wondering why you removed the coordinates here. That question leads me to Talk:Cities of the ancient Near East#Coordinates templates, and the section after it. I see that the issues are long-running and complex, I've looked at (and linked back to) some of the archived discussions. Just wondering if there might yet be a way to make everyone happy. I don't fully understand the problem, and I'm not familiar with how coordinates are used on Wikipedia. I see that there is something new out on this front, see GeoData: a new age of geotagging on Wikipedia and Wikipedia Nearby Is Basically a List of Interesting Things Near You, is that helpful? Wbm1058 (talk) 18:59, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]