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Third Opinion Desperately Needed

I am at an impasse with a new user who has been around for about a week, the main problem is whether or not Template:Notable Rulers of Sumer should be converted into an "infobox style" (upper right hand corner) on the whim of a single new user, or whether it should be left as a "reference box" (centred, appears near bottom of article) as it always has been by the creators of this box since it was created a year ago.

I have been arguing for the latter on the talk page, because the subject matter is a list of all the other wikipedia articles about Sumerian kings; if you are looking at an article about a Sumerian king, these would be solid "see also" material, not something of vital importance to the specific article, like an infobox.

An additional problem is that the majority of the articles are so short as to make all the infoboxes run down the right hand margin, way past the one paragraph of text, which makes them unwieldy and an eyesore.

The new user has summarily brushed aside all these concerns (with legalistic responses like "Templates are under no obligation to be optimized for stubs" while ignoring my other arguments, and this has turned into a 2 man edit war. I very carefully followed procedure and warned hi when he was about to cross 3rr, then when he did I reported it, making sure I stayed under 3RR. The result is I got an admin who couldn't tell what was going on and blocked both of us for 12 hours -- even though I meticulously followed the correct procedure, I was blocked for reporting the other guy's violation. The newbie user is back now and is continuing to singlehandedly redesign the layout of all Sumerian king articles in an awful way without regard to previous editors like me, such as repeatedly inserting parent categories that I have to remove again, etc. so I need help here! Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 12:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Aratta article

Recently several editors, including the above poster, have turned the Aratta article into an Armenian-location-theory free-for-all [1].

It might be a good idea to replace discussions of location for this mythical land with a statement to the effect: that it is, as yet, mythical and there is no obvious or clear "location" for it.

References: WP:POV, WP:RS, WP:Civility.

Sumerophile (talk) 20:05, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I have been involved with that article in one form or another since 2005, and the "Armenian location" material there is certainly not recent or new; in fact a look through the article history will show that there was originally much more of it than there is now. All we can do per OR is neutrally reflect what various scholars and schools of thought say about the subject. NPOV means we cannot endorse any one school of thought over the others where they disagree; for example those (who?) saying Aratta could never have existed, over the many other scholars who have offered evidence for where they think it did indeed exist. As usual, any viewpoint is welcome to be added, provided it is properly attributed. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 21:06, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Nobody says Aratta "could never have" existed; it is as-yet unattested and, at this point, exists only in myth. There is also no evidence WP:RS for anyone's theories on where they think it "did indeed exist" - there is no evidence at all. If the Armenian material was removed before, it should be removed again. Sumerophile (talk) 23:40, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Given the vast number of scholars who are already reliably sourced as speculating that Aratta = Ararat (many more can and should probably be added if there aren't enough yet) it's pretty hard to justify suppressing the fact that this viewpoint exists simply because it doesn't fit in with your personal POV. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 23:57, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

There are a vast number of scholars that can be reliably sourced as speculating that Aratta is in any number of places, especially if it's their dig site, or their homeland, or someplace they like. And drawing a connection between two words looking somewhat similar across unrelated languages and over 5000 years is linguistically unsubstantiated original research. For the record, I don't have any POV in this matter, and I don't like seeing this POV in the article. Sumerophile (talk) 01:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

"Original research" is really an in-house term we use on wikipedia to describe something that a wikipedian came up with himself, that isn't in any published source... it doesn't apply to claims that are in many published sources, no matter what we editors may think of those claims. I don't have any POV either, but the article doesn't seem to be asserting that any one POV is correct or incorrect. It simply reports what all the significant POVs are and which authors subscribe to them, as it should. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 01:29, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

For the record, just because a source is published doesn't make it reliable; there are many off-topic, poorly sourced and fringe publications, as well as generalist books that pass on outdated or incorrect received knowledge. Any POV can be "verified" by not vetting sources. And you don't have to say another POV is incorrect to have a POV-laden article. Sumerophile (talk) 01:53, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

