Talk:Ancient Egyptian deities

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Linkss

These relevant links are getting removed by User:Beetstra and User:Shadowbot.

• Makara's List of Egyptian Gods from A to H. angelfire.com/me3.
• Makara's List of Egyptian Gods from I to Z. angelfire.com/me3.
• Makara's List of Egyptian Goddesses. angelfire.com/me3.

UNLESS a valid reason (not the spam one, as this is not spam), these sites should be reinserted. J. D. Redding 15:27, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

it appears that links to angelfire were automatically rejected. This was probably a mistake, and the meta:Spam Blacklist at present forbids only one particular angelfire account (/poetry/seidel/). dab (𒁳) 13:58, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Original research

I am concerned about some of the claims in the lead of the article, such as

• Being a culture dating from 10,000 B.C. or before,
• the earliest anthropomorphic deities are presumed to be great goddess figures such as Mut or Ma'at.

and a few others. I am not clear about what the date is referring to, but I can't imagine an argument for a precursor to Egyptian goddesses that goes that far back in history. I'd be interested in seeing references for such claims. — Zerida 08:35, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

these were, of course, bullshit claims (added in September by 83d40m (talk · contribs)), and have been duly removed. --dab (𒁳) 12:27, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I must say that I have taken a look at 83d40m's contributions and I find many other questionable claims in several other articles. I might have to bring it up on WP:ANEGY, but will approach her/him about it first. — Zerida 02:48, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Original Names

I think it's time to stop using the words of a foreign language to say the names of the dieties. Those are all names that descend from the invaders. As historians and intellectuals, we know the true names and should use them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.114.143.28 (talk) 12:49, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The issue is that the Greek versions of many names of Gods have become part of English popular usage e.g. Osiris, Isis and Horus. We also don't know the precise pronunciation of the original Egyptian and so which ever form was used would cause some debate. Its just easier and more efficient to stick to the well known names. Apepch7 (talk) 11:20, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Henotheism

Having read the opening of this article I am concerned at the lack of mention of henotheism and the work of Erik Hornung and others. To rehearse some ancient debate between Petrie and budge seems pointless. Anyone agree? Apepch7 (talk) 15:14, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Certainly. Trying to explain the current theological debate at Ancient Egyptian religion has given me headaches, but if you want to try dealing with it here, go ahead. A. Parrot (talk) 19:07, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

ah ok I should have read that first before posting. Its a difficult subject but I have had a recent email conversation with a philosopher in the US who calls the Egyptian approach polycentric polytheism based on the writings of Proclus who was a pagan Greek Neoplatonist, which is similar to henotheism or monolatry. I think at least I will have a go at making the pantheon and religion pages closer.Apepch7 (talk) 23:08, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Gods or gods

Someone has been changing the words god to God in a few articles recently - I have reverted one example because I feel that God with a capital G is the monotheistic Judeo/Christian/Muslim God and not a term for deities generally.Apepch7 (talk) 11:17, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Family Tree Section

Can someone provide a reference for this family tree. I recognize parts of it but not all. Also where do the attributes eg. Nephthys 'lamentation' come from? ThanksApepch7 (talk) 21:54, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I've seen most of these genealogical connections in one place or another, though not all. The underlying problem with the chart is oversimplification—the actual myths are so diffuse and contradictory that constructing a single family tree is pointless. To wit: Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Isis, Osiris, Seth, and Nephthys are often described as having the same relationships that they have in this chart. However, myths that describe their genealogy this way give Atum as their ultimate ancestor, not Ra. One myth does describe Neith as the mother of Apep and Ra, but it says nothing about their relationship to Nun, Khepri, or Atum. Horus is sometimes the son of Geb and Nut rather than of Isis and Osiris, Anubis is sometimes the son of Ra, and on and on. The same oversimplification is true with the attributes: the chart tries to squeeze the gods' complex characteristics into a few words. (Nephthys, incidentally, is associated with lamentation for Osiris, but that's only one of her characteristics, and I don't think she had any real unifying identity.) Given the chart's problems, I'm inclined to just ditch it. A. Parrot (talk) 02:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

My instinct is to delete it too but I felt it only right to give someone a chance to justify it. The Nephthys = lamenation thing ... I don't like the tendency of some to equate gods/goddesses to a particular function - the deities are complex in nature and its a big step from saying that Nephthys laments Osiris to saying she is the goddess of lamentation. But the main point is exactly as you have said you can't squeeze the deities into fixed family relations like this.Apepch7 (talk) 13:44, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it should be removed, it is a way to complicated subject to be summed up in a single chart. - IanCheesman (talk) 04:35, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Deleted. Apepch7 (talk) 18:14, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Blast. Apparently, before we cut that tree out of this article, User:Lanternix turned it into a template. Now User:BomBom, apparently unaware of this discussion, turned that into an article: Family tree of the Egyptian gods. I think the article should be deleted for the same reasons that it was deleted for here, but now that will involve a deletion debate. If I'm going to plunge into that mess, I'd like to have some support from other people. What do you think? A. Parrot (talk) 19:07, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't like it any better than I did before. It is completely unreferenced and has no dates to show which period is being portrayed. The idea that Nu(n) and Neith were a couple - like great great grand parents I find so simplistic that it will confuse utterly anyone researching the subject. So you have my full support for deletion. Apepch7 (talk) 18:27, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

