User talk:Katolophyromai

If you are here because you are upset that I reverted one of your edits, please do not take it personally. I have no personal vendetta against you, nor did I mean to attack or insult you in any way. The only reason why I reverted your edit is because I genuinely believed that your edit was damaging to the encyclopedia. If you have a legitimate query, please refrain from making personal attacks and write your complaint at the bottom of the page.

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A token of appreciation

	The Writer's Barnstar
	I've read some of your works (Hypatia, Sappho, Library of Alexandria and Pythagoras). Your writing is really outstanding! I would like to especially thank you for expanding Hypatia, because like many other people, I watched Carl Sagan's Cosmos and thought that Hypatia was flayed under Cyril's order [sic!]. Mimihitam (talk) 04:57, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

@Mimihitam: Thank you so much! That is so very kind of you. I worked very hard on those articles I wrote and I am glad you at least are pleased with the results of my labor. Of the articles you listed, I wrote almost all of the articles "Hypatia," "Library of Alexandria," and "Pythagoras." The article "Sappho" is mostly the work of another user named Caeciliusinhorto, who has made many fine and outstanding contributions to Wikipedia, but who is now mostly, if not completely, retired. I did help with that one, though. I have not been writing much on Wikipedia lately, partly because working on Wikipedia seems to inevitably involve so much arguing and partially because I do not get my name attached to any of my work. Instead, I have mostly been writing on my own website and on Quora. —Katolophyromai (talk) 05:14, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm just being honest hehe. I've been digging into these articles quite deeply because I have translated Hypatia, Library of Alexandria and Sappho into Indonesian (if you don't mind!). I'm now also translating Pythagoras, and someone else is currently translating Mary Magdalene (I forgot to mention this article in the barnstar description). I've translated some other articles from the English Wikipedia before, and usually I'm very picky with the selection, because some of the articles here are quite horrendous (example: human rights, it's so bad that I decided to write it myself in Indonesian: id:hak asasi manusia). I remember some historians in /r/askhistorian were also complaining about Homer several years ago, but I notice that you have fixed this article. Really great job!

I understand the frustration. That's probably one of the reasons why I am reluctant to contribute to the English Wikipedia. The community here can be a bit harsh sometimes. But I have a suggestion: if you want your name to be cited, why don't you submit one of your articles to the WikiJournal of Humanities? That's one way to have your contribution recognized. The reviewers will also come from an academic background, so you won't have to be frustrated by comments that are not really substantive (like I'm really grateful Indonesians are not fussing over alt description!). Sure, it's not like a tier 1 journal, but at least you can have your name mentioned as the author in that journal. Mimihitam (talk) 06:03, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

@Mimihitam: Well, most of the original improvements at "Homer" at least are the work of NPalgan2, who specializes in cleaning up bad articles, but I can certainly claim some credit because I wrote most of the current text of the "History of Homeric scholarship" section, which is currently the longest section in the article, and I also made substantial contributions to the other sections as well. According to the page statistics for the article "Homer," about 35.9% of the article was written by NPalgan2 and about 28.3% was written by me. Put together the two of us wrote 64.2% of the article, which is pretty much the entire body of the article. —Katolophyromai (talk) 06:17, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the mention, Katolophyromai! I am pretty inactive at the moment – real life has a distressing habit of getting in the way, and I don't have the motivation to really dig into rewriting any articles at the moment (though I made some notes on Praxilla the other day, so a rewrite there is possibly on the cards – keep your eyes peeled for that!) It doesn't help that the markup is so damn baroque and I'm not as fluent in it as I once was, either!

You'll still see me contributing on occasion (and you can always email me if you want me to have a look at something in particular!) but I'm not as active as I once was... Caeciliusinhorto ::(talk) 17:00, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Herodotus

Hi K. Re this edit, did you see the previous edits by the IP there? The question is whether the qualifier "in early modern times" is adequately sourced. Burn, p.10 (cited there) says: "The strange facts that Herodotus reports at second hand, about the customs of barbarian tribes, from north Africa to south Russia and Afghanistan, used also, in early modern times, to be among the features that caused him to be called the father of lies rather than of history;". But it is unclear to me just what "in early modern times" is qualifying in that sentence. The other source cited, David Pipes (who? self published?) n. 21, says: "Herodotus has been called the "Father of History" since ancient times. For almost as long, detractors have referred to him as "Father of Lies." Can we find a better source for when "father of lies" is first used? After a quick scan of Evans, "Father of History or Father of Lies; The Reputation of Herodotus" in The Classical Journal, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Oct., 1968), pp. 11-17 JSTOR 3296527, while providing much useful information, I don't see where it provides a date for the first use of "father of lies". Paul August ☎ 15:54, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Paul August: My apologies. I believe the qualifier about "in modern times" is accurate, but, since it is unsourced, I have now removed it from the article with this edit. —Katolophyromai (talk) 17:18, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

No need to apologize, I think some kind of "modern times" qualifier is probably correct, too. Paul August ☎ 19:38, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to exactly answer the question, but in "Was Herodotus the 'Father of History' or the 'Father of Lies'?" there is "according to an essay of Momigliano it was not until the 12th century Francesco Petrarca (ironically dubbed the Father of Humanism) that an implicit contradiction was noticed in the two terms." Mind you The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the ...,

https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=0520054873, François Hartog - 1988, brings up "When Vives declared that it would be closer to the mark to call Herodotus the father of lies than the father of history, that was ...". Presumably this is Juan Luis Vives (d. 1493), but I can't see the actual text. Ah, yes, here. And here we have Momigliano with the Latin. Johnbod (talk) 20:19, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

If I can break in to a discussion that's a bit old and doesn't concern me, I think the description of Herodotus as the father of history is a reference to the methods he used, not to his results. Of course, modern historians never lie...PiCo (talk) 22:54, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

It would help

if you gave a warning to the editor who made these edits.[1] I've had a bit of an unpleasant experience with him. Thanks Doug Weller talk 08:40, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: I am not entirely sure what sort of warning I ought to give. Just so I know what sort of individual I am dealing with before I write the warning, may I ask what sort of "unpleasant experience" you have had with him? Has he been sending you harassing emails or been otherwise trying to target you off-wiki? —Katolophyromai (talk) 14:00, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: I left him a nice little message on his talk page. I respectfully explained to him what the word "mythology" means in an academic context and politely requested that he stop changed the word "mythology" to "history" in articles on Wikipedia. Here is a link to my edit. I hope what I wrote is helpful. —Katolophyromai (talk) 20:41, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

It's perfect, very appropriate. I really appreciate that. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 09:36, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: You are welcome! It is true that I have not been spending nearly as much time on Wikipedia lately as much as I used to, but I am glad that I was able to help. —Katolophyromai (talk) 09:39, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, Katolophyromai. 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 15:20, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

I will not contest your deletion. However, you are preventing a truthful assessment of Quora, not helping. First it is not true that QUora is easy to delete. I tried and after a few hours I gave up. Second, the documentation of this fault is simple - one need only type into google "Searches related to how do I get out of Quora?" and the wide frustration is obvious. Finally, it is also noted that Quora inserts itself maliciously into our phone when we innocently google a question and thereby boosts its account base. I don't know why you support such spam, but I don't have the time to fight you.

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	I had a great time reading the articles you created. Thanks for your work. Puduḫepa (talk) 06:44, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

@Puduḫepa: Thank you so much! I am so glad you enjoyed reading the articles I wrote. I have not been very active here on Wikipedia for the past six months or so because I have been writing on Quora and on my own website instead, but, during the time when I was editing here most prolifically, I was writing two or three articles every month and bringing them up to "Good Article" status. I do still log in to Wikipedia every few days to check what changes have been made and sometimes I still rewrite sections of articles, but I am no longer rewriting whole articles, or at least not at nearly the pace I once was. Some day I may go back to writing whole articles here on Wikipedia, but I have not been doing it for a while now. In any case, I am very grateful for your appreciation. A lot of times I think I felt like my work here on Wikipedia did not get much appreciation. —Katolophyromai (talk) 11:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

I have had a look to your talk page and have seen many possitive feedbacks regarding your contributions. You are one of the few content editor on Wikipedia, please keep it up. By the way, the website is interesting and many of its articles are within my area of interest. Thank you for the links. Happy editing. Puduḫepa (talk) 10:12, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Brothers Poem

Can you keep an eye on this pls. The article seems deservedly, and likely, to pass FAC, but could do with shepherding from somebody with specialist knowledge. Also, the comments so far have mostly been about prose; it would be good to have a content review, lets face it - otherwise whats the point. I hope you are not too disenchanted by the FAC process by our earlier encounter there; I look back on that with some regret. Your work here is very much admired and appreciated; many of the articles you hve worked on I had already watchlisted, and it has been a joy to see them expanded / brought under control. Ceoil (talk) 02:26, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Robert E. Lee on Traveller

On June 15th, I nominated Robert E. Lee on Traveller for DYK - I was wondering if you'd be kind enough to take a few minutes to review the nomination? That would be much appreciated.MagicatthemovieS (talk) 13:38, 19 June 2019 (UTC)MagicatthemovieS

@MagicatthemovieS: I have read the article and I believe it is ready for DYK, but, for some reason, I cannot find the nomination for the article at WP:DYKN. Has someone else already reviewed the article and approved the nomination? If that is the case, then I sincerely apologize for my lateness. I have basically left Wikipedia for the most part. I still log in every day or two to check up on what is going on and see what changes have been made to the articles I have worked on, but I am no longer writing articles. I used to spend hours writing on Wikipedia every day, but now I spend no more than half an hour on here each day at the most. Some days I do not even log in at all. Instead, I have been writing answers on Quora and articles on my website. I devote nearly all my time to writing on Quora and typically republish my best and favorite answers on my website as articles. —Katolophyromai (talk) 19:50, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Shortly before you responded to my question, someone reviewed the DYK nomination. Good to hear from an old collaborator! If/when I nominate the statue article for GA, would you be interested in reviewing it?MagicatthemovieS (talk) 00:14, 22 June 2019 (UTC)MagicatthemovieS

@MagicatthemovieS: If I were still spending most of my time editing Wikipedia, I would gladly agree to review the article for you, but, since I have been spending less time on here, I doubt I would have time to review it. —Katolophyromai (talk) 07:35, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Hello friend

Hello friend, I've returned to edit Wiki again. Glad to see you're still around. I'm just utterly amazed at the amount of work you've done since I've been gone. Nice job and keep it up. — JudeccaXIII (talk) 21:52, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Sacred prostitution

Given your 2018 edit on Aphrodite, adding "an idea which is now generally seen as erroneous" after the link to sacred prostitution in the lead, your informed input might be useful on Talk:sacred prostitution, in relation to the discussion in the last two sections, as to whether there is now an academic consensus on this point (and whether that consensus can be demonstrated). Jheald (talk) 23:59, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Jonah (talk page)

What did you think of my reply to your suggestion? regards HuPi (talk) 19:19, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Enlil

Hi. In reverting my edit, you wrote:

reverting unexplained removal of sourced content and addition of unsourced content, which seems primarily motivated by a POV desire to portray Enlil in a more positive light (e.g. by removing the mention of the myth of him causing the flood from the lede; by removing the mention of the myth of his rape of Ninlil from the lede; and by defining him in the first sentence of the article as primarily a god of "uprightness," which is not how he is defined in the sources cited)