NPOV means we don't take any sides or tell readers what to think about issues that have been controversial or disputed or where there are multiple significant schools of thought among scholars; we simply present all the viewpoints that can be sourced neytrally, and let the reader make up his own mind. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 01:58, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes I know what NPOV should be, and the Aratta article is full of the Aratta=Ararat POV/Original Research that you mentioned above. Sumerophile (talk) 02:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Once again, it cannot be called "Original Research" (as we use the term here on wikipedia) if it is published, in this case, in multiple scholarly sources on the subject. And it cannot be called POV if it is worded neutrally without endorsing any one view over another in the controversy. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 02:23, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:RS. And a POV is not turned into a NPOV simply by not criticizing other views. Sumerophile (talk) 03:40, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, criticism of a POV is perfectly admissible too, so long as you can find that specific criticism in a published RS. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 01:22, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, wp:rs, exactly. If everyone cited them, we wouldn't have speculative POV's running around like Aratta=Ararat. Sumerophile (talk) 03:14, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Aryan invasion theory (Europe)

(copied from WikiProject:European History) Anyone fancy having a go bashing this into shape? Without work it's AfD'able, but maybe there's something salvageable there for someone with knowledge on the topic. I leave it to your collective better judgement. Knepflerle (talk) 09:14, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Has this already been deleted? The title is red linked. Sumerophile (talk) 23:52, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Appears so! There were a few revisions, it got WP:PROD'ed, then it disappeared. If you want to see the deleted content I think you can get it from any admin, but don't think you're missing much. Knepflerle (talk) 08:49, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Well not really, I was just wondering :) Sumerophile (talk) 16:56, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Unified Format and Chronology for ANE Rulers

Looking around the various articles in the Ancient Near East project, I note their are a number of different formats for listing the kings/rules. There are also some articles that use the short, middle or long chronology dates or list all dating options for each ruler or mix and match in the same article.

What I am going to suggest is that a single format and chronology choice be chosen for the entire project and then the ruler lists and dates be rationalized to match up accross the board. Naturally, this might involve some debate. :-)

So, as a base proposal, how about choosing the SHORT CHRONOLOGY and a table format, as in the Chronology of the Ancient Near East, of

Fifth Dynasty of Uruk

Main article: Uruk
Ruler proposed reign Notes
Utu-hegal 2119 BC – 2113 BC

The Chronology page has "Dating Notes" but it can be changed in the interest of commonality.

Well, what do you think? Ploversegg (talk) 01:38, 21 February 2008 (UTC)ploversegg


The short chronology should be standard standard in Wikipedia, so if you see something else, go ahead and change it to short chronology. (But if they list multiple options, it's probably for a reason, so don't change that.)
I'm not sure what table you're refering to. I've put some succession tables on the kings articles, and that's a standard format. Sumerophile (talk) 03:23, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't say that the Short Cronology is anywhere near the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, but it's a good a choice as any.

It turns out the articles are all over the board on what chronology they use. For example First Babylonian Dynasty uses the long chronology. And List of Kings of Babylon uses mostly the middle chronogy. It would make sense for everyone to work off the same timeline. Ploversegg (talk) 16:53, 21 February 2008 (UTC)ploversegg

Thank you, Ploversegg, the post-Akkadian dates make much more sense now!
Could you look over a few dates (which I assume you haven't looked at): the reign of Nannia (Nanniya) in the 4th dynasty of Kish (the first table), and the dates of the two eclipses under Shulgi in the Third Dynasty of Ur? Sumerophile (talk) 20:51, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure, my basic plan is to do a first pass over each dynasty, some of which are still in thr wrong chronology. I'll take a look at the items you pointed out. After I'm done, I'll request a full review. Ploversegg (talk) 00:19, 24 February 2008 (UTC)ploversegg

I added some comments to the chronology page. Feel free to look them over. Sumerophile (talk) 23:28, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Hm ... look reasonable. In general, I tried to be conservative so I left in most existing comments like "possibly King Elul(u)mesh of Gutium" for a later review, and didn't try and force dates or linkages for earlier rulers where there was not attestation. I guess all the Notes should be double checked at some point.

Also, I have a number of potential references for the article, but wanted to wait until is settles down a bit to see which ones make the most sense and where. For my next trick, I would like to write a new Principal Sources section from scratch to replace the existing one which looks like it was copied from somewhere, but that's probably a weekend type thing rather than a lunchtime job. :-)

Lastly, I'm uncertain how to handle earlier dynasties. My original thought has been to just have include the range fro which chrono dates are at least semi respecable, say Sargon and beyond (the 4th Dynasty of Kish is marginal, but I guess if you have Sargon, you need to have Ur-Zababa) and let the Sumerian Kings List article handle the earlier stuff. I wonder though if it would be better to have a Pre-Historic section for the old dudes and a Historic section for the currently listed rulers. Any thought? Ploversegg (talk) 23:48, 26 February 2008 (UTC)ploveregg