The deletion debate for that page is here. A. Parrot (talk) 03:02, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Snake deity

When I was a kid, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis had a mummy room with images of various deities all over the wall. They still have the mummies, but that particular installation is long gone. I remember being scared because of a snake-headed deity on the wall. This deity had a long neck, but did not have the hood of a cobra. Does anyone know what this deity might be? --Scottandrewhutchins (talk) 18:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Move proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Article was moved in October 2012. Rd232 ^talk 10:24, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

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I believe this article should be moved to Ancient Egyptian deities. Scholars sometimes use the term "pantheon" to refer to the gods collectively, but not as often as they use just "deities" or "gods". For example, the relevant article in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt is titled "Deities". In their book Gods and Men in Egypt, Françoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche specifically address the use of the term: "We often invoke the word pantheon, of course. If we mean by it simply the totality of gods and goddesses of Egypt, the term is acceptable, but it explains nothing. If it indicates a global organization, comparable to the totality of human society, it is ill taken. Unlike the Greek pantheon, which is our inevitable reference point, the divine configurations of Egypt were structured on levels that could always interact with one another, without ever amounting to a panorama of a single, perfectly hierarchized society." (p. 29)

The articles about deities in other polytheistic systems aren't much help as examples of what to do here. Most "Fooian deities" titles are redirects to articles about the religion or mythology of a culture, or to bare lists of deities in that culture. (See, for instance, Semitic deities, Chinese deities, and Roman deities). "Pantheon" seems to be used for only one other article title, Celtic pantheon. Even Greek pantheon is a redirect to Twelve Olympians, a narrower group of gods. But for Hinduism, there is a Hindu deities article, independent of Hinduism, Hindu mythology, and List of Hindu deities. I think that is the best approach in most cases, including this one.

As usual, I'm unsure whether the qualifier "Ancient" is needed, but because modern Egyptians have at least one god (God in Abrahamic religions), I'm erring on the side of caution. If people who comment here think the title should just be "Egyptian deities", I'll go with that. A. Parrot (talk) 06:46, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I think it is probably true that any page called 'pantheon' should stress the hierarchical structure within the religion and also because of 'pan' attempt to include all the deities (probably impossible). I have always thought, but I can't prove it, that the family structure of AE religion was a kind of popular simplification or even a fabrication for popular consumption ... and so perhaps should not be, or would be confusing if it were the central plank of an understanding of the role and function of the gods themselves. A list of deities would be useful for indexing purposes I guess and as a quick look-up for anyone who wants to check for a particular name.

I agree in principle with what you are suggesting about the move ... would just moving it work? or are you suggesting a complete re-edit of the subject? I think it would be simpler if there was one page for the deities perhaps supported by a list page. One thing I think should be strenuously avoided is the descriptors 'god of ... ' or 'goddess of ..." for instance "Isis goddesses of motherhood" or some such ... people look for this but it is just the wrong way of thinking. I would like to expunge all such references but I fear it is so popular and desired by many that it would cause problems.

I would keep 'Ancient' ... if you were to ask what God is worshiped in Egypt the answer would be Allah and not Amen-Ra ... Ancient Egypt refers specifically to the dynastic (and pre-dynastic) culture of the Nile valley and is therefore clear to all. Apepch7 (talk) 09:37, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Okay. Moving the page to a new title is easy; I can just click the "move" button at the top of the page and type in the new title, and everything on this page moves to the new title. I am working on a rewrite of the article, but that's mostly separate from changing the title. The rewrite is an overview of the gods' general characteristics (with loads of examples), so it will explain how the major gods' natures are far too complex to be pigeonholed in one role. A. Parrot (talk) 16:47, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Ok. First may I give a vote of thanks to you for doing so much to improve the Egyptolgy on Wiki. If its easy to just move then I would suggest that would be a good idea. Then maybe just take out any obvious duplication or dare I say it contradiction. Then begin to ship away from there at the detail (?) Apepch7 (talk) 19:15, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I'll move it soon. I just want to wait a few days to see if anyone else comments here, since I left a note about these discussions on the wikiproject page. A. Parrot (talk) 23:53, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

List of deities

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Section was split to List of Egyptian deities. Rd232 ^talk 10:22, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

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The section List of deities of Ancient Egypt takes up about half the length of this article, even though it's nowhere near complete—there are only 109 deities listed, whereas The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt by Richard H. Wilkinson lists about 150. George Hart's Dictionary of Egyptian Gods lists a similar number, including half a dozen that aren't in Wilkinson, and I've collected a personal list of at least 55 gods that aren't listed in those books but are mentioned in other Egyptological sources. And James P. Allen once estimated the total number of Egyptian deities at about 1,400. The list could grow truly enormous and dwarf the rest of the article, even if the article were better developed.

