Talk:Epigraphy

I wonder why ...

I wonder why no mention of inscriptions from India is made. For example, in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, more than 25,000 epigraphical inscriptions are known to exist. For example University of Cologne in Germany is trying to digitize it. See here. --Aadal 20:28, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

There is no mention of the Maya_codices, or the work on the various stelae. Links to the Mayan Epigraphic Database Project would be useful. [1] --Colin Matthew Chan (talk) 21:09, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

WP is the people's encyclopedia - there is no mastermind determining what shall go in and what not. The owners and employees faced that decision and won over the "expert-dominated" view of Larry Sanger. If the things you mention are not in there it is because no one has yet put them there. Take courage and give it a try. You will of course invoke our review, but nothing worth while comes without price (except the gifts of our creator). No pain no gain, nothing ventured, nothing gained, etc. Exposing yourself to public critique is something a bit different, so be prepared.Dave (talk) 11:12, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Box

Wasn't sure why there was a box (dotted) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.53.149.117 (talk) 23:18, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Dead links, blogs, resumes, advertisements

Hi folks, none of these things are allowed. We seem to have a build-up of non-allowed sites, which I am removing. If you had a good link but it's dead (you're right), you might want to reconsider its stability. Personal links usually are not very stable; similarly, links of personal sites of students tacked onto universities go dead when the student leaves. And, I admit there are very good resumes of professors containing bits of their work but they are only resumes and those are not allowed. Similarly knowledgeable persons often tell us interesting things in blogs, but they are not encyclopedic sources. I do apologize if anyone gets offended, but policy is policy. This article was all links no article, and many of those were dead. If you need a reference in the text, list its paper citation in a footnote. A link can then be added if there is one or removed if it is dead without having to rewrite everything because you have no references. Ciao.Dave (talk) 10:35, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Lists of articles

Generally WP frowns on lists of articles unless it is a list article, which this is not. There were three sections of lists. As they were all of the "see also" type I organized them under "see also". The difference between "notable inscriptions" and "types of inscription" is that the notable are individual inscriptions, while the others a types, which may contain many individuals. In addition were the other fields of study. We are generally not placing a description of the article in the "see also" as you would in a disambig page, so I removed those phrases or sentences. The problem of the number of lists I solved by reducing the font size and making it 2-column. While I was at it I reduced the font size of the external links, as even with sifting out unsuitable links, that section is still large.Dave (talk) 01:35, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The view of the god

"(or for the view of the god, as in the Persian Behistun Inscription),"

Now why would the god require an inscription in three languages to understand what the king had done and why? Just in case the Persian god did not understand Persian? You don't understand religion, that is the problem. This I believe is original thinking, and unsound thinking at that. Gods don't need reports from kings or anyone else and especially not supreme gods such as Ahura Mazda. It could have been placed in a cave deep under the earth if only the gods were going to read it. I believe this inscription stood on or near the border but I am sure there are plenty of expert opinions on its purpose and location. If you are going to do it, do it right - give us a summary of a few such opinions with references. Just write this off as part of your education process - trial and error, just as though you had done a bad paper. Everyone has done those, you know.Dave (talk) 10:09, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Temporary inscriptions

This is (as self-stated) interesting to think about, but I wonder whether all these things really are inscriptions:

Modern inscriptions might be chalk graffiti on a sidewalk, sky writing, a tracing with the finger in the condensed moisture from a breath on glass, or in criminology less propitious media. Traces of such temporary epigraphs preserved by chance are often of great interest.

Why aren't these things merely forms of writing, since they aren't in a real sense "inscribed"? If scrawling with my finger on a steamed-up mirror is an inscription, or writing with chalk on the sidewalk, why isn't writing on paper epigraphy? Aren't these forms of handwriting or paleography? Since the statement raises these questions, it needs a citation where a scholarly source asserts that these constitute forms of epigraphy. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:52, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Expansion

I intend to expand this article to include a more comprehensive area of Epigraphy, in its form & content - hoping to do a good service to this entry. My main sources will be specialist works by renowned epigraphist Ernest Arthur Gardner and subsequent litterature, which I'll indicate in the notes and bibliography.--Monozigote (talk) 14:25, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Original Research

The following is not a citation and violates WP:NOR:

The following sections are based on specialist work consulted from the following sources: Ernest Arthur Gardner's article on "Epigraphy and Inscriptions", in Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911), Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Cambridge University Press - now in the public domain; Réne Cagnat (1914). Cours d’Epigraphie Latine. Paris.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link); Ida Calabi Limentani (1973). Epigrafia Latina. Milan: Cisalpino-Goliardica.; Margherita Guarducci (1995). Epigrafia greca. Rome: Ist. Poligrafico dello Stato.; Robert Favreau (1997). Épigraphie médiévale. Turnhout: Brepols.; Chiara Lambert (2004). Pagine di pietra. Manuale di epigrafia latino-campana tardoantica e medievale. Fisciano: CUES.; Jean-Marie Lassère (2007). Manuel d’épigraphie romaine. Paris: Picard, Antiquité-synthèses. Archived from the original on 8 June 2009. Retrieved 8 June 2009. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help); Armando Petrucci (1992). Le epigrafi. Medioevo da leggere. Turin: Einaudi.; Lidia Storoni Mazzolani (1992). Iscrizioni funerarie romane. Milan: BUR. pp. xi, 361ff. ISBN 8817168009.

Removal https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epigraphy&oldid=906288946

Metaquanta (talk) 22:17, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Form section is now completely unreferenced and Content section is severely under referenced.Metaquanta (talk) 22:31, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

External links modified

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Copyright problem

Much of the second paragraph subsection § Milestones and boundaries (starting with "Latin inscriptions are the meeting point of Roman history...") is directly copied from Latin Epigraphy (1983) by Arthur E. Gordon, and other parts are closely paraphrased from it. This content was added in this edit of 16:20, 5 April 2013, and cited in note 23 at the end of the paragraph to that Gordon (1983) source. The same user is responsible for 76.4% of the current page content, according to Who Wrote That?, the great majority of it added in a ten-day run.

On 13 March 2013, the article was 12kb (much of which was extensive appendices) and contained two references. Then came this run of 33 edits from 28 March to 8 April (with a couple of bot edits mixed in), during which the article octupled from 12 to 92 kb, and from two to 28 unique references.

Other than one small portion of § Milestones and boundaries, I have not looked further, but given the amount of material added in a relatively short period, it should be investigated. Mathglot (talk) 00:57, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

I just found the source of the first paragraph of the Milestones section, while looking for something else in the article, and it turns out it's word for word from EB 1947, right down to punctuation, parentheticals, and italicization. The first paragraph doesn't cite any source, it just directly copied the material from EB 1947. Just to make sure this article on "Inscriptions" in EB 1947 wasn't inherited unchanged from EB 1911 (which is out of copyright and fair game), I checked EB 1911 as well for the "Inscriptions" article, and it does not contain text similar to the EB 1947 Inscriptions article, so the text in this WP article must have been copied from the 1947 EB article (or some other year still under copyright). The EB 1911 article on Inscriptions can be found in EB 1911 vol. 14, 14.6 6 Inscriptions to Ireland, William Henry in the article for Inscriptions, in which the expression milestones (miliaria) never occurs; the term milestones occurs four times, but not in any context similar to this; and miliaria twice, but again, very different context. So, it was copied from EB 1947, which is under copyright. Mathglot (talk) 05:37, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Researching this is slow, and mind-numbing. The copying that I've found so far is all from printed material, meaning we can't use Earwig and company to find it, and it's slow going. I'm not sure how we're going to verify the other 3/4 of the article or 80kb of content, but I'd be okay with just dropping it, as it seems like too much work to go through it all. I have to move back to other things; I've spent too much time on this. Mathglot (talk) 05:45, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

This is a much larger problem than what I first suspected. Much of this is plagiarized from Encyclopedia Britannica non-free editions in the 1930s and 40s. I have started to remove this content, but it violates WP:COPYRIGHT so ultimately will need to be WP:REVDELed. A huge amount of unsourced and plagiarized material was added by Monozigote in March 2013. I only got part of the way in these 12 edits, and much more needs to be removed from the article. Mathglot (talk) 11:35, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Abbreviation used in epigraphs

I hope that this query is not out of place here - if so, feel free to remove it. Please suggest where I might better direct it. I have recently seen a boundary marker stone, dated 1792, with an inscription, the first line of which reads "No 9". This is of course the abbreviated form of "Numero 9". What is (to me) unusual is that the letter "o" has two horizontal diacritical lines inscribed above it. I know of other inscriptions in which an underline "o" indicates the same abbreviation. I have tried a couple of AI systems, but they are largely text-based, so nothing useful was forthcoming. TraceyR (talk) 16:56, 3 December 2024 (UTC)