Yeah, the Guti king in the king list begins with an 's' Silulumesh, but I agree it's better just to gather information and sort it out later.
For the earlier dynasties there's a point where we just don't have any more information. The reigns listed on the king list are unreliable, and lacking any other references you have to go by archaeology, which is much more approximate. Ur-Zababa reigned 400 years in the main recension of the king list, or 6 years, or 4+x years, or 131-100 years in other recensions. Lacking anything more concrete I'd just like to put, i.e., mid-24th century for Ur-Zababa. Can we label approximates like that "short chronology", seeing they differ from each other by half centuries?
Sumerophile (talk) 00:15, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely, like for the Hittite Old Kingdom I dispensed with a couple early sketchy probably mythical rulers and also left out dates for the first two rules for which there appeared to be no real support.

Hm, for the specific case of the 4th Dynasty of Kish I was thinking either 1) take it out or 2) add the first two kings (Puzur-Suen and Ur-Zababa) to the table without dates or 3) add them and take out ALL of the dates since I can't figure out came from or 4) add the two rulers with reigns of 25 and 6 years repectively and set their dates appropriately. What do you think?

As for the bigger question i.e. "mid-24th" etc, given that there is only a 64 year difference between short and middle chrono (and given I don't really believe in the Venus Tablets) it seems weak to even assign a "chronology" to Giglamesh type rulers. Just my humble opinion though. Ploversegg (talk) 01:04, 27 February 2008 (UTC)ploversegg

OK check, we shouldn't assign a chronology to approximate dates.
4th Dynasty of Kish - my thoughts are we should keep all the kings together in a Dynasty, even if we can't date them all, but if all we have to go on is Ur-Zababa and the king list we should probably just remove it. Sumerophile (talk) 01:40, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
This is probably nit-picky, but are Lugal-zage-si's dates correct? Sumerophile (talk) 02:59, 27 February 2008 (UTC)


Ok ... letsee. Lugal-zage-si ruled for either 25 or 34 years depending on which fragment of the Sumerian Kings List we believe. He is cotemporal with Sargon of Akkad based on http://www.piney.com/BabSarLeg2.html and other versions of that story (which in theory also makes him a cotemporary of Ur-Zababa). And he defeated Urukagina of Lagash and apparently (less clear) defeated Kish (one would assume under Nannia). So, my take is that there are several date choices that are equally valid i.e. 2340-2316, 2341-2316, 2359-2335, and 2360-2335 (using 25 years). My analysis says it should be 2340-2316, but if you prefer another, then afer 5000 years that would be good enough for me. :-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ploversegg (talk • contribs) 21:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

What I was really wondering about, was that LZS and the early Akkadian king reigns weren't listed as ending in the same year as the beginning of the next reign. Sumerophile (talk) 22:36, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, my sense of the sequence is

1 LZS rules in URUK and in some point in that reign defeats KISH to become the top power in the region

2 Sargon rules in Agade for some years before he completes the process of creating an empire (defeating LZS along the way). In order words, dynasties can start before a city state makes the big time. Consider Babylon, where the dynasty starts 5 kings before Hammurabi make it a major power. So, the first year of Sargon is probably not going to be the last year of LKS unless an iscription turns up that says "on my first day as king I pasted LKS". :-)

Unless, your questions was "Why do some dynasties have each ruler start in the last year of the previous ruler and some do not?" Well, not an expert on that but what I've read is that some people listed a year as belonging to whoever was in charge at the beginning of the year, and other dynasties would reflect the changeover in that same year. Ploversegg (talk) 23:22, 27 February 2008 (UTC)ploversegg

Yes I agree with an overlap (although I half think LZS wouldn't have survived a power transfer in that day and age). The thing is that 2335 doesn't overlap 2334.
And OK, regnal dates start on New Year's Day for part of the Akkadian dynasty.
Sumerophile (talk)
Do you have any information about the first dynasty of Lagash, beyond Urukagina being contempory with LZS? Sumerophile (talk) 18:38, 28 February 2008 (UTC)


No. But as soon as I finish reading the "Kings of Larsa" http://cdli.ucla.edu/staff/fitz/dissertation.pdf which is a nice read btw, I'll take a look. Ploversegg (talk) 21:28, 28 February 2008 (UTC)ploversegg

This is a good read. How did you come across it? Sumerophile (talk) 16:50, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Urukk and Akkad

Now I'm down to the second passes on the tricky early section i.e. Uruk and Akkad.