The list is probably too bulky to conform to the guideline for lists within articles, and it would certainly be too bulky if it were as thorough as it should be. There is already a stand-alone list on this same subject: List of Egyptian deities, which began as a copy of this article's list. I think the list should be removed from this article and its content merged into that of the stand-alone list (to which this article would link). Anyone agree or disagree? A. Parrot (talk) 06:46, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

"Neterw" could include all types of 'entity' such as demons in the Duat ... so any attempt at a complete list is doomed I think. Perhaps what we should make sure is that all those deities (and groups like SoH) worthy of their own page on here are listed ... in this way at least things will be self consistent. I imagine that the main use of the list page would be to help people who are uncertain of the exact name of the deity they want to look up and by scanning the list they can find it easily.Apepch7 (talk) 09:44, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Just to reinforce the point I made above about short descriptors ... I looked on the current list page and the first entry describes Aken as the Ferryman ... while he was actually the boat keeper and Mahaf was the Ferryman. I realise this is just plain wrong but it illustrates the danger of quick one line descriptions.Apepch7 (talk) 09:48, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I really don't know how to organize a list of deities or what descriptions to give. Egyptian gods are an organizational nightmare. But how do we decide what gods are worthy of their own article? There are many cases where the decision is obvious—Isis and Ra need articles, and Mestjet (see Wilkinson, p. 179) does not. But there are borderline cases like Amunet, about whom somebody raised the issue last year (see Talk:Amunet#Merge Amun and Amunet?). There isn't enough information about her in the article now, but enough information may well exist, somewhere in the scattered mass of inaccessible Egyptological studies. A. Parrot (talk) 16:47, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Is it possible to call up a list of all existing entries under Egyptian deities? My Wiki knowledge is very limited. If so then I think the first step would be just to make sure that any list contains all those deities which already have a page. Then when we know what we've got to scout round and see if there are any glaring omissions and/or inclusions which don't really merit their own page (a tougher call). I think some deities are very much the adjunct to other deities, such as your example of Amunet who (correct me if I'm wrong) I would mainly mention as one of the eight Ogdoad and the pair of Amun (hidden-ess). So I wouldn't give her, her own page. Structuring the list is probably a nightmare so I would suggest just alphabetical with sub-sets where they clearly fall into groups eg. Ogdoad again or Sons of Horus (do we need to list Hapi, Imsety, Duamutef and Quebsenuef as well???). Otherwise avoid things like family groupings ... for instance Isis can appear in various relationships to Horus and so on ... which is back to other point about one line descriptors.Apepch7 (talk) 19:25, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

There is Category:Egyptian deities. It's messy and haphazard, but I think it includes all the Egyptian deity articles in the wiki. Some of them are splits or duplicates of other topics, and others may not be gods although the articles claim they are (like Imiut fetish), but here are the article names I collected from the category, excluding articles like Queen of heaven (antiquity) that aren't gods at all. A. Parrot (talk) 23:53, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

There seem to be a number of pages on some fairly obscure deities like Iabet for instance .. who is clearly 'the East' personified as a goddess in the Amduat. There's a lot of work in here! Even some of the names are a problem eg. Sutekh ... most would look for Set or perhaps Seth. I feel an attack wiki-despair coming on. lol. Apepch7 (talk) 12:47, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Transliteration of the Egyptian words for "god" and "goddess"

Somebody, using various IP addresses from Hanoi, has changed the transliteration of the Egyptian words for "god" and "goddess" in this article several times in the past two months. In writing the article, I rendered these words as nṯr and nṯrt, based on the transliteration system used in James P. Allen's book Middle Egyptian, the source I cited for the hieroglyphic spellings. The IP user keeps changing them to nthr and nthrt. I keep changing it back, though with increasing unease, as these changes are adding up to a slow edit war. I've put messages on the talk pages for these IP addresses, but I don't think the message ever catches up with the editor because his or her IP keeps changing.

As I said in those messages, many systems are used to transliterate the Egyptian language, but the systems that use th to transliterate the middle consonant in nṯr are far out of date. Our article about the transliteration of Egyptian has a chart of several of the systems that are widely used today. The list includes some of the major reference works on the Egyptian language, like the Wörterbuch der aegyptischen Sprache and Alan Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar, and the systems range in date from the early 20th century to the start of the 21st. Of the eight systems listed, five use ṯ to transliterate the sound in question. One uses T, one uses č, and one uses c. So ṯ seems to be the most common sign for this sound, and th may not appear in any source in current use. On top of that, th makes English speakers think of the sound at the beginning of words like "thin" and "thatch", which is not the sound that the Egyptian ṯ is believed to represent. For these reasons, I really think the sound should not be transliterated this way.

I don't know what to do about this problem, because I can't seem to communicate with the IP user. I've left a note at the talk page of the latest IP address. If the anonymous user sees it, I ask him or her to discuss the reasons for the transliteration change below. If anybody else reads this, I'm asking for suggestions about how to handle it if the IP user doesn't respond. A. Parrot (talk) 18:15, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Although I don't know Egyptian, my impression from encountering it regularly (mainly in the context of ancient Greek and Roman religion) is that the system of transliteration you follow predominates current scholarship. Since it's an IP, the simplest remedy would be protection, but I don't know whether the level of disruption rises to that. In my view, however, you've attempted to notify the user(s), and have invited discussion in your edit summaries, without getting a response, so it's unnecessary disruption: I just had to revert it again. Since there's no single entity to deal with, I'd probably try placing a protection request at WP:RPP. To me, an FA is a readier candidate for protection, because it's less in need of attracting passing editors for improvement. (At the same time, I do see small but high-quality edits made by passing IPs.) Cynwolfe (talk) 19:57, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't see what can be done other than semi-protection, but semi-protection is usually reserved for articles that are getting several unconstructive edits a day. Today's edit was the first in nearly two months. And the transliteration difference isn't terrible damage to the article; most of my frustration comes from the inability to communicate. If the IP editor does it again soon (like the first time around, when there were several instances in one week), I suppose I'll go to RFPP and see what they say. I just wish there were a better option than chasing the editor from address to address. A. Parrot (talk) 21:19, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Question about a citation