Firstly, I did not "remove" any information from the article; I trimmed down some of the introduction (content that was derived from the body of the article and never removed from it), and thus there was no information lost; I perceive your introductions as characteristically bulky and inconcise, as if you miss the entire point of an introduction. Secondly, I did explain the edit in question—and in greater detail than I just did when repeating myself. Third, your bizarre accusation of me having an ulterior motive to portray a mythical figure in any particular way (other than how these myths portray the deity) is not only off-putting, but it also violates the policy of Good Faith (I also never, as you claimed, removed anything from the lead or elsewhere concerning the rape of Ninlil, as there simply was no mention of that myth in the lead—how could I have removed something that wasn't there?). I also, as you claimed, did not remove all mention of the flood from the lead. Furthermore, you—as the author of the article—are the one who saw fit to mention in the lead that Enil was "himself so holy that not even the other gods could look upon him"; if you don't think that holiness is (at the least) synonymous with " uprightness", what word would you use to summarize that quality? And why, when seeking to summarize the said deity, would you believe that the basic character/defining personality of the subject is less relevant than his power over the elements? Or not relevant at all? I'm left scratching my head as to why you'd have reverted my legitimate and constructive edits without any discussion whatsoever, moreover making false claims and slander of me to justify your reverting of my edits. Since I'd like to have good faith concerning what you've done, can you please explain why you did all of these things? WikiEditorial101 (talk) 18:01, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

@WikiEditorial101: This is a conversation we should really be having on the article talk page. Contrary to what you say here, you did, in fact, remove content from the lead. Also, I do understand the purpose of a lead, as Wikipedia defines it. WP:LEAD states a lead is supposed to "serve as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents," which is what all my leads for all the articles I have written do. In your edits to the articles "Ninurta" and "Enlil," you removed a number of sentences that were summarizing whole sections of their respective articles. Furthermore, my leads are not "bulky" relative to the leads you see in most articles at WP:FAC these days. Most Featured Article candidates about prominent or notable subjects tend to have leads composed of four lengthy paragraphs (e.g. "Leonardo DiCaprio"). Featured Article candidates about less prominent or less notable subjects tend to be about two lengthy paragraphs (e.g. "French battleship Brennus," "Soviet destroyer Nezamozhnik")

My comment about you seemingly wanting to portray Enlil in a more positive light was an observation based on the fact that many of your removals from the lead concerned myths in which Enlil was portrayed in a less-than-savory light. I have already listed examples in my edit summary. You may notice I used the word "seems." That was a very deliberate word choice. I was not stating it as a blank fact that that was what you were doing; I was just saying that was what it seemed like to me. I noticed something very similar in the article "Ninurta" where many of your removals concerned parts dealing with Ninurta's aspect as a warrior deity. For instance, you removed all mention of him as a warrior deity from both the first paragraph of the lead and from the infobox, even though his warrior aspect was an integral element of his persona for most of the history of his worship. Indeed, Ninurta was most prominent during the Neo-Assyrian Period, when he was primarily viewed as a warrior deity—almost to the exclusion of most other aspects.

Regarding the "rape" of Ninlil thing, I apologize for my wording, since I see it is characterized in the article as a "seduction," although consent is often ambiguous in these myths and other sources characterize it as a rape. I must have been thinking of some other source I had read that characterized the event in that story as a "rape" when I wrote that edit summary. Again, I apologize for that; I should have reread that sentence in the article more carefully. In any case, my point still stands, since "seduction" of Ninlil still doesn't exactly make Enlil look like a perfect role model.

As for the "uprightness" thing, I have two remarks: First of all, "holiness" in ancient Mesopotamian religion did not necessarily correspond with moral uprightness. The word "holy" only came to be associated with moral righteousness through the influence of the Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity. For the ancient Mesopotamians, as well as the ancient Greeks, Romans, and most other ancient peoples, holiness was about something being somehow ritually set apart. In any case, I actually agree with you that Enlil did have a role as a dispenser of morality in some sense. What this is really a problem of is, though, how Enlil is defined in the sources; none of the sources cited define Enlil as primarily a god of "uprightness." If you want to list "uprightness" as Enlil's primary attribute in the very first sentence of the article, you are going to need to provide a source that defines Enlil as a god of "uprightness."

I really hope this doesn't turn into another massive argument. These unpleasant arguments I keep getting pulled into are a large part of the reason why I have not been spending much time here on Wikipedia lately. —Katolophyromai (talk) 03:11, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Notice of edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. WikiEditorial101 (talk) 03:34, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Friendly recommendation

Our editing differences aside, as a humble gesture of peace I'd like to recommend the documentary The Case for Christ, in case you've never seen it and ever have the time. Cheers! WikiEditorial101 (talk) 19:59, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Phoenix_(folklore)#Requested_move_31_October_2019

Given your work on topics such as dragon, you may find the discussion occurring at Talk:Phoenix_(folklore)#Requested_move_31_October_2019 interesting. :bloodofox: (talk) 04:27, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

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Greek mythology sources and stories

Katolophyromai, I admire the work you have made on Wikipedia. I have been contributing since 2006, mostly by reading and revising articles. Over the years, particularly in 2011, 2017 and 2018 I read heavily on several sources and criticized several articles that relate to Greek mythology. Just like you, I am interested in sources and truth but also in structure and elegance when it comes to articles on Wikipedia. I read and commented on a variety of Greek mythology articles and, in some cases, you provided feedback. I read that we share interest on a few subjects and primarily on Greek mythology to which I dedicated a section of my personal website. I uploaded a variety of documents, currently 9 genealogical trees and 25 paraphrased stories of gods and heroes that compare different stories as well as 2 summaries that compare a variety of mythologies. I created 6 more stories that have been in the making for a while. I would like to know if you would be able to comment on some statements I came across on Wikipedia that I was unable to verify because I could not find a source for them.

ICE77 (talk) 06:47, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Question

Greetings. I am currently nominating "Sappho" as a featured article in the Indonesian Wikipedia. It is a translation of your work here. One of the comments I have received is to expand more on the themes of her poetry - love, family, marriage, satyr, etc. Do you know the sources that explicitly and comprehensively deal with the themes of Sappho's poetry? Thank you in advance! Mimihitam (talk) 15:44, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

@Mimihitam: Just to be clear, I only helped with the article "Sappho"; the primary author of that article is Caeciliusinhorto. I would recommend consulting them for information and sources, since I imagine they would probably be able to tell you more than I am. In any case, I do believe that Page duBois's book Sappho Is Burning (1995) contains some discussion of some of the major themes in Sappho's works at some point towards the beginning, probably in the introduction or maybe the first chapter. If you want information about themes in Sappho's poems, that might be a good place to start looking. —Katolophyromai (talk) 03:45, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion, I will take a look at it. Mimihitam (talk) 08:10, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your question, Mimihitam (and thanks K for pinging me). If I recall correctly, Sappho is Burning is fairly theoretical/methodological and about how Sappho has been read/used, though there is surely some discussion of themes in it. I also have Margaret Williamson's Sappho's Immortal Daughters, which contains a chapter dealing with the best-known of Sappho's works – I'm sure there will be something usable in there. You might also look at Ellen Greene's Reading Sappho (I suspect mostly useful for discussion of love poetry), Bierl and Lardinois' The Newest Sappho (for information on love and family poetry). I haven't read it, but I suspect Philip Freeman's Searching For Sappho is another recent work which might have relevant content for you.

Note that I am but an interested amateur, and my knowledge of works on Sappho is by no means comprehensive: if you get totally stuck looking for sources, you could always try emailing a professional classicist! Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:22, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your response @Caeciliusinhorto! That seems to be the case, most of the sources are focusing on the love theme, which is understandable. In any case, the reviewer is willing to understand. Thank you for your time anyway :) Mimihitam (talk) 20:40, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, poetry about love is certainly what Sappho is best known for, and consequently most discussed in the sources. Partly this is an artifact of how her poetry survived – things like Ode to Aphrodite and Sappho 31 have been known since the renaissance, whereas the most complete family poem was only rediscovered in 2014. Partly it is an artifact of her surviving ancient reputation as a love poet. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:10, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Epicurus

Hi Katolophyromai (no idea how to pronounce that). I have been working through some old GAs with maintenance tags on them. I came across Epicurus, which you got to Good Status a year ago. I see an editor has added an expand section to the politics section. Can't see any conversation about this on the talk page and thought I would ask you to look in on its relevance in case you had missed it. AIRcorn (talk) 09:43, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

@Aircorn: I have left a message on the talk page for Epicurus. If no one comes forward with something they think the section needs to include within twenty-four hours, I am just going to remove the tag. —Katolophyromai (talk) 00:35, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Two years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:28, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: Thank you so much for the reminder! I remember how flattered I was when I first found out I had been named a "precious editor." I haven't been on Wikipedia much lately because I've been writing a lot on Quora and on my own website instead. Nonetheless, I really appreciate the people who continue to work here. —Katolophyromai (talk) 16:24, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

School of Athens

Is that painting counterintelligence? --Alterego (talk) 17:30, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

@Alterego: I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what you mean. Could you please clarify what you are asking? —Katolophyromai (talk) 21:47, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Jesus and the woman taken in adultery

I don't know if you take requests, but could you write a talesfromtimesforgotten article on the narrative of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery? I was wondering if you see it as historical.MagicatthemovieS (talk) 22:32, 26 April 2020 (UTC)MagicatthemovieS

Just checking, Magic - have you read the rather long article we already have? Johnbod (talk) 22:53, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Multiple times.MagicatthemovieS (talk) 23:28, 26 April 2020 (UTC)MagicatthemovieS

I'm not so interested in whether Spencer sees the passage as original to the text. It's more about whether he sees the massage as historically accurate to some degree.MagicatthemovieS (talk) 12:51, 27 April 2020 (UTC)MaicatthemovieS

@MagicatthemovieS: I already wrote about the Pericope Adulterae in this article from February 2020, titled "Can We Know What Biblical Texts Originally Said?" In that article, though, I only talk about the pericope in one section and it is very much focused on whether the story is original to the text rather than whether the story is historically true. I could write a more extensive article about the Pericope Adulterae at some point. I already have a very long list of topics that I want to write articles about. I could easily add that one to the list. It may be a while before I get around to writing about it, though, since the list is very long and I am always getting distracted by new topics to write about. —Katolophyromai (talk) 22:57, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

OK. I understand if you are busy or interested in other topics. Have a nice day!MagicatthemovieS (talk) 00:16, 28 April 2020 (UTC)MagicatthemovieS

Statue of Frederick Douglass (Rochester, New York)

Hi! I know you are interested in American history and current events and here is an article that covers both. The Statue of Frederick Douglass (Rochester, New York) was the first statue ever to honor a specific African-American. A copy of it was vandalized on Independence Day. Would you be interested in reviewing this article for GA?MagicatthemovieS (talk) 16:20, 7 July 2020 (UTC)MagicatthemovieS

Glad ...