URUK - The main problem is that there is basically no attestation or support for the 4th dynasty of Uruk asside from the SKL. Added to this is the "one king" dynasty thing for 3rd and 5th dynasties of Uruk. And the suggestions that that some of the Uruk guys were governors from Ur (there is evidence, for example, that Utu-hengal and Ur-Nammu were brothers). Not sure yet how to handle this. The emerging trend is to smush together the 3rd and 4th Uruk in the 3rd and make Utu-hengal the 4th, but dunno

AKKAD - The names etc are mostly fine. The problem is the dates. Way back in the day, they set the chronolgy of Akkad by simply adding the length of the Gutian dynasty to begining of Ur-Nammu and making that the end of Akkaddd i.e, the last year of Shu-durul. Since then is has become clear that after Skar-kali-sharri, that the Akkadian Empire was tiny. There is also the issue that the "length" of the Gutian dynasty has several answers, with "100 years" being used for convenience. On top of that, there are suggestions that Shar-kali-sharri was contemporary to Sarlagab of Guti and Gudea or Urbaba of Lagash. So, the answer is to slide down Shar-kali-sharri of Akkad to overlap Guti somewhat. The question is "how much".

That's what I'm thinking about next. Ideas?

That and whether to add the Neo-Assyians ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ploversegg (talk • contribs) 20:08, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

After some thought, I went with a drop in the dates for Akkad, but a conservative one, in line with the conservative choices made in the rest of the article.

Now, to think about Uruk. Ploversegg (talk) 18:06, 2 April 2008 (UTC)ploversegg

Problem with Til Eulenspiegel.

This user is reverting wholesale the editing I did on the History of Sumer, referring to whatever I do as "bad edits", such as using the Oxford spelling of king names (there is no "official" standard, but some of the spellings in the article are inaccurate, such as three different spellings for Lugal-sha-engur in two paragraphs) and correcting a number of factual errors.

He has also made unhelpful edits by removing pictures from the still incomplete last half of the article rather than completing the missing information himself. I myself have not gotten to those sections yet, but removing pictures that will be a part of those sections is a step backward. And if editors cannot edit without disruptions like these, that article will never be completed.

He also added POV to the page, re-linking the mythical Deluge (mythology) with the historic king list, and removing a footnote about Aratta being unattested (and then "labelling" its unattested state POV).

His method has been to revert wholesale all edits another editor makes, not even sticking to the items he wants to contest, and then accuse the other editor of "edit warring".

References: WP:Civility, WP:POV

Sumerophile (talk) 18:25, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

On the contrary, my method is to initiate discussion on the talkpage to hash out our differences, which Sumerophile so far has not deigned to respond to. I have promised not to revert again until there is a consensus among editors. That means if he reverts to his version again, I will let it stay that way until due process takes its course. I am confident that by adopting a policy of cooperating with other authors of the article, we will solve all of these issues that we disagree on, that are now all detailed on the said talkpage. Please continue this discussion there. (Talk:History of Sumer). Thanks. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 18:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Initiating discussion on the talk page is not what you did, Til Eulenspiegel.

Sumerophile (talk) 18:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

It isn't? Well who initiated it then? I am glad to see you are now responding there. And if you want to revert the disputed article to your version again, please do; I will even leave it your way pending consensus, because I want editors to easily see how bad it looks with a bunch of unneeded pics added to one-line sections messing up the whole appearance and edit links. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 19:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

You reverted twice what you referred to as my "bad edits", before continuing your incivility on the talk page.

You should add material to the sections rather than complain about relevant pictures being there.

Sumerophile (talk) 19:38, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


Formats for ANE Ruler pages

Is there some sort of "official" format for an article on a ANE ruler? I see that there is a Wikipedia project for biography and royal persons type articles, but the only ANE article that is currently on their list of properly done articles is Hammurabi. Some of the current Assyrian and Babylonian rules seem to use a before and after type template which seems ... awkward.

I guess the subtext was that I was thinking about doing pages for the rulers of Larsa and if so I wanted to do them in a format that makes sense.

You can get a sense for the various current formats by poking kings on Chronology of the ancient Near East.