• Citation #3 is "Allen 1997, pp. 44–54, 59". In the "works cited", there are two works of James P. Allen, dated from 1999 and 2000 and one from 2001 in notes section. Could we be more explicit on the 1997 dated source? --Mskyrider (talk) 11:33, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

  There is no 1997 source, only my stupid error, which I just corrected. Thanks for pointing it out. The refs that said "Allen 1997" should have said "Allen 1999", referring to the Archaeology Odyssey article. I looked through the notes and references and didn't see "Allen 2001". If it's there, it's an error too. All the Allen citations should be either 1999 (the Archaeology Odyssey article) or 2000 (the original edition of Middle Egyptian). Unfortunately I can't cite specific pages of the 1999 article, because the journal has been discontinued and I was able to obtain the article from the publisher as a Word file, which is oddly formatted and doesn't have page numbers. I only know the page range from another source that refers to the article. A. Parrot (talk) 18:31, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• In fact I was referring to Redford 2001, but I see that's only "Ba" article written by Allen. So there is no Allen 2001. Thanks for the correction, it answers fully my question. May be we should consider using harv citation which links notes to references.-Mskyrider (talk) 08:03, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I've considered that possibility, but in long articles, including this one, I often use text notes that have their own references within the note. I don't know of a way to incorporate the harv citation within a note the same way I've done so far with standard <ref> tags. I'm no expert on referencing systems, though. If there's a way to do it, I'd have no objection to converting to the harv system. A. Parrot (talk) 18:25, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

• No problem, I've began to use the template harvard citation and I remarked another possible error. There are some "Johnston 2003" citations but the source is 2004. I've corrected them to 2004. Could you check that as well? The good side of the harvard citation template is to catch this kind of error. --Mskyrider (talk) 12:37, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I looked it up, and it is 2004. Thank you for your help. A. Parrot (talk) 14:25, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

List of deities, again

This issue has a complicated history. Originally, Egyptian pantheon was created as a bare list of gods, but it quickly developed sections of body text describing the gods as a class, above the list. Eventually, somebody copied the list onto a separate page, titled list of Egyptian deities. In 2012, I moved the main "pantheon" article to the current title. A few months later, I replaced the body text of the article with a much more thorough analysis of the deities as a group.

As #List of deities above shows, while I was working on the rewrite I wasn't sure whether to keep the list here. As this article states, the number of deities is nearly impossible to count. In addition, it's often difficult to distinguish between a god and an epithet; the classic example is Werethekau. (The comprehensive expert source, Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen, apparently avoids the problem by listing all known epithets. It takes eight volumes to do that.) When the article had its peer review, Tim riley said that the list "does not belong in the present article, any more than, say, a complete list of compositions belongs in Mozart's article." So I deleted the list in this article and provided a hatnote and a "see also" link to the preexisting, independent list.

Today, Cosprings merged the independent list into this article. I lean against that. Even without listing every epithet, a list much more extensive than the current one risks contravening the Manual of Style section on embedded lists (WP:Manual of Style/Embedded lists#Size). The current list is by no means very extensive; it leaves out many deities (Serapis, Sokar, Nun, Heryshaf, Banebdjedet, Andjety, Sopdu, Shay, Nehebu-Kau, Shezmu, Neper, Mandulis, Panebtawy, Shed, Tutu, Amenhotep son of Hapu…) who are significant enough to have their own entries in both the major English-language reference works, Wilkinson 2003 and Hart 2005. Most of those gods have their own articles already.

So what should we do with the list? A. Parrot (talk) 21:15, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

To me, the list HAS to be part of the main article, because otherwise it basically completely unsourced. The source on the list article is referenced in the main article. Plus it makes navigation easier. Plus it was an orphaned article. So many reasons. I clicked on the article, and there are barely any gods specifically mentioned, so I scroll down looking for the list. It just doesn't make sense having separate articles. Cosprings (talk) 20:11, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

The thinking behind the division is that this article describes the general characteristics of Egyptian deities, much as castle describes the traits of castles, with list of castles a separate article. I did make an effort to include examples, and 40 individual deities named in the article does not strike me as "barely any". In any case, I've asked for opinions at the Ancient Egypt wikiproject page, so we can get more input.