.. to see you are still keeping your hand in. Paul August ☎ 14:25, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! Even though I'm not really an especially prolific editor these days, I do generally try to keep up with the articles that I worked on while I was still editing here regularly. —Katolophyromai (talk) 14:46, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Well I'm always pleased whenever I see your edits on my watchlist. Paul August ☎ 14:51, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Latin abstract nouns within the Latin corpus in both -ia and -itas?

Hello Katolophyromai, My name is Michael, and I am in Massachusetts. I navigated to this talk page via your Quora page; I have had the pleasure of reading several of your answers there... I have a question that might require you to do a bit of research, but have exhausted all other avenues of having it answered thus far. What I am wondering is: are there any abstract Latin nouns (by which I mean nouns derived usually from adjectives in either -ia or -itas) which are found within the Early Latin-Classical Latin-Late Latin corpus in both the -ia and -itas forms? Some examples of this would be as follow: if ignavus produced, at different times and/or by different authors, both the common ignavia and also ignavitas, amarus produced both common amaritas and also amaria, or fidelis produced both common fidelitas and also fidelia. I thought you might have noticed some unusual forms in your reading of the classics. I have become quite interested in the way in which these two nominalizing suffixes became productive, and would like to know more about that. Thanks, Mike.

@68.112.86.146: I apologize for responding so late to your inquiry. I haven't been on Wikipedia much lately and I actually don't entirely know the answer to your question. It would be an interesting matter to look into, but I'm not exactly sure where to look and I don't really have time to research it adequately at the moment. I do know that the words fidelitas and fidelia both exist in Latin, but they mean slightly different things. Fidelitas is the nominative singular form of a third-declension feminine noun meaning "faithfulness"; whereas fidelia is the nominative/accusative neuter plural form of the adjective fidelis, meaning "faithful." Thus, fidelitas means "faithfulness," while fidelia means "faithful things." —Katolophyromai (talk) 16:51, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks much, Kay (if you don't mind that as a nickname...we guys used to call a fellow that I grew up with whose surname was "Kotsopoulos", "Kay"). I suppose that I will have to find an older classics professor who has been reading the Latin corpus for many years if I want to get an answer to that question. I just thought that I would give you a shot at it, even though you're a young fella... One thing to note, however, is that the neuter nominative form of adjectives are often nominalized/substantivized, e.g. īnsīgne (while the neuter accusative forms are often abstracted to form adverbs, e.g. dulce and facile), but this is always done in the nominative singular, not the plural. Even so, that is not exactly what I am talking about. My question has more to do with the localized productivity of the nomilalizing suffixes -ia (A.Greek -ῐ́ᾱ, PIE *-i-eh₂) and tās/-itās (A. Attic Greek -της, PIE *-teh₂ts), than it does about transferring usage of a word without morphological transformation. Hey, thanks for considering my question, though, and Good luck with your studies!

Eureka! I have found one example of this: vīcīnia (vīcīnus + -ia), and vīcīnitās (vīcīnus + -itās), both meaning "neighborhood", "proximity", "vicinity". Of these, vīcīnitās seems to be the older form. Vīcīnia is mainly post-Augustan, but is well attested in the classical corpus after that time; it apparently was used by Seneca within his Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (65 CE), and by Pliny the Elder in the Naturalis Historia (77 CE). Both forms appear within Lewis and Short. I am on the hunt for more examples of this phenomenon...

Thales

I think the article on Thales could use some work. Not being a historian, I don't know how exactly to do it. I've added a section in that article's talk page detailing what I think doesn't fit well. It'd be nice for you to drop in there. I'm new on Wiki and you're one of only two historians I know here, so I thought I'd ask you. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (talk) 04:29, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

@Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI: Thanks for contacting me. I agree that the article on Thales needs a lot of work. Unfortunately, I am rather busy nowadays with other things and I don't really have a lot of time for editing Wikipedia. You may have noticed that, lately, I have only been editing occasionally and, when I have made edits, I haven't generally been making huge changes. Nonetheless, I will try to take a look at the article at some point in the coming days. —Katolophyromai (talk) 16:35, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

@Katolophyromai:: You're welcome, K. I might do some minor editing there myself soon. I just have some exams I need to get out of the way, and then I have to de-addict myself from Quora... Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (talk) 17:41, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Wiktionary link

Just by the by I linked your μῆτις at the Odyssey. I here direct you thereto so you can "ohh". Untitled50reg (talk) 10:08, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Comparing Latin aevum and aeternitās.

Hello, Spencer. I hope things are going well with you.

This query has to do with a semantic uncertainty which I have had for awhile now, since I first noticed it some months ago. You might be aware that the primary meaning of Latin aevum is "time is its totality"/"time as a continuous and infinite entity", or in other words: "eternity". Certainly, aevum has other more restricted meanings which were applied to it, but the aforestated is the original meaning of the word as it came into Latin, originally from PIE *h₂eyu (which primarily meant "a long time"). One is prompted to ask: if this is true, then why would the Latinii feel the need to formulate aeternitās, which likewise means "eternity" (its only meaning, in fact), if the meaning was already "spoken for", other than for morphological and phonological consistency? More to the point, I wonder whether there is any shade of semantical difference between aevum as it means "eternity" and the meaning of aeternitās. If you have any insight on this point of semantics, please give me your thoughts.

BTW, did you happen to see the one example of collateral forms that I found: vīcīnia and vīcīnitās? I was happy about that! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.112.86.146 (talk) 15:50, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Odyssey

On 5 November 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Odyssey, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the Odyssey has been used as a school text since antiquity? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Odyssey. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Odyssey), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. 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, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

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A note of appreciation

Hello Katolophyromai, we haven't interacted before but I just came across Library of Alexandria and found it such a well-written, enlightening and captivating read that I felt I had to express my appreciation to you for writing it. Thank you for your labour - I am grateful as a reader and fellow Wikipedian, and I'm sure a great many others feel the same. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 13:57, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

@Kohlrabi Pickle: Thank you so much! I'm glad you appreciate my work! I rewrote that article two years ago during the first semester of my freshman year of college. I'm a junior now and I've grown much more knowledgeable since then. I think I have a better understanding of the ancient sources and of historical methods. I think that, if I were to rewrite that article today, I'd probably do it a bit differently. Unfortunately, I don't have much time to spend editing Wikipedia nowadays, since I have schoolwork and I'm busy writing articles on my own website. And, honestly, I'm a bit disillusioned with Wikipedia anyway. —Katolophyromai (talk) 06:56, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

NIN.URTA

I'm working on finding a reliable source for the meaning of the Sumerian URTA. But apparently you're not familiar with this article NIN (cuneiform), nor the sources it cites. And are you also oblivious to your own edits, as you yourself attested via the sources Black & Green (1992) and Mark (2017) that NIN is Sumerian for "lord" when you offered “Lord of Girsu” as the translation of Ninĝirsu? So I'm only half wrong, and you're only half right. WikiEditorial101 (talk) 02:47, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

UPDATE: Since you have a lot more experience as an editor than I do and a lot more knowledge about Mesopotamia than me, I'm genuinely interested in what you think of this source for the meaning of URTA: University of Pennsylvania Akkadian Dictionary (it's listed under the Akkadian "antu", but the definition notes it's Sumerian equivalent, URTA, both meaning "ear of barley"). In the meantime I'll be searching for additional sources. WikiEditorial101 (talk) 03:10, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

UPDATE: Still looking, but in the meantime here is a link from the same site to URTA directly rather than indirectly. University of Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary WikiEditorial101 (talk) 03:29, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

@WikiEditorial101: You're missing my point, which is that, here on Wikipedia, we are supposed to go by what is written in reliable, scholarly sources. If you want to say that the name Ninurta means a certain thing, you need to provide a citation to reliable, scholarly source that says it means that thing. I'm not trying to be mean or anything. I don't know why you always seem to be so hostile. —Katolophyromai (talk) 03:39, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

@WikiEditorial101: Katolophyromai has it exactly right above. Trying to deduce a meaning for Ninurta from the meanings of "nin" and "urta", no matter how seemingly obvious, is WP:SYNTH (please read this carefully). The only way that Wikipedia is allowed to assert a meaning for Nunurta is to find a reliable source which gives a meaning of it. Sources for the meanings of "nin" and "urta" would not be sufficient. Paul August ☎ 14:47, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining that. I realize now that it counts as original research if I'm putting two non-original things together. Because that's basically all that most scholarship is anyway. I admit that I'm still learning. And that I'm not all that good at it. Thank you for your patience with me. Cheers! WikiEditorial101 (talk) 20:53, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Ukur

Hi, I wondered if you could help me out here. I'm sorting out orphaned articles and came across Ukur. He is listed in Michael Jordan's Encyclopedia of Gods as a cthonic god in Mesopotamian mythology, but I can't find any other sources which mention him. I don't want to list him at List of Mesopotamian deities with only that sourcing to go on (and of course Jordan doesn't cite his own sources - helpful!). Is this even legitimate, or should I be PROD'ing it? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:32, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

@Premeditated Chaos: I apologize for responding so late. I have barely logged onto Wikipedia at all this year and I only just now saw this message. Unfortunately, I cannot find the article of which you speak, because the article you have linked here is not about a chthonic deity in Mesopotamian mythology, but rather about a village in Azerbaijan. Has the article been deleted or have you simply linked to the wrong article by mistake?

I'm not familiar with a Mesopotamian deity named "Ukur," but there are many minor ancient Mesopotamian deities with whom I am unfamiliar. That being said, "Ukur" sounds a bit like "Kur," which is a word that is applied to the underworld in some texts and which Samuel Noah Kramer rather dubiously interpreted as a name for a personification of the underworld. It's possible that, through the telephone game of modern writings about Mesopotamia, somewhere along the line, "Kur" could have mutated into "Ukur" and made it into an encyclopedia. It certainly wouldn't be the strangest thing that has ever happened. —Katolophyromai (talk) 09:49, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I wound up taking the original to AfD after posting this message. It was deleted as no one else could verify the information either. Looks like an article previously disambiguated to Ukur, Azerbaijan was subsequently moved to the title Ukur. Thanks for your response though - makes me more confident that AfD was the right thing to do. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:26, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Three years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:32, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: Thank you! —Katolophyromai (talk) 22:01, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

GAN Backlog Drive - July 2021

Good article nominations | July 2021 Backlog Drive
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Wandering womb

Someone just undid your last work at Wandering womb (diff). I have reverted it, but this is a new pop-up account and I have a gut feeling it might be someone who has edited before and wants to start an edit war. Might be worth you keeping an eye on the article for a while. 10mmsocket (talk) 08:55, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia Wars and the Israel-Palestine conflict...please fill out my survey?

Hello :) I am writing my MA dissertation on Wikipedia Wars and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I noticed that you have contributed to those pages. My dissertation will look at the process of collaborative knowledge production on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the effect it has on bias in the articles. This will involve understanding the profiles and motivations of editors, contention/controversy and dispute resolution in the talk pages, and bias in the final article.

For more information, you can check out my meta-wiki research page or my user page, where I will be posting my findings when I am done.

I would greatly appreciate if you could take 5 minutes to fill out this quick survey before 8 August 2021.

Participation in this survey is entirely voluntary and anonymous. There are no foreseeable risks nor benefits to you associated with this project.