Ploversegg (talk) 17:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)ploversegg

Regarding the variant "Belzebub"

Hello. Since the templates on the main page suggests this is "Ancient Near East"-related, I was wondering where "Belzebub" should be referenced in it's target article, as it is currently not even mentioned there. Thoughts? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 06:22, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

And "Beelzebob"? Why does it redirect there if the article does not mention the term? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 04:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Chronology of the Ancient Near East

There was some discussion that the Chronology of the ancient Near East needed to be returned to its planned purpose as dealing with the short vs long etc controversies of ANE chronology and splitting of the dynasty ruler stuff to some sort of timeline article. Can we come to some sort of resolution/decision on the future of the article so I can continue to work on it?

I'm fine with whatever but the uncertainty makes it difficult to know how to proceed. As I understand it the choices are

  • Leave things the way they are
  • Rename Chronology of the Ancient Near East to, say, Timeline of the

Ancient Near East and revert the CANE to what is was before I started working on it and start from there

  • Split off part of CANE into a new article, say Timeline of the ANE

and leave part in the old article.

  • Something Else

Am going to drop this note is several places, including my talk page Ploversegg (talk) 18:35, 29 May 2008 (UTC)ploversegg

"Myths of the Fertile Crescent" template series cleanup

Hi all. There are a bunch of templates for the "Myths of the Fertile Crescent series", each of which differs from the rest in inappropriate ways:

And then there's this list which isn't part of that self-described "series", but is apparently an independent effort at collecting some of the same info:

I'd love to take a stab at unifying and cleaning up these templates, but I don't want to step on toes. Is there a meta-history here that I should be aware of? Shall I just move forward with the cleanup "boldly"? Erobson (Talk) 21:38, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Please do! IansAwesomePizza (talk) 00:55, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Wait, there's more!:
Twofistedcoffeedrinker (talk) 22:01, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Unknown ruler of Persia

The article Unknown ruler of Persia about a king of Parthia circa 80 BCE has been tagged for expert attention. If you are familar with the topic, your help would be appreciated. --Eastmain (talk) 23:52, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Legend of Keret, a new article

I have created a new article, Legend of Keret, on an ancient Ugaritic epic poem. I'd appreciate if some-one takes a look at it and assigns an initial rating. Also, I am not an expert in this area and would appreciate if some-one knowledgeable looks through the article with a very critical eye, in terms of accuracy, style, appropriateness of references etc. Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 15:09, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup listing bot

As a test, I have added a hook for the bot that crawls a category every few days and generates a list of all articles needing cleanup etc. If it works out, I'll put it into hidden mode (hidden=1 parameter) and make an explicit link. If it doesn't work, I'll clean up the mess. Ploversegg (talk) 22:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)ploversegg

All the kings from the Sumerian King List that have their own articles seem to have been designated in their articles as "ensis" of their respective cities - I assume because of the assumption that only a superposed, higher-than-city-state level authority could be called lugal or "king", so anything on a city-state level must be an ensi. But that is not necessarily true - for example, in ED IIIb, only the Lagash rulers are known to have called themselves ensi. [2]. I've [citation needed]ed the occurrences I've found. --Anonymous44 (talk) 02:55, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, Sargonic and Ur III rulers would be "Lugals", but prior to that, a priest-king serving a city's temple would probably be the best description for these rulers. Historicpastime (talk) 20:06, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Sure, that's been the common assumption in Assyriology during much of the last hundred years - one that I used to be more convinced of than I am now - but as you can see in the above link, some aspects of it have also been challenged. In particular, the author states that the rulers of Ur, Uruk and even Umma called themselves "lugal" in EDIIIb (the best-documented part of the Pre-Sargonic period) - and while the classic interpretation would be that they were ensis of their main cities (à la 1st dynasty of Lagash) and lugals of the group of subordinated cities they had hegemony over, the author suggests that there is no evidence for them calling themselves ensis in relation to anything. Even if we assume that they - and the lugals of the Sumerian King List - were indeed best described as "priest-kings serving their cities' temples", the question still remains whether this position was referred to as ensi2, en or something else in their respective polities.--Anonymous44 (talk) 14:17, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Rulers calling themselves "lugal" could also be ancient propaganda, like many of their claims of conquest. Since we don't have better word for it, I'd just stick with "ensi". I'm not sure this theory has struck resonance with the mainstream. Historicpastime (talk) 14:44, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
No better word? Well, even if we discard, say, "priest-kings", nobody said we have to specify their titles at all - if we don't, we're on the safe side. Note that we aren't just trying to describe them from our point of view, we are specifying a title, thus a term with which they supposedly designated themselves. But if you happen to have access to a source showing that the modern mainstream view is that these folks had the title ensi, that'd solve the issue. I'll be looking at some articles these days which might be helpful, too.--Anonymous44 (talk) 22:41, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Well then use priest-king - I really don't have any preference, but it would be a good idea to canvass other editors first before tagging everything. One thing, though, that we are not in the business of doing as editors is to impose or favor "challenges" to mainstream scholarship, other than to discuss them in a balanced way in the ENSI article.
We also can't just go by what people call themselves, either. I mean I could go and call myself royalty, but that doesn't make me actually royal, and a lot of propoganda went on back then, as it still does now. And in a modern English wiki we *do* describe things in terms of a worldview that our readers will understand. Historicpastime (talk) 00:24, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
I normally would have posted here before tagging - in fact, normally I wouldn't have had the patience to tag all the articles in the first place. I was just wikifying occurrences of ENSI and I didn't realize how many Sumerian King List articles there were before it was too late to stop. :) Both the "classical" theory and the challenges to it are within mainstream Assyriology, and it ain't clear what the majority view is in this instance. Like I said, I'll be reading up on this these days. --Anonymous44 (talk) 01:34, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