The list certainly needs an overhaul, no matter where it goes. To clean it up, we need to settle on inclusion criteria. Maybe we could include all the articles on gods from Category:Egyptian deities and its subcategories. Unfortunately, some of those articles are incoherent stubs (like Aani) that may need to be prodded. A. Parrot (talk) 03:17, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

I remain of the view that the list should be a separate page, as is customary for substantial articles. There's no harm in having a start class article with a list incorporated but if aiming at GA or FA having a list plonked into the article will certainly be a stumbling block. As to citations, both the list and the main article naturally require citations, but where appropriate the same citation will serve both pages. Ancient Egypt is not my area of expertise, and I can't help with citations, but I hope colleagues from the wikiproject will be able to rally round. Tim riley talk 07:56, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Why does the list need an overhaul? It is sourced on the main article, and almost every listing has an article. See List of Hunnic rulers. Is this what you want? It makes no sense to have a list of 100 names without the relevant information also on the same page. Why have a good article and a stub article when you can have one good, better article? Cosprings (talk) 12:34, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Correct me if I am wrong, but Cosprings appears to have taken it upon him/herself to import a large amount of material into a featured article without consulting anybody, let alone establishing a consensus. I hope I am mistaken about this, but if not it seems to me a flagrant breach of Wikipedia's modus operandi, not to mention of good manners. Consensus to effect the change is, in my view, unlikely for the reasons that have been very clearly explained above; moreover, the article has passed though the FA process without the recently added list. Articles are articles and lists are lists: see, for example: Shakespeare article and list or Mahler article and list. In my view the list should be removed forthwith from the article. – Tim riley talk 13:33, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

List don't have to be separate from the article, which is why I pointed to WP:Manual of Style/Embedded lists. When judging whether to include a list, I think there are two major questions. The first is whether the list is a distinct enough subject from the article. Composers are fairly distinct from a list of their compositions—one is a person and the other is a list of works. In contrast, this is the article on Egyptian deities, and it's not totally unreasonable to expect the deities to be listed here. The second question is whether the list is so long as to overwhelm the article. This list could easily become that long if it were more thorough, because Egyptian deities number in the thousands. The current version of the list is haphazard, as are most articles that haven't received the focused attention of one or more knowledgeable editors. That is why we need to set a consistent standard for what deities to include in the list. A. Parrot (talk) 16:28, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

One point to bear in mind is that if anyone were to take the article as it now stands through the Wikipedia:Featured article review process it would be delisted. The insertion of an inadequate and badly referenced list would, I am pretty certain, be fatal to its survival, and rightly so. That said, I shall stick my oar no further in for the moment, and leave discussion of content to those who know what they're talking about. No need to begin the FAR process yet. Tim riley talk 07:13, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

In theory including a sorted list of the gods with their principle attributes seems a good idea but in practice it probably wouldn't work because of the huge numbers involved. To keep the list to a manageable size could end up causing ongoing conflict as to who should be included. A link to such and an article would be useful for somebody who wanted to know which god looked after pregnant mothers, babies, crops etc. and came to this article to find out. 09:30, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, which is why, on Tim's advice, I left the list out and put "see also" links to it at the top and bottom of the article. If the list is moved out again, I will certainly put the links back. A. Parrot (talk) 17:27, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't look like anyone else is going to weigh in here. Yt95 and Tim.riley oppose the list's inclusion in this article, and only Cosprings is in favor. I'm not completely opposed to the list's inclusion, but I lean against it for more or less the reasons Yt95 just stated. Unless somebody else supports inclusion, I'll move the list out again in a couple of days (and clean up its mess of references along the way, so it will be less haphazard than it was before). A. Parrot (talk) 14:03, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I've carried out the separation. See my posts at Talk:List of Egyptian deities for details. A. Parrot (talk) 03:49, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Citation check

Could the text from Hornung's book be pasted here that supports the article assertion "By the Late Period (c. 664–323 BC), several sites across Egypt were said to be the burial places of particular deities." as it doesn't appear in my edition. I'm curious as to the number of "dead" (who Hurnung in my edition points out are "not dead", p. 160) . Yt95 (talk) 10:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Page 156 in my copy: "In the late period the tombs of gods are also depicted and mentioned as being on earth—in Thebes even the tombs of the great primeval gods [referring to Medinet Habu, said to be the resting place of the Ogdoad], who were not created and should therefore reach back to the deathless world before creation, but who fall prey to the consistent extension of of the idea of mortality which encompasses all deities. The best-known tombs are those of Osiris at Philae, Dendara, and Abydos (among many other places). A text from the eighteenth nome of Upper Egypt also speaks of an entire necropolis of tombs of gods, and the sites of tombs of gods are known from Edfu and Hermopolis." A. Parrot (talk) 17:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Gods of Egypt

The usage and primary topic of "Gods of Egypt" is under discussion, see talk:Gods of Egypt (film) -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 04:39, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Recent edit of the entire article

I don't object to every change made by 83d40m, but I find most of them unhelpful. When I undid 83d40m's first revision, I only had room in the edit summary to register one specific objection, but I'll list several of the others here.