Thanks so much,

Sarah Sanbar

Sarabnas ^{I'm researching Wikipedia} _Questions? 20:38, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@Sarabnas: In all honesty, I can't actually recall having edited any articles on Wikipedia about the Israel-Palestine conflict. I may have done so at some point, since I have edited many articles on here and I don't remember all the articles I have edited. In any case, I'm still probably not the best person to talk to, since I have mostly retired from editing Wikipedia at this point. —Katolophyromai (talk) 22:43, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know! Then perhaps you will be curious to know that you are the 3rd largest contributor to the Bethlehem article :) https://xtools.wmflabs.org/authorship/en.wikipedia.org/Bethlehem/

I knew not everyone would be active, but better to throw out a wide net anyways. Sarabnas ^{I'm researching Wikipedia} _Questions? 10:29, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

@Sarabnas: Ah, yes, I do remember editing the Bethlehem article. I was editing the sections about the pre-modern history of the site, though. As far as I can recall, I never wrote anything on the page that was immediately relevant to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. —Katolophyromai (talk) 18:57, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Necessary large scale changes in the article "List of Mesopotamian deities"

Since according to the message you've left on my talk page much of the article List of Mesopotamian deities is your work, I'd like to politely address an issue: simply put, the first two sections provide the reader with a warped, artifical image of Mesopotamian mythology.

The section "Triad of heaven" is based on outdated scholarship - Kramer was a maverick in the 1960s but he's hard to use as a source now (many of his ideas aged poorly, not just this one; it's best not to use him for much beyond discussing the shape of assyriology in the past and perhaps for translations alone, though not commentary on them). As is, it doesn't accurately reflect the role or importance of these deities in religion, and they weren't always the top 3. We have examples of Anu, Enlil, Ninhursag or Anu, Enlil, Inanna as the top 3 for instance; of Nanna as the main god (there's even a fragmentary myth about that); and so on. On top of that the elephant in the room is the fact that in the first millennium Marduk and Ashur were in most locations more important than Enlil and Anu (a notable exception being Uruk, where Anu suddenly rose to the top in terms of popularity in personal names in Achaemenid times), which the article doesn't exactly reflect accurately right now.

The other issue is the grouping of "planetary" deities apart from other major gods, which is simply artificial. Many Mesopotamian deities had corresponding celestial bodies, sure - but these associations were fluid, and in its current shape the article only reflects a single, rather subjective, view rooted in neo-Babylonian astronomical treatises. Mars could be a symbol of Nergal but the imported god Simut was also worshiped in relation to this planet, and "Simut" functioned as its name in some texts; Inanna being associated with Venus didn't stop Ninsianna from also being Venus (and Joan Goodnick Westenholz in one of her books briefly discussed a situation where it seems only the latter got to be Vensu in Larsa!); Marduk was associated with Mercury at times, not exclusively with Jupiter; Ninurta was also associated with Mercury and Saturn could be also assigned to a completely unrelated deity, one of the sons of Enmesharra (so not exactly a major player in Mesopotamian beliefs, to put it colloquially).

The way I see it, there is simply no reason for these two sections to be kept separate from the "major deities" one - the information about associated astral bodies should stay in, of course, and in fact I think it would be a good idea to provide the celestial identification for other deities where available.

I would therefore like to ask for your permission to implement such a change (eg. merging the triad, planetary and major tables into one) in the foreseeable future.

I have a number of other, smaller gripes with certain entries (ex. Nanaya and Zababa were hardly "minor" deities and Nanaya, based on more recent scholarship, got more divergent with time, not less) but these are of lesser importance and unlike this proposal are quick fixes.

(P.S.: Ukur/Ugur was the sukkal of Nergal and a semi-prominent god in Hurrian sources, he has nothing to do with the term Kur - see the Reallexikon entry for details)HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 18:37, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

@HaniwaEnthusiast: The division of the first few sections into the "Triad of Heaven" and "Seven planetary deities" actually came at the suggestion of an anonymous IP user in March 2018. The same user was also the one who suggested adding boxes for "astral body" and "color." You can find the conversation that led to the creation of the first two sections here: Talk:List of Mesopotamian deities#Consider adding boxes for cuneiform, astral body and color.

I would have no problem with you reorganizing the article a bit. I am glad that you consulted me first, though, so that I know what you are doing. —Katolophyromai (talk) 19:57, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

You can see the early stage of the groundwork already as of today, though I'm not done yet with this stage. I will further expand the sections of the remaining deities currently left in the "other major" group to show why their "major" status is warranted (I've already expanded the descriptions of Ishtaran, Ninlil, Nisaba, Ninazu and Zababa and wrote a completely new description for Nanaya - Black & Green wrote their book before most modern studies of Nanaya were published) and only after that's done I will move on to actually merging the 3 sub-lists.

Fresh additions to caption of the current "triad of heaven" section illustrate that the top of the pantheon was somewhat more fluid than Kramer imagined, which is the second key part of the groundwork for my proposed change - I want to show in advance that it's rooted in sound arguments from modern scholarship, rather than in a decision made on a whim.

I think most if not all information from that astronomy article has to go, sadly - much of it is basically just an attempt at rehabilitating certain figures and ideas of panbabylonism, and sources used by its authors are largely antiquated or dubious (as are some of their statements and conclusions, ex. about Sabians)... The fact that the anonymous person who provided this information seems to be an enthusiast of Parpola explains a lot, I must admit (also some of their information is... off. Mummu has nothing to do with Nammu, for instance...) Parpola might not be an ancient aliens enthusiast but his ideas and work are very antiquated in many regards and try to make a coherent whole from fluid or unrelated elements often (the other Parpola is similar...). The most striking thing about the article's current shape is that the descriptions (eg. your work) already often provide accurate information, but the odd divisions derived from that article twist it.

Also, do you think it's okay to remove the link to that odd article, Family tree of the Babylonian gods, from the "see also" section? The page seems superficial and as far as I can tell is a weird mix of Enuma Elish and information (not necessarily correct...) from other sources, it's hardly comprehensive (Sarpanit had an established genealogy) but it doesn't accurately represent EE either and as such arguably serves no real purpose in general in the context of wikipedia. I think including links to other ANE god lists under "See also" would be more informative. especially as it helps put the last section of the list into perspective. There are no separate articles but the Elam article and these on Hittite and Hurrian religion all do include brief god lists in similar form. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 22:31, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Good article reassessment of Inanna

Inanna has been nominated for a community 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. Apocheir (talk) 23:25, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

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Nomination for deletion of Template:Timeline of ancient Mesopotamia

Template:Timeline of ancient Mesopotamia has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Nigej (talk) 16:21, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

List of hybrid creatures in folklore

Hi Katolophyromai, In these edits you drew attention to some problems with the List of hybrid creatures in folklore article. I’ve just stumbled across it now. Do you have any views on removing the tags? I’ve started a discussion on the talk page. The overall theme of the list seems to be a collection of articles that readers might want to make connections between. I’m doubtful it could ever be given a referenced set of objective inclusion criteria, assuming that’s the problem. Thanks, --Northernhenge (talk) 16:08, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

June 2022 Good Article Nominations backlog drive

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The credibility of Joshua J. Mark

I've noticed many of Mesopotamia-related articles you entirely or partially wrote, especially the Ninurta one, rely on online publications of a certain Joshua J. Mark. As far as I can tell, he is not a historian or otherwise an expert in the religon of Ancient Near East, often relies on sources which are, to put it lightly, low quality or outright makes things up. I'll pick just a couple of examples to show you why I think he should be avoided as a source:

• in his "Sauska" (not how it's spelled, what sound does š correspond to is not exactly arcane knowledge...) article, he claims she is still worshiped today in India (last attestation is from the 7th century BCE, from Assyria, and I am pretty sure not even one attestation of her comes from further east than the Zagros). He seems unaware that Mitanni were predominantly Hurrian, and puts Hurrians a thousand years further in the past than they are actually attested (Sargonic and Ur III periods are the actual oldest reference to Hurrian personal names, as far as I am aware, and they are absent from the Ebla texts according to Alfonso Archi, who unlike Mark is a historian specializing in both Ebla and the Hurrians...). He does not quote any of the main studies of the deity, like Beckman's "Ištar of Nineveh Reconsidered" which the author himself shared on multiple platforms. He somehow forgets to mention any of Shaushka's courtier deities, or the fact she could be depicted in male form, even though the Yazilikaya relief is by far the most famous depiction of the Hurrian pantheon. He also makes a nonsensical claim about identifying Shaushka with Amaterasu - who is, as basically everyone knows, not attested before the 7th century CE - some 1400 years after the last mention of Shaushka. She also has nothing in common with her due to spatial and chronological difference and complete dissimilarity between position in the pantheon and the religions themselves. For a good overview which will show you how wrong this article is, see Beckman's aforementioned study (shared by the author for example here) or other sources listed in the bibliography of Shaushka's wiki page. I should also note that Patricia Monaghan, who he enthusiastically quotes, was not a historian either, and had a variety of rather unsavory views on trans people, which I suspect might have shaped her decision to hide a certain aspect of Shaushka's character, which mr. Mark also did.