For a good example of how complicated this issue is, you can read http://198.62.75.1/www1/ofm/sbf/Books/LA44/44351LV.pdf Ploversegg (talk) 16:13, 6 August 2008 (UTC)ploversegg

Yep, Ebla and Mari appear to have been a whole different story. Very peculiar - although things get even funnier when you think of the use of "lugal" in the sense of "proprietor" or even "Monsieur" in various Sumerian texts!--Anonymous44 (talk) 22:41, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Conclusions and suggestions

I will state my conclusions regarding titulature here, but I won't edit the Sumerian King List articles any further - it's too much work, and I absolutely won't have time these weeks. I can't afford to discuss it in any detail either. So - here it is.

My reading suggests that both theories still persist - i.e., both the "classical" theory that the lugal is a kind of regional or all-Sumerian hegemon à la Bà, while the ensi is a locally restricted prince, and the "new" theory that lugal, ensi (in Lagash) and en in (Ur) are merely local terms for the same thing, the prince/king of the city-state (see "lugal" for some references). I can't establish which theory is predominant. This suggests that it is best not take a stance, i.e. not to specify the titles of the Sumerian King List rulers. So do several other issues:

First, it's obvious that we know very little about many of the SKL rulers; all we know is that they were described as sovereigns of a united monarchy by the authors of the Sumerian King List, at Ur III times or later (when Isin was seeking to emulate Ur III). Many of those rulers may never have existed in view of the time distance; more importantly, the SKL authors were clearly politically motivated. For one thing, they obviously wanted to extrapolate the Ur III centralized monarchy system to Early Dynastic times, although it's clear that the old system was different - at any rate it had autonomous ensi dynasties, and it is even debated whether it was any kind of united polity at all - perhaps the lugal=ensi theory is correct, or perhaps there could be several "legitimate" lugals at one time (in the latter case those rulers shouldn't be called "kings of Sumer") . Another problem is that, even assuming that an all-Sumerian lugal really existed, the SKL authors may have chosen to drop some rulers who "really" were lugals (whatever that might mean), and to describe as lugals some who "really" weren't - they definitely omitted Mesilim of Kish and Eannatum of Lagash, for instance, though both had referred to themselves as lugals in their inscriptions, and indeed Mesilim's arbitration of the Lagash-Umma disputes is one of the most used clues for the functions of an Early Dynastic lugal. These are not my speculations, they can be found in the literature. On the other hand, it's true that people's own inscriptions are unlikely to be "objective" in their titulature either. Thus, in the absence of secondary sources that clearly refer to each and every one of the SKL people as lugal, we should abstain from doing so.