• Most significant is the passage that now says "Living kings were equated with Horus and called the "son" of many deities, particularly Osiris and Ra; deceased kings were equated with these elder gods. The tradition tended to be similar for women who became pharaohs." There was no tradition for women who became pharaohs. Women weren't supposed to. Hatshepsut had to bend tradition in order to justify her rule. As I plan to write in an upcoming revision of Hathor: "Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled as a pharaoh in the early New Kingdom, emphasized her relationship to Hathor in a different way. She used names and titles that linked her to a variety of goddesses, including Hathor, so as to legitimize her rule in what was normally a male position." Sobekneferu and Tawosret are not as well documented as Hatshepsut, but I'm not aware of evidence that either of them took the same approach as she did, or whether they even had time in their comparatively short reigns to develop an ideology of female rule the way she did. For that matter, texts from her reign often switch genders between male and female. Whether those were errors by scribes copying texts dating to the reigns of her male predecessors or represent some kind of ideological distinction, they show that the position of pharaoh was supposed to be occupied by a man. The Egyptian ideology of kingship was overwhelmingly masculine, and it's misleading to imply otherwise.
• "Families of three deities, with a father, mother, and child, represent the creation of new life and the succession of the parent by the child, a pattern that connects divine families with royal succession." Again, the father god, not the mother, represented the king. Isis, near the end of ancient Egyptian history, was a partial exception but only a partial one. She was treated as a ruling deity in texts from Philae and maybe some other places, but she was never entirely independent of her husband and son. Horus was certainly thought of as his father's heir, not his mother's.
• "The majority of kings, later called pharaohs, were male." This is related to the problem above. The ideal pharaoh was male. If we ignore the complicated situation in the Ptolemaic dynasty, in which queens often wielded some measure of independent power but rarely reigned alone, we get four or five female pharaohs out of something like 250 total. The second problem is the nit-picking qualification of "pharaoh". Yes, the title it etymologically derives from didn't emerged until the New Kingdom, but in English, "pharaoh" is a general term for the divine king of ancient Egypt. And "later called pharaohs" is confusing for those who aren't aware of the etymological background; later than what?
• "The picture is further complicated by Atenism's apparent tolerance for some other deities, such as Shu and the retention of the patronage of Wadjet and Nekhbet." While I wouldn't be surprised if Wadjet and Nekhbet still appear on Amarna Period monuments, the source I cited doesn't mention them. I wouldn't mind adding Tefnut or Maat to this passage, as they are supported by the citation.
• 83d40m avoids using possessive constructions like "gods' manifestations" and re-words such passages to use "of" instead. I see no reason to do so. The possessive is more concise and is not, to my knowledge, considered wrong.
• 83d40m replaced "gods" with "deities" in every instance where it isn't referring specifically to male deities, arguing that doing so establishes "consistency of terminology". I would argue that it makes the article more repetitive to use one word. The article has to refer to divine beings, as a broad class, very frequently, and I want to vary it as much as possible (especially after writing Egyptian temple, where there is no real synonym and I had to say "temples" over and over). Maybe the original text used "gods" too often and the terms should be balanced out more, but I don't want to use the same word in every case.
• 83d40m also replaced "but" at the beginning of sentences with "however". "However" is a weaker word and prone to overuse, and it really dangles when put at the end of a sentence. In some of these cases I'd be willing to keep "however", and in some I'd prefer to just delete the conjunction, but there is nothing wrong in using "but" to start a sentence, and in a few of these instances I want to leave it in place.

As a final note, more than one of these problems seem to stem from a desire to overemphasize the importance of women and goddesses—a problem that is evident even in the second section on this talk page. Goddesses were certainly important, but kingship was thought of as being transmitted from male deities to human men, with the participation and support of female deities. Only in the last centuries of ancient Egyptian religion did that change, and then only partially. This article should not mislead readers about goddesses' significance. A. Parrot (talk) 02:29, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Replies to each point by User:A. Parrot

• Most significant is the passage that now says "Living kings were equated with Horus and called the "son" of many deities, particularly Osiris and Ra; deceased kings were equated with these elder gods. The tradition tended to be similar for women who became pharaohs." There was no tradition for women who became pharaohs. Women weren't supposed to. Hatshepsut had to bend tradition in order to justify her rule. As I plan to write in an upcoming revision of Hathor: "Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled as a pharaoh in the early New Kingdom, emphasized her relationship to Hathor in a different way. She used names and titles that linked her to a variety of goddesses, including Hathor, so as to legitimize her rule in what was normally a male position." Sobekneferu and Tawosret are not as well documented as Hatshepsut, but I'm not aware of evidence that either of them took the same approach as she did, or whether they even had time in their comparatively short reigns to develop an ideology of female rule the way she did. For that matter, texts from her reign often switch genders between male and female. Whether those were errors by scribes copying texts dating to the reigns of her male predecessors or represent some kind of ideological distinction, they show that the position of pharaoh was supposed to be occupied by a man. The Egyptian ideology of kingship was overwhelmingly masculine, and it's misleading to imply otherwise.

As early as the First Dynasty there were women who ruled. Are your asserting that traditions would not have been followed if the ruler was a woman?

I find your determination that “Women weren’t supposed to.” rather telling of a personal bias. An encyclopedia is neither for theorizing nor projection.

Our article is intended to be general, since there were women who ruled, the discussion ought to include the realities, not just what an editor considers an “ideal”. Exceptions to patterns often are given extensive discussion in topics because they may be very informative.

Hatshepsut ruled in the Eighteenth Dynasty and greater documentation exists about her rule than for some of the other women rulers, especially the early ones. One cannot presume that early women rulers would have (or would not have) followed what she did. I note that apparently she only avoided using one eighteenth dynasty title for the ruler, that described being the bull-son of Hathor, which would have followed logically given her gender.

A discussion of the Ancient Egyptian Deities ought not become a discussion of the rulers.

• "Families of three deities, with a father, mother, and child, represent the creation of new life and the succession of the parent by the child, a pattern that connects divine families with royal succession." Again, the father god, not the mother, represented the king. Isis, near the end of ancient Egyptian history, was a partial exception but only a partial one. She was treated as a ruling deity in texts from Philae and maybe some other places, but she was never entirely independent of her husband and son. Horus was certainly thought of as his father's heir, not his mother's.