• in the article The Mesopotamian Pantheon he makes multiple incorrect claims: Aya was popular in the Old Babylonian period, Sherida is obscure, not the other way around (see Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, Goddesses in Context for details); Amurru was not a "storm god of the Amorite people," he was not an Amorite god at all (see Beaulieu's study for details); Ashnan is Akkadian, the Sumerian grain goddess was called Ezina; Ashur was not called Anshar in Akkadian, the name Anshar was used as a logogram to designate Ashur as superior to Marduk in neo-Assyrian state propaganda (discussed in virtually every recent study of Ashur); Bel was Marduk's title, not his brother; I do not think the Gugalanna = Bull of Heaven equation is in the vogue today, A. R. George doesn't even bother to bring it up in his extensive commentary on all known versions of Gilgamesh; the god of Umma, portrayed in Inanna's Descent as her servant and occasionally as the son of Inanna of Zabalam (who is not the same deity as Inanna of Uruk) is named Shara, not "Cara"; Dagan was not a weather god (see literature linked in the Dagan article here); Enkidu was rarely, if ever regarded as a god (restoration of An = Anum placing him alongside Gilgamesh has been questioned, see discussion in George's Gilgamesh commentary from 2003), and he definitely was not a "god of the forests and the wild"; Enlil was not "absorbed into Marduk" and especially not during the reign of Hammurabi, Marduk's rise didn't happen before the late second or early first millennium BCE and even then, Enlil continued to be worshiped, especially in "conservative" Nippur and to a smaller degree Uruk (some discussion is present in Julia Krul's monograph on Seleucid Uruk, the rise of Marduk is described in detail in W. G. Lambert's Babylonian Creation Myths from 2013 which sadly isn't open access but which you can find on De Gruyter's site if you have institutional access); "Ereshkigal was an important and much feared goddess whose consort was the Bull of Heaven until he was killed by Enkidu" is basically crossover fanfiction, also Ereshkigal's cult had a very limited scope according to Frans Wiggermann and other authors; Gibil was a fire god and not... whatever Mark made him into; Bau was a separate goddess from Gula and was not conflated with her, also Ninisina and Ninkarrak are attested as medicine goddesses before Gula, while Bau only acquired such character through secondary developments; saying "Inanna was known to Assyrians as Ishtar" is technically not incorrect but seems to indicate mr. Mark isn't exactly aware how labels like "Akkadian," "Assyrian," "Babylonian" work; asserting that Inanna's character was not sexualized before the Babylonians did it would indicate complete unfamiliarity with Sumerian poetry; Kabta was a star deity, not a builder deity; Kulitta was not a "Babylonian" goddess but one half of the inseparable Hurrian part Ninatta and Kulitta, who obviously have nothing to do with Dumuzi; the term "kulullu" specifically designates a "merman" type hybrid creature, and not all mythical beings living in rivers, and it is not exclusively Assyrian; as far as I am aware, Mammitum did not "simply made up the fates of humans on a whim" (the mention of her role as a wife of Nergal is oddly absent, too), and it is not universally agreed that her name has anything to do with fate, a connection with frost has also been proposed; "Mylitta" is a garbled spelling of Mullissu (a name of Ninlil conventionally employed in scholarship to discuss Ninlil as spouse of Ashur in 1st millennium BCE), who was not a "fertility goddess" (a basically meaningless term); Nanaya is the correct form, not Nana, and she was not a "virgin mother goddess," she was a goddess associated with a term which roughly corresponds to sexappeal and her relation to Inanna is much more complex than Mark claims (once again, see literature in the corresponding wikipedia article); "Nedu" and "Neti" are both outdated readings of the name of the same god, Bitu; the spelling "Nidaba" is no longer accepted by most authors, see literature in the bibliography of the Nisaba article; Ningal was not a "fertility goddess" or a solar goddess; Ningishzida was invariably a son of Ninazu and Ningirida, not of Anu or Ereshkigal; Nnhursag's cult center Kesh did not decline during the reign of Hammurabi and it's laughable to blame a single guy for a complex multi-century process in which many southern deities, both male (Shara, Ningirsu) and female (Nanshe, Ninhursag), declined as their cities were abandoned; Ninshubur's name refers to Subartu, which was in the north, not in the east (she's not named Ningutium or Ninelam), also mr. Mark once again seems to have trouble with the š; it's spelled "Papsukkal," not "Papsukkel;" Nisaba was never described as Nabu's wife; "Ramman(u)" is an epithet, not a god; (E-)Babbar was a temple, not a god; Sherida was, as far as I am aware, never a big deal and especially not one of the primary deitites (the oldest attested goddesses are Inanna of Uruk, Inanna of Zabalam, Ezina and Nisaba; Sherida does not show up in the Early Dynastic zami hymns to city deities, only in god lists, see Asher-Greve & Westenholz for list of deities who do); Tiamat is a one off antagonist from a single relatively late myth, not a "primordial mother goddess of Mesopotamia"; Uttu was usually not associated with spiders, see literature in the Wikipedia article (I rewrote it so that it doesn't rely on two pages from a single book anymore, there is a pretty detailed entry in the Reallexikon and some interesting discussion elsewhere); Z/Sarpanit has no role other than being the wife of Marduk and she is hardly "early"; "Zaltu" (it's actually Saltu) is an antagonist in a single myth, not a goddess. There is more but I just picked what seemed glaring to me, and what shows best that mr. Mark does not know what he writes about.

I am also pretty sure that in an article I cannot locate now he claimed Inanna was the original deity of Babylon before being replaced by Marduk; as far as I am aware, the oldest confirmed reference to a tutelary deity of Babylon is a puzzling "Nergal of TIN.TIR^ki" (=Babylon) in a document from the Ur III period, it comes up in Tonia Sharlach's Foreign Influences on the Religion of the Ur III Court. There was an "Ishtar of Babylon" but she obviously does not predate Marduk, who is already firmly attested as the god of Babylon during the reign of first dynasty of Babylon, so basically for as long as Babylon was a city of any historical relevance.

In the light of these issues, I personally think his publications should be avoided and replaced with better sources where they were used. Reallexikon der Assyriologie is free to use and contains more detailed, better sourced information, for instance. It also does not gloss over the spouses of major deities, which Mark does non stop. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 13:05, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@HaniwaEnthusiast: I completely agree with you. I did most of my editing here on Wikipedia during my junior and senior years of high school and the first part of my freshman year of university. At the time, I relied on many sources that I now know are not trustworthy. Also, at the time, I don't think I was even aware of the existence of the Reallexikon der Assyriologie, let alone its online availability, so I hope you'll forgive me for not referencing it anywhere. You certainly seem to know far more than I do about ancient Mesopotamian deities, so you are probably far better qualified to assess Joshua J. Mark's credibility in that area than I am. I will say, though, that, over the past three years or so since I stopped editing regularly, I have independently come to view Mark's articles about ancient Greece and Rome as extremely factually dubious.

For instance, his article "Spartan Women," published in 2021, seems to accept the legendary Lykourgan reforms as historical (which is highly dubious to say the least). In the same article, he also claims that "equality" was an important Spartan value (which is only even arguably true if he's talking exclusively about equality among adult men of the Spartiate citizen class and, even then, it's still highly dubious), he claims that there was "equality of the sexes" in ancient Sparta (which is absolutely not true in any possible sense), and he engages in an irresponsible "girlboss feminism"-style interpretation of Spartan women while ignoring the fact that the vast majority of women in ancient Sparta were helot serfs who were, according to every ancient account that survives, brutally oppressed and mistreated, even by the standards of the ancient world.

I can only describe Mark's 2012 article "The Passing of Philosophy to Religion: The Death of Hypatia" as an egregious garbage fire. That article relies exclusively on outdated and/or unreliable sources (mostly written by "rationalist" or atheist polemicist authors with no background in history), it doesn't reference any of the works of scholarship written by ancient historians and classicists about Hypatia in the past fifty years, it retells a deeply inaccurate, propagandistic narrative, and it is absolutely riddled with unfounded speculations and false assertions. For instance, even in the title of the article itself, he seems to assume that pagan Greek and Roman philosophy and Hypatia of Alexandria's philosophy in particular was fundamentally secular, when, in reality, it was no such thing. (In the case of Hypatia, there is compelling evidence in the form of her editing of Klaudios Ptolemaios's Almagest and references in the surviving letters of her close student, the Christian bishop Synesios, that she not only believed in the existence of deities, but also believed in astrology, oracles, and Neoplatonic mysticism.)

Mark inaccurately portrays the mob of Christians as having murdered Hypatia primarily if not solely because she was a pagan philosopher. In reality, the only surviving account of her murder by a contemporary is that of the Christian historian Sokrates Scholastikos in his Ecclesiastical History 7.15. Sokrates lavishes exuberant praise on Hypatia, claims that she was universally admired for her status as an intellectual, and roundly condemns the Christians who murdered her. He specifically says that they murdered her because she had sided with Orestes (the Roman governor of Egypt, who was a convert to Christianity, although Mark incorrectly claims that he was a pagan) in a political feud he was having with Cyril (the bishop of Alexandria), which Sokrates describes in detail. Sokrates makes no mention of her status as a pagan or a philosopher having played any role in them deciding to murder her. Obviously, Sokrates may be eliding some information and it's likely that the fact that she was a pagan philosopher did play some role in Christians deciding to murder her, but it clearly wasn't the main factor the way Mark makes it seem.

Mark also claims that Christians destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria—even though no surviving ancient source ever claims that they did any such thing, the best evidence suggests that the Great Library was already destroyed by the end of the third century CE, and the story that Christians destroyed the Great Library rests purely a very dubious reinterpretation of ancient sources describing the actual Christian destruction of the Serapeion of Alexandria. He also quotes the "rationalist" activist M. M. Mangasarian (lived 1859 – 1943), a non-historian, as an authoritative source claiming that "some historians" (whom Mangasarian never names) think that the Christians who murdered Hypatia (whom he calls "monks" even though no ancient source actually says that they were monks) ordered her to kiss a cross, become a Christian, and join a nunnery if she wanted her life to be spared. No ancient source records anything even remotely resembling these details and they seem to be purely the imaginative invention of modern anti-Christian polemicists.

Mark claims repeatedly that Hypatia's murder marked the death of "philosophy" and the advent of "religion," but, in reality, pagan Neoplatonic philosophy remained strong in the eastern Roman Empire until as late as the sixth century CE and there were even several prominent pagan Neoplatonic women philosophers after Hypatia. Hypatia was not even the last pagan Neoplatonic woman philosopher from Alexandria to become famous for her work, since another pagan Neoplatonic woman philosopher from the same city named Aidesia attracted a very similar reputation to Hypatia in the decades shortly after her death. That's not even mentioning the fact that there were many Christian philosophers in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.

From what I've seen, Mark's factual inaccuracies frequently occur along ideological lines. He clearly idolizes ancient civilizations (especially ancient Greece and Rome), is stridently hostile to Christianity, and is not inclined to accept any narrative other than "Ancient civilizations good; Christianity bad, destroyer of ancient civilizations." His article about Spartan women and his enthusiastic reliance on Patricia Monaghan, which you have pointed out above, indicate to me that he supports a kind of 1980s-style "girl power" feminism, but he's not inclined to think seriously about systems of oppression and is not sensitive to the intersectionality of gender oppression with class. His article about Spartan women correctly emphasizes that it was common for women of the Spartiate class to have homoerotic relationships, which suggests to me that he is supportive of LGB rights, but his reliance on Monaghan suggests that he may not be willing to extend that support to trans people.

In conclusion, I would agree that Joshua J. Mark is generally not a reliable source for information about ancient history or religion. —Katolophyromai (talk) 19:05, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

With all due respect, I think you should've done this sort of background checks before pushing for the articles to be recognized as "good." Especially when the articles you worked on are mostly those of the most major deities which by default is a huge responsibility, particularly when it comes to cultures with incredibly limited presence in the public consciousness today. I picked Mark as the bad source to highlight but frankly as you said yourself, it's hardly the only one which is not credible.

The Enlil article is a pretty bad example of this issue, between the use of studies primarily focused on Greek mythology (a recurring problem - Mesopotamian mythology as nothing but an exotic addition to Greece) making fanciful claims about Enlil, Marduk and Dumuzi , a book whose author seems unaware iconography of Mesopotamian deities is more than just kudurru symbols (shall we also claim Inanna was never depicted in antropomorphic form because she's a star in a circle on kudurru, like how Enlil is a horned crown?). The complete lack of topics which for the past 40 years dominated Enlil scholarship - etymology debacles, the "Enlil theogony" from god lists and incantations, the connections between Enlil, Dagan (not "Canaanite" like the article claims least we want to argue that Canaan stretches all the way up to modern Syria-Iraq border, since Dagan was worshiped deep inland, not on the coast) and Kumarbi, "Enlil" as a title rather than a deity (Lambert used the rather funny neologism "Enlilship" as a translation of related Sumerian and Akkadian terms). I should point out that in this case information sourced from Mark's publications is utterly baffling - who were the people smashing the statues of Enlil after the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and where did they live? Assur was not actually introduced to Babylonia on any meaningful scale, and Enlil remained the head of the pantheon in many cities, if anything it would be Marduk who was unpopular, especially in Uruk (where he was ejected from the top of the pantheon after the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire), and possibly in Nippur and Der as well. I won't even comment on Ninlil barely factoring into the article despite being an integral element of Mesopotamian religion (I did fix her article recently but I feel like this should have been done back to back with Enlil's... same goes for Gula and Ninurta). Also, referring to something from 1961 as "current" interpretation strikes me as well beyond inappropriate.