Second, even assuming that the lugal="all-Sumerian hegemon" theory is correct and that all SKL rulers really were lugals, the question remains whether they should be called "kings of Sumer". The title "lugal of Kiengi[=Sumer] (and Kiuri[=Akkad])" dates to the Akkadian dynasty at best (actual attested occurrences date from Ur III, as can be verified by a CDLI search; the Akkadians and Utuhegal preferred "lugal an-ub-da limmu2-ba" "king of the 4 quarters of the world" (which the Ur III people didn't shun either, BTW); the Gutians were "lugal gu-ti-um" "kings of Gutium"); among earlier hegemons, Lugalzagesi called himself lugal of Uruk and lugal of Kalam [3], and Enshakushanna called himself en ki-en-gi lugal kalam-ma [4] [Kalam = "the land"? "Sumer?" "Mesopotamia"? "The region of Ur" as opposed to Kiengi, the region of Uruk (according to Glassner)?] For the overwhelming majority of early lugals, the attested contemporary title is not "king of Sumer (lugal ki-en-gi)", nor even something like "lugal kalam-ma", but "lugal + /relevant city (Kish, Uruk, Lagash, etc./" (so Mesilim, Urnanshe, etc.)! [Some interesting variations, confirming this rule, are Lugalkiginnedudu, who claimed to exercize "the en-ship at Uruk and the lugal-ship at Ur" (thus supporting Glassner's hypothesis about "Kalam" above) this, and Eannatum, who at one point asserted, in what was likely an exaggeration of his victory, that, in addition to the ensi-ship of Lagash, he had now received the lugal-ship of Kish as well [5] (in contrast to earlier Urnanshe and later Urukagina, who also called themselves lugals, but lugals of Lagash itself).] Thus, these are the titles that we should use for these pre-Ur III rulers, if any. But for most SKL rulers, there are no surviving contemporary inscriptions at all, so there should be no title either. BTW, it should be noted that even if the SKL titulature is mentioned, it is still unclear how it should be formulated: it's obviously lugal, but SKL doesn't specify lugal of what it means - likely not of Sumer only, because it includes Semitic dynasties and what came to be called "Akkad"; possibly of Mesopotamia - but only Southern Mesopotamia was meant; perhaps of "Babylonia" - though this is an anachronism, as is, of course, "Sumer and Akkad". The sad truth is that the SKL authors were not interested in historical differences and accuracy, they were just trying to say that all these kings were somehow equivalent to - and thus legitimized - the Ur III and later kings, so the accurate rendition would probably be to reproduce the Ur III - Isin titulature ("Lugal of Sumer and Akkad").

Third, the above problem leads to the next one - if a hegemon was not "lugal of Sumer", but "lugal of Kish/Lagash/Ur", this seems incompatible with the assumption that he simultaneously remained ensi in relation to his native city (Kish/Lagash/Ur) - an assumption on which the current titles in the articles are based, up until Lugalzagesi. As far as I can see, there is not a single occurrence of such a titulature. In Lugalzagesi's case, he only referred to his father but not to himself as "ensi2 umma{ki}" ([6]). In fact, while it's clear that the offices of en and lugal could be combined, there's little evidence for people ever having combined lugal-ship and ensi-ship (search for "nam-en nam-lugal-da tab-ba" at Google books). The rulers of Lagash call themselves mostly ensis of Lagash, at times lugals of Lagash, but never both. The only case of any form of combination of these offices that I'm aware of is Eannatum, as mentioned above; but no matter how we interpret his use of titles (it seems to fit nicely in the theory that titles were bound to specific localities, and the old speculation that "lugal of Kish" might have meant "king of Sumer/the world" is certainly far-fecthed), it's not enough reason to impose the title ensi on each and every lugal in history. I don't count as an exception the case of Sargon who called himself ensi of ... Enlil(!) - similar to the Assyrian formula "ishshakkum ("steward", etymologically = ensi) of [God] Assur" and not to the Sumerian ones "ensi of [the city of] Lagash".

To sum up, the title templates should be changed; the (wikified) original Sumerian terms should be used rather than translations, because the meaning of the terms is elusive, uncertain and is known to have changed through time and space; people whose inscriptions we have should be styled the way they styled themselves, unless we have evidence against it - which we usually don't (if the SKL does not confirm it, that may be mentioned) - I suppose that titles may carry over to others known to belong to the same dynasty (but then with a question mark, compare the vacillation in the titles in Lagash I); and the "titulature" of the SKL should either be skipped, or used only with a question mark and with an explicit attribution to SKL. --Anonymous44 (talk) 15:56, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Ancient Near East

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Gathering sources for a paper

I am gathering sources for a paper on cotton trade in the middle east and Asia. Please see this question at the reference desk for more details. If you know of any good sources on the subject, please add them to the discussion. Please pass this along to any sister projects that may be able to help me. Thanks. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 19:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

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