A parent includes a father, how could this be inappropriate?

• "The majority of kings, later called pharaohs, were male." This is related to the problem above. The ideal pharaoh was male. If we ignore the complicated situation in the Ptolemaic dynasty, in which queens often wielded some measure of independent power but rarely reigned alone, we get four or five female pharaohs out of something like 250 total. The second problem is the nit-picking qualification of "pharaoh". Yes, the title it etymologically derives from didn't emerged until the New Kingdom, but in English, "pharaoh" is a general term for the divine king of ancient Egypt. And "later called pharaohs" is confusing for those who aren't aware of the etymological background; later than what?

"The majority of kings, later called pharaohs, were male." seems pretty straightforward and very accurate. How could there be an objection to it?

• "The picture is further complicated by Atenism's apparent tolerance for some other deities, such as Shu and the retention of the patronage of Wadjet and Nekhbet." While I wouldn't be surprised if Wadjet and Nekhbet still appear on Amarna Period monuments, the source I cited doesn't mention them. I wouldn't mind adding Tefnut or Maat to this passage, as they are supported by the citation.

A view of every image of this ruler shows him wearing a crown with the Two Ladies upon his brow. Certainly that would have been different if they were not tolerated.

• 83d40m avoids using possessive constructions like "gods' manifestations" and re-words such passages to use "of" instead. I see no reason to do so. The possessive is more concise and is not, to my knowledge, considered wrong.

Neither is wrong, why would it be the basis for justification of reversal of the entire edit?

• 83d40m replaced "gods" with "deities" in every instance where it isn't referring specifically to male deities, arguing that doing so establishes "consistency of terminology". I would argue that it makes the article more repetitive to use one word. The article has to refer to divine beings, as a broad class, very frequently, and I want to vary it as much as possible (especially after writing Egyptian temple, where there is no real synonym and I had to say "temples" over and over). Maybe the original text used "gods" too often and the terms should be balanced out more, but I don't want to use the same word in every case.

Au contraire, I did miss some, which can be corrected in another edit!

Accuracy is important in an article, using correct terminology consistently throughout avoids misinterpretation by our readers. Deities are the topic of the article, of course it will appear repeatedly.

• 83d40m also replaced "but" at the beginning of sentences with "however". "However" is a weaker word and prone to overuse, and it really dangles when put at the end of a sentence. In some of these cases I'd be willing to keep "however", and in some I'd prefer to just delete the conjunction, but there is nothing wrong in using "but" to start a sentence, and in a few of these instances I want to leave it in place.

Starting a sentence with a conjunction is not considered good construction in English and a personal preference by an editor may differ from another.

As a final note, more than one of these problems seem to stem from a desire to overemphasize the importance of women and goddesses—a problem that is evident even in the second section on this talk page. Goddesses were certainly important, but kingship was thought of as being transmitted from male deities to human men, with the participation and support of female deities. Only in the last centuries of ancient Egyptian religion did that change, and then only partially. This article should not mislead readers about goddesses' significance. A. Parrot (talk) 02:29, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Again, the topic is deities, not kingship, and an editor ought to avoid changing the perspective of the article by stressing a bias that is more likely an overemphasis derived from a bias.

Apparently, the earliest deities from which the full pantheon of Ancient Egyptian Deities evolved, included goddesses such as Neith, the first prime creator, …the creator of the universe and all it contains and she governs how it functions, "I am the things that are, that will be, and that have been..." Examination of Ancient Egyptian Deities from the most primal to the latest, demonstrate clearly the significant presence of goddesses among the deities worshiped. Facts are facts, no matter how it offends the sensitivities of a bias. I am not threatened by a balanced perspective, and believe that our readers should be provided with the least biased information presented in the best English.

Thank you for providing explanations, please consider my replies as positive criticism along with insight into my choices to edit an article to which you have contributed significantly. _ _ _ _ 83d40m (talk) 00:22, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

I'll reduce the number of bullet points this time.

• "Neither is wrong, why would it be the basis for justification of reversal of the entire edit?" Because it makes the article wordier than it needs to be.
• "Starting a sentence with a conjunction is not considered good construction in English…" The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed., 2010) disagrees. It says, "There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice" (pp. 257–258).
• I'd rather use Tefnut and Maat in the Atenism passage, simply because they're supported by the source I already cited, whereas Wadjet and Nekhbet aren't. We don't need to list every deity Akhenaten may have tolerated, after all.
• When I say that women weren't supposed to be pharaohs, I'm expressing the Egyptian belief system, not my own. From Dancing for Hathor: Women in Ancient Egypt (2010) by Carolyn Graves-Brown on page 106: "Female rulers are given the attributes of essentially male kingship such as false beards (the beard is also false when worn by male kings) and kilts. But depictions of female queens, such as Sobekneferu or Hatshepsut, wearing male attire should certainly not be seen as evidence of transvestism or mythical androgyny. Female kings were rather taking on a male persona, given the essential masculinity of kingship." And from page 130: "For the Egyptians, male and female complement one another, as shown by paired gendered elements such as night and day, earth and heaven, cyclical time and eternity. These pairs represent two aspects of the same phenomenon. Thus, the feminine was essential to masculine kingship and followed the mythic prototypes of the actions of the gods. When living, the king was the god Horus, when dead, he was the god Osiris. The queen took on aspects of goddess consort." Goddesses were indispensable, but in ancient Egyptian belief, kingship was a fundamentally male phenomenon. Regarding your references to Neith: yes, she's one of the earliest attested goddesses, but the creation myth about her is one of the latest ancient Egyptian religious texts. The inscription that says she was all things that are, were, and will be—a subject on which I wrote the article—is known only through Greek mentions of it and cannot have dated back as far as Neith herself; the scholars who discuss it give the impression that the statue bearing it was a product of the first millennium BC. Anyway, to get back to the article text, the passage under discussion is about the ideology of kingship and should reflect it. We cannot claim that there was a tradition for how to treat female pharaohs when those pharaohs were so rare, and I'm not sure we can say anything about a shared ideology between them, given that the evidence for most of them is so sparse. As you said, the article should be about deities, not rulers, and because the evidence about female pharaohs is complicated, it's hard to go into it here without either going off-topic or misleading the reader.