The Anu article is similarly troublesome. Kramer's "seven gods who decree" with a permanent membership belong in the 1960s - how do you reconcile this idea with local pantheon of Umma (Shara, Ninura and Inanna-Zabalam on top) or Lagash (Ningirsu, Bau, Nanshe on top) in the core area of Sumerian culture, let alone with pantheons of the periphery like Der or Eshnunna? How about the mix and match approach in inscriptions of Naram-Sin where Dagan appears with Enlil and Ninhursag, or on their imitations from Susa with Inshushinak among the "great gods?" How do Ishtaran and Nisaba fit into this image of Mesopotamian religion - they are pretty clearly major in the Early Dynastic period already...? How about Nuska and Ninshubur being pretty often listed among the "great gods"? Claims about the Eanna in the article are presented as consensus when in reality Beaulieu's Uruk monograph devotes multiple pages to various argument in favor and against the presented view. Identification of Anu with El seems like a complete and utter misunderstanding too - the dingir sign could be read as ilu, but "ilu" as an element of names is a generic, unspecified god (a topic discussed ex. by Alfonso Archi wrt the Ebla texts), not the Ugaritic El (who is firmly identified as analogous to Enlil in primary sources, ex. Ugaritic trilingual god list). Completely glossing over the lists of ancestors of Anu from An = Anum and other sources is a rather odd decision too considering that's where Enuma Elish got everyone but Apsu and Tiamat from. Nemet-Nejat does not make the claim about Antu and milk the article does, also, not do any of the detailed studies of Antu from authors such as Beaulieu or Julia Krul. An elephant in the room is the fact that not even once does the article mention that Anu was not really an object of any personal worship prior to the Seleucid period reform in Uruk - considering this is arguably what most publications about Anu from within last 40 years focus on this seems like an enormous oversight. Also, the Kumarbi cycle is a Hittite adaptation or translation of a Hurrian myth, not a Hittite myth in the strict sense. The sources used completely misquote the myth (the "old gods" - or rather "former gods" - are on Kumarbi's side, not Anu's. As summarized by many authors, for example Hoffner, the myth has a clear underworld and sea vs. earth and sky theme). Too much focus is placed on indirect Greek parallels which I personally think is inexcusable - Mesopotamia should be more than just a quirky demo version of Greece, and that's roughly what prioritizing compilations of comparative mythology essays over research on religion and politics of Mesopotamia in articles about Mesopotamia leads to. The authors in this section seem to be decades behind with material pertaining to the Ancient Near East, which tbf is par the course for classicists, I've seen a work from this field published within past 5 years recommend a publication from 1960 on Nanaya when the study which is the basis of her modern understanding was only published in 1997...

The Utu article somehow fails to mention most deities whose name was written with UTU used as a logogram, even Shimige, who was so closely associated with his Mesopotamian "cousin" that he ended up with a derivative of Aya as his bride (a recurring pattern in Hurrian religion - Hurrians actually lived side by side with Mesopotamians, often in the same cities, it is not a theoretical study in comparative mythology) gets just one line, and he's not even in the infobox (glad to see multiple deities completely unrelated to Utu in there, though, perhaps Amaterasu should be included, after all she is the sun too). Mark strikes again, too - I do not think Utu was ever regarded as old, quite the opposite, he's up there with Inanna or the medicine goddesses in the "youthful" category as far as I am aware. Also, no source calls Ishkur Utu's brother, and Ereshkigal is addressed as Inanna's sister in exactly one and technically direct reference to her also being Utu's sister is missing so given the variance in genealogies I would abstain from such statements myself. Last but not least, this as far as I can tell is not your addition, but I am pretty sure the sun deity the Hebrew Bible would be more concerned with would be Shapash, not Utu. Utu is not exactly known for his association with the Mediterranean coast unlike her. The article quoted even pretty explicitly talks about female solar deities, which, once again, does not describe Utu. This, too, is a recurring pattern where

At the very least these three articles would basically need to be rewritten from scratch. I frankly think the Inanna article needs that too but I'm never going to touch it again so I will not discuss it, I consider it a lost cause. I will only note that Pirjo Lapinkivi is a disciple of Parpola and her book was basically mocked by Andrew R. George, but then much of the rest of the discussion of "sacred marriage" is of dubious quality.

I'm sorry, I won't deny that I'm a bit frustrated with this state of affairs, especially since in some cases the dubious sources are fiercely defended by other users. It makes everything feel a bit futile because what good is there in fixing the page of some minor deity when it will still link to an Inanna article which proudly quotes Campbel, Wolkstein, Mark and multiple sources with no knowledge of Mesopotamian religion (Ereshkigal was a marginal figure), on top of some astrology magazine (not to mention statements like "the character Buffy Summers in television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) bears remarkably strong similarities to Ishtar") or to an Enlil article which is stuck in the 1970s?

P.S.: I will add that I only work on wikipedia articles because I believe a kid browsing this site has the same right to credible, modern information as an expert seeking sources in a professional library does. This is not about personal ambition or some will to amass the most edits of Mesopotamia articles (note I haven't nominated a single thing I wrote for good article or anything else), but about making sure everyone has access to sources with are up to date and credible. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 22:19, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

@HaniwaEnthusiast: With all due respect, I did do at least cursory background checks on the people whose works I cited. The problem is that I did the vast majority of my editing on articles about Mesopotamian deities in 2017 and the first half of 2018 during my junior and senior years of high school. At that time, I completely lacked the knowledge and the background that I would have needed in order to know that there was any reason to be skeptical of Joshua J. Mark’s work.

I saw that he was a professor at Marist College, so I assumed that, even if he was writing outside his primary field, he would know how to do research and make sure he got his facts straight. The Ancient History Encyclopedia (as the World History Encyclopedia was known as the time) for which he was writing looked credible. Finally, when I read Mark’s articles about ancient Mesopotamian deities, they seemed eminently well researched based on everything I knew at the time. Indeed, at the time, if I had read Mark's articles about Spartan women and the death of Hypatia, it is unlikely that I would have been able to point out any of the specific errors I have pointed out above. In any case, I have now gone through and removed all references to Mark from the articles about Inanna, Ninurta, Enlil, Anu, and Utu, as you can see from the edits I have just linked.

I’m well aware at this point that you absolutely despise me and that you think I am an intentionally malicious, grifting, self-aggrandizing, incompetent scumbag. I happened to stumble across your Tumblr blog by accident sometime last year when I was doing a search for terms related to Mesopotamian mythology for some reason. Ironically, I actually found your Tumblr blog first and only later found out that you edit Wikipedia through your blog. I am really, truly impressed by both your blog posts and the articles you have rewritten here on Wikipedia. Admittedly, I haven’t been following your blog closely because I’m not on Tumblr, but, after you left your most recent message here on my talk page, I went and checked up on it and happened to see some of the things you’ve written about me.

In this post, you very clearly reference me specifically as “the guy who basically singlehandely pushed mesopotamian mythology articles on wikipedia to the 1960s and actively pushed Parpola insanity in articles” and complain about me making "100 usd a month from patreon." In this post, you describe me as a Wikipedia user "who just treated a few high profile Mesopotamian mythology pages as an ~exotic~ addition to their portfolio of Greek mythology ones and source of easy clout (who used mostly sources which outdated, like Kramer, or otherwise worthless, like worldhistory.eu or that dumb Ishtar book from the author who praised the Marvel ancient aliens movie)."

In this post you complain that "authors of some of these low quality articles were rewarded for their efforts, and some of these are fiercely defended" and you conclude: "The largest venue in the world for the oldest writing is basically largely at the mercy of new age grifters and similar miscreants." I assume that you regard me as one such "grifter" and "miscreant." In another post, you describe the articles about major Mesopotamian deities as "written so awfully, so ineptly, so deliberately maliciously (giving sources from the 19th century illusion of credibility is malice) that what is the point in fixing these of much less notable ones if they’ll just inevitably lead to this trash." Later, in the same post, you describe the articles about major Mesopotamian deities as "worthless trash." Again, I’m assuming that you would place all the articles about Mesopotamian deities that I have worked on in the category of "worthless trash."

I cannot blame you for hating me; I hate myself most of the time and part of me regrets the fact that I ever got the overconfident idea in my head to start editing this godforsaken hellsite. I will not try to defend my own competence. You seem to know far more about the scholarship on ancient Mesopotamian religion and mythology than I do or anyone else on this site that I am aware of. If you think that what I have written on the subject on this site is irredeemable garbage, then it probably is. If you think that the Enlil, Anu, Utu, and Inanna articles need to be completely rewritten from scratch, you are more than welcome to rewrite them yourself, since you are clearly the person who is in the best position to rewrite those articles.

I do, however, wish to correct some misimpressions that you seem to have about me. First of all, I am not a "guy"; I'm a trans woman. I first came out to my cousin in March 2021, I came out to my parents in May of that year, and began transitioning over the summer. Everyone who knows me in real life knows that I’m trans and those closest to me have known for over a year now, but this is the first time I’ve ever explicitly said that I am trans on a public online platform. I'm telling you this now because I figure it's time that I just came out with it—and, honestly, at this point, having you and other people think that I'm a "guy" almost hurts more than you thinking I'm a shameless and incompetent grifter.

In your blog posts, you accuse me of editing articles about Mesopotamian deities just so I could have an "an ~exotic~ addition" to my "portfolio of Greek mythology ones" and as a "source of easy clout." These accusations could not be further from the truth. Firstly, I do not view Mesopotamian mythology as any more "exotic" than Greek mythology, nor did I ever view it as such at the time I was actively editing articles here, nor was I really interested in creating any kind of "portfolio" or chasing "clout." I did end up eventually making a list on my userpage of articles I had brought up to GA status and I did end up gaining the respect of many people on this website, but these were always secondary and incidental to my primary goal, which was to improve articles on Wikipedia.

The reason why I worked on articles about Mesopotamian deities is because I am genuinely interested in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and religion and I saw that, unlike the articles about Greek deities, which were relatively complete, all the articles about Mesopotamian deities were in utterly abysmal condition. You can see what the articles I have worked on looked like before I came along by looking at archived revisions. For instance, this revision shows what the Inanna article looked like before I made my first edit, this is what the Enlil article looked like, this is what the Utu article looked like, this is what the Dumuzid article looked like, this is what the Anu article looked like, and this is what the Ninurta article looked like. As I’m sure you will agree, they were all in very meagre shape.

The Inanna article was the only article that was any longer than start length, but even that one had a lot of statements that were completely uncited and the works that it did cite were, by and large, not very good. The more reputable sources include Samuel Noah Kramer’s book History Begins at Sumer and Thorkild Jacobsen’s The Treasures of Darkness (both of which I am now aware, thanks to you, are apparently wildly outdated and full of inaccuracies). The plurality of the sources cited are goddess movement publications, including Anne Baring’s book The Myth of the Goddess (1991), a book by someone named Gavin White titled The Queen of Heaven (self-published in 2013 by White's own small independent press), Suzanne Banay Santo's book From the Deep: Queen Inanna Dies and Comes Back Again (2014), Voorbij de Zerken, which the article itself describes as "a Dutch book which 'contains' both Ereshkigal and Inanna" (whatever that is supposed to mean), and a book by Sylvia Brunton Pereira titled Descent to the Goddess (1981), which the article describes as "a Jungian interpretation of the process of psychological 'descent and return', using the story of Inanna as translated by Wolkstein & Kramer 1983."

Some of the other works cited in the article include an article by Joshua J. Mark titled "Inanna’s Descent: A Sumerian Tale of Injustice" and a book by someone named Clyde Hostetter published by an publisher that focuses on books about astrology titled Star Trek to Hawa-i'i (1991), which apparently argues that the ancient Sumerians had something to do with Polynesian expansion. There are also multiple citations to a BDSM writer writing under the pseudonym "Anne O. Nomis," who is hilariously quoted in the main text of the article as an "archaeologist and historian." I cleared all of these sources I have mentioned out when I rewrote the article, aside from Kramer and Jacobsen.

Meanwhile, the Enlil, Dumuzid, Anu, Utu, and Ninurta articles were all either stub-length or just barely start length and were almost completely devoid of any references whatsoever to scholarly sources. For instance, the only references in the Anu article were to Kramer's book Sumerian Mythology, Michael Jordan's 1993 generalist reference book Encyclopedia of Gods: Over 2,500 Deities of the World, the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article "Anu," and the article about Enlil on the Penn Museum website. The only references in the Ninurta article were a citation to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article "Nanib," plus a few external links to the ETCSL and an early-2000s amateur website called "Gateways to Babylon."

My motivations back when I was still editing regularly on this site were very similar to your own current motivations. Above all else, when I was working on articles about ancient Mesopotamian religion and mythology, I wanted to ensure that anyone who tried to look up the subject would be able to find accurate, well-referenced information. I chose to focus on articles about major deities because I felt that those articles were in the most dire need of attention. I would have felt like I was being negligent if I had devoted all my attention to articles about minor deities while articles about major deities were still basically stubs.

You accuse me of relying on wildly outdated sources and "push[ing] Parpola insanity" during my time editing Wikipedia. Bear in mind, though, that I was a very ignorant and very overconfident high school student for the majority of the time when I was editing Wikipedia. I did not realize that scholarly sources dating to the 1960s and '70s were considered outdated, since, after all, Kramer and Jacobsen were the main scholars cited for articles about Mesopotamian deities before I came along, so I assumed that their works were still seen as authoritative. At the time, I also did not know that Parpola was considered a completely untrustworthy fringe source; I knew that he was a professional academic Assyriologist and professor emeritus of Assyriology and therefore assumed that his views were worth including. Any errors I made during my time here can be blamed on my own ignorance and inexperience.

The reason I nominated articles for "Good Article" status was not primarily out of a desire for personal recognition, although I will admit that I used to take some pride in every article I brought up to GA status. One of the main reasons, if not the main reason, why I nominated articles for GA status is because, as part of the GA review process, another editor is supposed to examine the article closely, check all the references, make sure all the sources are reliable and everything is cited correctly, make sure there are no glaring omissions, and so on and give feedback. I felt that having another editor closely examine articles I had worked on in this manner and give feedback was immensely helpful to improving the articles.

Moving on from your personal accusations against me, you've listed a whole litany of complaints about various articles I have worked on here, but I not sure why you are taking all the time to list these complaints to me personally on my talk page rather than simply acting on them yourself. You know you can edit the articles I've worked on in the past, right? You won't even have to contend with me. I don't consider myself a "guardian" of anything on this site, or at least not anymore.

My days of rewriting Wikipedia articles and keeping track of the latest edits are over. I've left this hellsite, I don't regret leaving, and I have no intention of coming back. I'm fine with making occasional edits here and there every so often, but rewriting whole articles, keeping track of and policing the latest edits, and having to constantly argue with people who think the name Easter comes from Ishtar, that Behind the Name dot com is a reliable source for the meaning of a Mesopotamian deity's name, or that the Anunnaki are a race of reptilian aliens from Planet X is far too time-consuming and exasperating.

In any case, since you have taken the time to list all these complaints to me, I have taken the time to respond to most of your complaints below, in the same order in which you have addressed them to me:

• In general, if you've noticed some striking omission in an article that I worked on extensively, it's probably because, at least at the time when I was working on the article in question, I was not aware of the information or scholarship that is omitted or I was not aware of its importance. I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of ancient Mesopotamia is imperfect and, at the time when I was actively working on Mesopotamia-related articles here, I was very young and very overconfident and I don't think I fully realized just how imperfect my knowledge was.
• The statement that Bel was a syncretic deity of Enlil, Marduk, and Dumuzi (which I assume is what you are referring to when you say "making fanciful claims about Enlil, Marduk and Dumuzi") is my fault. I apparently got that claim from Joseph Eddy Fontenrose's book Python (originally published 1959) and Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of World Religions (published 1990). Fontenrose was a classicist, not a Near Eastern historian, and his book is over half a century out of date. Meanwhile, Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of World Religions is a generalist encyclopedia. It was naïve and wrong of me to trust those sources. I have now removed that statement and both of the sources cited in support of it with this edit.
• The statement that Enlil was never represented anthropomorphically is also my fault. As you can tell from this comment I wrote on the talk page, I was having trouble finding any verifiable ancient Mesopotamian artistic depictions of Enlil. Then, I found the passage in the book Iconography of Religions: An Introduction by Albert C. Moore, originally published in 1977, which claims that Enlil was never represented anthropomorphically. All of a sudden, the fact that I couldn't seem to find any verifiable anthropomorphic depictions of Enlil seemed to make sense. I don't know if what Moore says in his book reflects the scholarly view of his time and his book is outdated or if his book was already demonstrably wrong when it was published, but, in any case, it seems his statement is incorrect. I have therefore removed both the claim that Enlil was never represented anthropomorphically and the citation to Moore with this edit.
• I have removed all statements in the Enlil article that were exclusively cited to Joshua J. Mark with this edit, including his claim about people smashing statues and destroying temples of Enlil after the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. I don't pretend to know where Mark got this claim from, but I will note that his articles about late antiquity and early Christianity, including his 2012 article "The Passing of Philosophy to Religion: The Death of Hypatia," which I referenced earlier, focus very heavily on the idea of Christians smashing statues of pagan deities and destroying pagan temples. Christians in late antiquity really did this to some extent, but Mark makes it sound like the destruction of statues and temples was far more systematic and widespread than it really was; in reality, it was more sporadic acts of vandalism by individual Christians and groups of Christians, rather than a centrally-directed empire-wide campaign to eliminate statues and temples. My guess is that Mark is probably imagining that the collapse of any powerful empire must necessarily be accompanied by religious turmoil and fanatical zealots of the new order destroying statues and temples affiliated with the old.
• I have removed the statement about the "seven gods who decree" with this edit. That one was my fault. I placed way too much faith in Kramer while I was editing here. You may also notice that, in deciding which articles to edit, I especially focused on articles about deities whom Kramer labelled as belonging to the "seven gods who decree." (I also worked on the articles Dumuzid, Ninshubur, and Geshtinanna because of those deities' roles in the myths of Inanna, who, as you may have guessed, is my favorite Mesopotamian deity.)
• I have removed the statement that An was equated with El with this edit.
• Contrary to what you have said here, Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat does, in fact, make the exact claim about rain being Antu's milk that was (until today) found in the article Anu. She writes in Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia on page 182: "From her [i.e., Antu's] breasts, the clouds brought forth her milk, the rain." The article Anu, in turn, said: "The Akkadians believed that rain was milk from the clouds, which they believed were Antu's breasts." As far as I can tell, this appears to be the same claim, merely rephrased using different words. In any case, because you find the statement dubious and neither you nor I seem to be able to find any reference to this notion in any other source at the moment, I have gone ahead and removed it with this edit.
• I have removed the statement about the "former gods" being Anu's allies in the Kumarbi cycle with this edit.
• I personally disagree with your view that talking about the influence of Mesopotamian religion and mythology on Greek religion and mythology in articles about Mesopotamian religion and mythology is "inexcusable" and that it reduces Mesopotamia to nothing but "a quirky demo version of Greece." I don't think it reduces Mesopotamia to "a quirky demo version of Greece" any more than talking about the influence of Greek mythology on medieval European literature in articles about Greek mythology reduces ancient Greece to a quirky demo version of the European Middle Ages or any more than talking about the influence of Mesopotamia on Greek religion and mythology in articles about Greek religion and mythology reduces Greece to a quirky epilogue to Mesopotamia. In fact, I worry that not talking about the connections between the Near East and Greece might lead some readers to an impression similar to that of many early twentieth-century scholars, such as Wilamowitz, who believed that Greek culture arose essentially ex nihilo without any significant early influence from the cultures of the Near East and that the Near Eastern influence was exclusively a late, degenerate phenomenon contrary to the true Hellenic spirit. I think it's important to emphasize that these are cultures that existed in relatively close proximity that interacted with and influenced each other.
• That being said, in this particular case, Walter Burkert's argument that the scene of Ishtar's ascent to heaven in the Epic of Gilgamesh VI directly influenced the scene of Aphrodite's ascent to Mount Olympos in Iliad 5 is wrong. The classicist Bernardo Ballesteros convincingly refutes it in his paper "On Gilgamesh and Homer: Ishtar, Aphrodite, and the Meaning of a Parallel," published in 2021 in The Classical Quarterly 71.1 1–21. Ballesteros shows that, although the scenes are indeed parallel, the parallel is best explained as both scenes being examples of a common narrative pattern found throughout ancient Near Eastern and Greek literature, rather than direct, specific influence from the Epic of Gilgamesh on the Iliad. Given Ballesteros's paper, I have therefore removed the paragraph about Burkert's argument from the section with this edit.
• Regarding the Utu article, I did not work on that one as much as I did the others. You may notice that I never nominated it for "Good Article" status. This may partly explain some of the errors and omissions you have noted.
• You comment on the fact that multiple deities are listed in the infobox as "equivalents" of Utu who are not historically attested to have been equated with him. You should know, though, that I did not put any of those deities' names there; someone else must have added them since I stopped regularly editing roughly three years ago. My most recent edit to the article Utu before yesterday is dated to 19 June 2019 and, as you can see for yourself from the archived revision, in that revision of the article, no names of any "equivalents" whatsoever were listed in the infobox. Random users frequently come along and add spurious "equivalents" to deity infoboxes without citations. When I was editing here regularly, I always reverted such additions, unless a user provided a citation to a specific reliable source. It seems that, in my absence, no one has been watching over the Utu article and, as a result, such edits are no longer being regularly reverted. In any case, I have now removed all the names of the spurious equivalents from the infobox with this edit.
• The error about Utu being represented "as an old man with a long beard" is on me. I trusted Mark when I shouldn't have. In any case, I have now removed that error with this edit.
• The infobox for the Utu article already listed both Ishkur and Ereshkigal as Utu's siblings before I ever came along, as you can easily see from this archived revision. I think I left Ishkur's name there because I didn't have any sources saying that he wasn't Utu's brother, I thought that he might be described as Utu's brother in some text I was not familiar with, and I didn't really bother to look into it since I was more focused on other articles.
• You are correct that I had nothing to do with the section "Influence of Utu on the Hebrew Bible." That section was added by the editor Falconfly, who now appears to have been permanently blocked from editing, in a single edit on 12 September 2018. At the time, I did not bother to closely investigate the addition, since I was more focused on other articles. The user Feline Hymnic, who appears to still be editing, subsequently expanded the section in an edit on 10 December 2019. In any case, I have now removed the entire section with this edit.
• You have not specified which aspects of the paragraph in the Inanna article about sacred marriage you take issue with, other than the reference to Pirjo Lapinkivi. I actually don't know why I apparently credited Lapinkivi in that paragraph. The main source I was using when I wrote that is the book Ishtar by the scholar of the ancient Near East Louise M. Pryke, published in 2017 as part of Routledge's "Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World" series. I am aware from reading some of the posts on your Tumblr blog that you apparently hold nothing but the most intense disdain for Pryke's book, but I went back just now to look at what Pryke actually says nonetheless. I found that she does recommend Lapinkivi's work on the sacred marriage ritual early on in her section on the subject, but she goes on in the same section to recommend several other works by other scholars and she does not say that Lapinkivi's work is responsible for changing scholarly opinion on the subject. In any case, with this edit, I have revised the paragraph about the sacred marriage ritual. Among other changes, I have now removed both the extended summary of Kramer and the reference to Lapinkivi. I also found the review of Lapinkivi's book by Andrew R. George that you have mentioned here and added a citation to it in the paragraph.
• I did not add the passage in the Inanna article about Joseph Campbell's interpretation of the myth of Inanna's descent; that one was already there before I came along, as you can see from this archived revision. I personally think Campbell is a crank. (I wrote an entire post on my blog in December 2020 about why the "hero's journey" is nonsense.) I am fairly certain that I already held this opinion of him by the time I started nominating articles for "Good Article" status. The reason I left that passage there is because I knew that Campbell's work is widely read and he is widely seen by the general public as the mythologist par excellence. I therefore figured at the time that his interpretation met the standards of WP:N and that it would violate WP:NPOV for me to remove it just because I personally thought his interpretation is psychobabble nonsense that pays no attention to the context of ancient Mesopotamian society or culture. I have now, however, changed my mind. I think that notability should be judged based on notability within the field of ancient Near Eastern studies and have therefore removed the Campbell passage with the same edit in which I also removed all references to Mark.
• The book Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer, coauthored by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer, was already referenced in the Inanna article four times in the revision of the article before I made my first edit, as you can see from the archived version of that revision I have already linked. I did, however, reference the book extensively in rewriting the article, partly because I felt Kramer's coauthorship gave it credibility and partly because the book is referenced in so many sources, especially those by non-Assyriologists analyzing the myths of Inanna through comparative mythology. I have now removed the paragraph about Wolkstein's interpretation of the descent myth, but I have not gone through and removed every reference to the book in the article. I think most of the citations to the book are to Kramer's portions, but I haven't gone through and checked.
• I don't know what "astrology magazine" you are alluding to here. If there is a citation to an astrology magazine somewhere in one of the articles I edited, then it is extremely unlikely that I put it there. Most likely either it was already there before I came along and I left it there because I did not recognize it as an astrology magazine or someone else has added it in the roughly three years that have passed since I stopped editing regularly. By all means, if you see a reference to an astrology magazine, remove it, since it is clearly not a reliable source.
• Regarding the line about Buffy in the "In popular culture" section of the Inanna article, as I know you are already well aware, Pryke devotes the final chapter of her book Ishtar (pages 185–204) to a detailed discussion of Inanna's reception and influence, including her reception and influence in modern times. In that section, Pryke devotes nearly a full page and half to a discussion of the supposed reception of Inanna in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I personally happen to think that the parallels Pryke describes are tenuous, but evidently Pryke, a professional scholar of the ancient Near East, felt that these supposed parallels between Inanna and Buffy were important enough to the modern reception of Inanna to talk about them at some length in a book that is meant to present scholarship on Inanna to non-specialist audiences. When I was rewriting the Inanna article, I removed the "In popular culture" section that was there before because it was just a bullet list of random pop culture references that various visitors to the article had added, without any citations to any reliable sources whatsoever to establish notability or relevance, as you can see from the archived revision I have already referenced. After removing that section, I eventually wrote a new section about the modern reception of Inanna in paragraph format, which relied to a large extent on Pryke's "Reception and Influence" chapter. I included mention of Buffy because Pryke talks about Buffy at some length. In response to your comment here, I have now removed the "In popular culture" section entirely, including the statement about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