I have been thinking for a long time of adding more about goddesses' relationship to kingship. I was slow getting around to it because I had my hands full, and because Lana Troy's Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egypt, which I intended to use because it focuses specifically on female divinity, is less to the point and harder to work from than Graves-Brown. I can use one or both to expand on the subject sometime in the next month. The Atenism passage can easily include Tefnut and Maat. As for your other changes, I object because most of them made the article wordier and more repetitious. A. Parrot (talk) 03:40, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

83d40m: Do you have any reply? A. Parrot (talk) 06:23, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it is on my list of things to do, but I have not had a block of time to tackle it yet. Thanks for the nudge, I intend to reply as soon as I have time to address it properly. _ _ _ _ 83d40m (talk) 13:53, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

A. Parrot:, sorry for the delay, and thank you for your patience. I have just read the article again and have a few additional edits that I will make, but must note that I think it works well for our readers. Of course, we differ in some views. That is not unusual among editors. It does not mean that either is wrong and since anyone may edit, so long as it is correct, I may replace what you write – just as you may what I write.

“Wordiness” in a sentence of an article of such length seems a curious justification to me that appears a little contrived because I believe that clearly stating concepts often calls for careful and complete rather than economic and incomplete wording.

Because it appears in ten percent of sentences of ‘first-rate writing’, doesn’t mean that it is good construction. Personal writing styles do not reflect good construction, to the contrary, they set themselves apart and often are used for that exact purpose. Encyclopedic writing is not supposed to follow such styles, but rather, more resemble technical or scientific writing, which aims to inform, not to affect a distinctive style. A conjunction joins, to have half of the concept stated separately defeats the logic and may mislead the reader.

You seem overly concerned with your authorship and its personal grounding. We are supposed to overcome wanting ownership. I appreciate your significant contributions to this article, but an article in an encyclopedia should not be written as one would something published as your personal opinion, theory, or judgment. In fact, trying to remove such characteristics makes for a better encyclopedia. I believe that more information is good for readers, not less. Providing, not limiting, information is the purpose of our articles. Conveying as much information as possible should be the objective. Economy should be secondary.

Overcoming contemporary biases is difficult. I constantly have to examine and correct my writing here to avoid projecting them. They may be so subtle that attempts to overcome them elicit accusations of ‘overemphasis’ about such things, as you have raised. I feel that I have gotten past that in my writing here and I hope that it can serve as an example to others who have yet to realize that those objections are based in a contemporary bias. Detailed rationalizations should be flags signaling where self-examination is needed. It is a rocky path at first, but becomes easier as one breaks down the biases in successive steps.

Being complicated is not valid as a reason for avoiding discussion of a topic that has some relevance to an article. Avoidance always is a disservice to our readers.

I look forward to your expansion about the influences on the rulers of Ancient Egypt. We have so much evidence that could be used to provide better understanding of the nature of the evolution of their religious beliefs and its effect upon the rest of the culture. _ _ _ _ 83d40m (talk) 02:33, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

I have supplied sources for my arguments. You have responded by repeating your unsourced assertions, accusing me of trying to own the article, and implying that I disagree with you out a modern sexist bias—rather than a desire accurately describe the sexist beliefs of an ancient culture. (Yes, ancient Egypt was sexist. Popular writing about it tends to exaggerate gender equality in Egypt because it looks good compared with many other ancient cultures, which were far worse.)

If I seem to "want ownership" of the article's content, it's for the reasons laid out at WP:STEWARDSHIP. I know the sources thoroughly and want the content to reflect them as accurately as possible. In contrast, I'm far from an authority on stylistic choices, so when editors who are more knowledgeable than I am edit the wording of articles I've written, I generally leave those changes in place without comment. Their stylistic edits make articles crisper and less repetitive. Yours do the opposite.

If you want me to quote style guides dispelling the notion that technical or scientific writing can't start a sentence with a conjunction, or Egyptological sources using "he" to refer to a generic pharaoh when discussing the ideology of kingship, or Egyptological sources using "gods" as a general term interchangeable with "deities", I can do so at great length.

Regarding your valid point, that the article doesn't say enough about the role of gender in divinity and kingship, I will definitely write up additions to the article on those topics over the weekend. A. Parrot (talk) 05:54, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Nefartiti

Say something about Nefertiti's eyes... 223.191.49.223 (talk) 18:26, 14 January 2022 (UTC)