If you have further issues with any articles I worked on during my time here (which I am sure you do), I would invite you to directly edit whichever article you have a problem with and fix the problem in whatever way you feel is best. If you have time to write this big long complaint to me, you surely have time to edit the articles yourself. If you feel that an article I have worked on is absolutely a flaming heap of garbage, then, by all means, wipe it clean and rewrite it. I genuinely will not feel hurt over it. I'm done with Wikipedia and I care far more about articles being accurate and thorough than I do about me being able to say that I wrote them. —Katolophyromai (talk) 14:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

@HaniwaEnthusiast: I apologize if anything I have said here comes across as rude or confrontational. Reading over what I've written, I worry that some statements might come across as more antagonistic than I meant them. I really feel like the two of us should get along. I'm not hurt that you think that what I've written on this site in the past is terrible, since I've been having similar thoughts myself about much of what I wrote here. What does hurt, though, is that you think I'm actively an malicious person.

In this post you wrote, you complain about me making money off my blog while you can't even get comments on your posts. I would be more than happy to make a post on my blog to promote your Tumblr blog if you would like me to. I don't really know much about how Tumblr works, but I'm sure that many people who enjoy reading my posts would enjoy reading yours.

Please note that this is entirely your decision; if you would prefer that I did not promote you, then I will not do it. I understand that you do not like me and I know that, in this post, you complain about not wanting to feel like you can only do something because "some weirdo with no actual expertise lets [you] in their kindness." The phrase "weirdo with no actual expertise" definitely describes me, so, if you don't want me to be nice to you, I won't and I will just ignore you. —Katolophyromai (talk) 17:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

First things first, my sincere apologies for the "guy" issue. As you probably noticed, I stick to neutral pronouns when talking about people I don't know, but tragically occasionally the "neutral=masculine" presumption slips through and results in "guy" and "dude" where the wording should be more cautious. I can adjust the post or delete it altogether to make up for this pretty serious misstep. No offense taken on my end regarding possibly confrontational phrases elsewhere, since my messages are arguably filled with more severe examples to the brim.

With that out of the way: I'm replying so late because I focused my free time on rewriting the Anu article almost entirely this week, leaving only the mythology section for the future (there are probably details one could add here and there but I think enough is enough). It revealed a few small problems in the process (Belili's career as an eternal redirect comes to mind, I think this was a problem from long before either of us started working on wikipedia articles though, well over a decade ago a fair number of redirects which were in reality separate deities were created, I keep stumbling into examples often - Aštabi and Ninkarrak come to mind as major examples) but that's beside the point. It's mostly meant to be an example of the level I'd like to aim at with upcoming rewrites of articles we've discussed - I plan to tackle Utu and Geshtinanna (and, while at it, Belili as well) next.

To clear up a misunderstanding: I am not opposed to showing influence of Mesopotamia on Greece. I take issue with two things, though: first, Greek examples of Mesopotamian influence seem to take precedence over cultures within the core sphere of Mesopotamian cultural influence, like various Hurrian and Syrian states and "statelets," which, in my opinion, reduces history just to succession of "major" cultures. My second issue is that the primary authors dealing with this topic from the side of ancient Greece are not particularly rigorous in their study of Mesopotamia, exclusively pick from a small "canon" of texts relevant due to being translated early. I would personally count "the myth of Athena's birth was derived from Inanna's Descent" as a particularly grotesque example, there is a pretty close analog in the Kumarbi cycle instead which never gained steam in this field as far as I am aware (granted, most comparative studies are 40 years behind with Kumarbi translations which is a problem in itself).

If possible I'd prefer to discuss two further matters you brought up outside Wikipedia, if you don't mind. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 19:38, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

@HaniwaEnthusiast: It's not really your fault for referring to me as a "guy." You couldn't have known. As I mentioned above, although I've been out with my close family for over a year now, my comment to you above is actually the first place I have ever explicitly stated that I am a trans woman on any public online platform. You can revise or delete your posts if you like, but I will not insist that you do so.

Your rewrite of the article Anu looks absolutely awesome from what I can tell, but, as we've seen, I have maybe less of a purview to comment on these things than I once thought.

You make an incisive point regarding comparative studies between Mesopotamia and Greece. I can't really argue with what you've said.

I would be happy to speak to you outside Wikipedia wherever you would like. My email is [redacted] if you want to email me. —Katolophyromai (talk) 20:59, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

"which suggests to me that he is supportive of LGB rights, but his reliance on Monaghan suggests that he may not be willing to extend that support to trans people." His beliefs on this topic are irrelevant, since we are unlikely to quote his works on the topic. According to this short bio, Marks is a philosophy professor, not a historian or archaeologist. He was part of the faculty in the Marist College. Dimadick (talk) 14:27, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

"about why the "hero's journey" is nonsense." Your article on the topic was highly entertaining, though far from novel in its approach. People tend to see patterns in just about everything, but this is often pareidolia at work. The so-called hero's journey essentially encourages readers to ignore the historical or fictional setting of a work, the motivations of the characters involved, the social class of the featured characters or that some of them strive for social mobility or financial security instead of a "heroic" quest, that there are stories where sexuality or sexual temptations may not appear at all, or the literary influences and allusions behind many of these tales. Basically it just proclaims that "they are all the same", and expects readers to take it at face value. Even TvTropes, far from a scholarly work, points out why the hero's journey does not work as a universal guide:

• • "Even when looking at the theory as a description of what already exists, folklorists complain that the pattern isn't really universal, because archetypes are culture-specific, and finding the Hero's Journey as a universal in stories from other cultures is only shoehorning them into familiar patterns." Dimadick (talk) 15:45, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

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Precious anniversary

Precious

Five years!

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Sappho peer review

Hope you are doing well, Katolophyromai! I know you aren't really very active on Wikipedia these days, but if you happen to see this and have some time to look over Sappho and comment on Wikipedia:Peer review/Sappho/archive1 I would greatly appreciate it :) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:54, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

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New article

Hi Katolophyromai! The new page Split of Christianity and Judaism could use help from a good religion editor like yourself! Thanks :) Zanahary (talk) 07:21, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you!

I have just recently discovered your writings. I'm amazed at how well researched and detailed they are. We need more people like you doing what you do! I was also surprised to learn how young you are. Congratulations and all the best! Rolim (talk) 17:32, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Inanna

Inanna has been nominated for a 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. Z1720 (talk) 16:09, 16 November 2024 (UTC)