Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ancient Egyptian literature/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 18:57, 18 August 2009 [1].

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Ancient Egyptian literature

Nominator(s): Pericles of Athens^Talk 02:40, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• Featured article candidates/Ancient Egyptian literature/archive1

This article, which has about 45 KB of main-body prose text and as far as I know meets all FA mandatory criteria, is well-cited and has many reliable sources (in fact, I've cited most of the big-name authorities on Egyptian literature: Erman, Breasted, Parkinson, Lichtheim, Wilson, Loprieno, Morenz, Fischer-Elfert, Forman, Quirke, Simpson, and Wente). Although I usually do Chinese history articles, I noticed this was a very neglected subject on Wiki, so I decided to act boldly. For anyone interested in Ancient Egypt or literary history in general, this article will certainly be an enjoyable read (I guarantee it).Pericles of Athens^Talk 02:40, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• Done; thanks. Images need alt text as per WP:ALT. Eubulides (talk) 05:05, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

??? But they do have alt text. Could you point out a specific image? I can't find one image that lacks alt text. Thanks.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 06:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

See WP:ALT for correct formatting of alt text (not to be confused with captions) Brianboulton (talk) 08:30, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Also please click on "alt text" in the toolbox at the upper right corner of this review page. You'll get a list of all the images, and their alt text in little blue boxes. The blue boxes are all blank, indicating that none of the images have alt text. Eubulides (talk) 08:33, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh; ok. I was under the assumption that you were just talking about captions, because I literally have been here since 2007 and have more than ten Featured articles under my belt, yet have never come across this problem before (or rather, no one bothered to mention Alt Text). Does this mean I have to go back through every article I've ever written and provide Alt Text now?--Pericles of Athens^Talk 12:58, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

That is recommended. Dabomb87 (talk) 13:36, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but this needs to be said. Alt text is not a "problem" as you so callously put it. It provides an essential service to visually impaired Wikipedians and I wish it had been enforced earlier. Perhaps the real problem is your attitude? MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 17:55, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Pericles and I have resolved all and any issues. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 20:28, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

All of these images now have alt text (for this article, at least). Problem solved. Moving on...--Pericles of Athens^Talk 13:47, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Wow, dude, settle down and be civil. In no way, shape, or form was I trying to disparage the visually impaired. When I said "problem solved," I meant essentially "the problem of not having alt text is fixed and we can move on to reviewing the article". I don't know how you interpreted that as meaning the visually impaired are a "problem". Lol! Please, grab a beer, a chill pill, or take a long vacation from Wiki if this is how you normally greet people. Or, if you are willing and able to be civil, I would like to get this review started on a very important subject.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 18:21, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for doing all that. The alt text requirement is relatively new. We don't expect all existing FAs to be updated immediately, but when you have the time.... The alt text you wrote was very good; I attempted to improve it a bit by removing less-important phrases like "A museum display of" (see WP:ALT #Flawed and better examples, example 2), and removing phrases like "princess", "limestone", "hypostyle", and "ostracon" that I thought could not be verified by a non-expert who is looking only at the image (see example 3 from the same section). Eubulides (talk) 18:17, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

You're very welcome. I'm glad to cooperate and help out the visually impaired. Cheers.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 18:21, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support Query That was an interesting read, nice work. The article begins "Ancient Egyptian literature refers to literature written in the Egyptian language during Ancient Egypt's pharaonic period,". Which would leave out the Coptic Ptolomaic and Roman eras. Whilst later it says "The final script adopted by the Egyptians was the Coptic alphabet, a revised version of the Greek alphabet.[18] Coptic became the standard in the 4th century AD". So perhaps the beginning needs to change to include the next three centuries? Also Coptic maybe the last Ancient egyptian language but not the last - Arabic has come since. ϢereSpielChequers 21:15, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Good points. It should be made clear that Coptic was the last script adopted by the ancient Egyptians, as opposed to the adoption of Arabic during the Middle Ages.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 21:29, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I also just tweaked with the introduction to include all literature in the Egyptian language from the pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination over Egypt, which roughly coincides with the invention of the Coptic alphabet and conversion to Coptic Christianity. This tweak makes absolute sense given the discussion in the article about literary works popular in the Roman era like Oracle of the Lamb and Oracle of the Potter.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 21:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, also can "there are some works that are thought to have been penned by women. For example, several references to women writing letters and actual surviving private letters sent or received by women have been found" be rephrased slightly. Either letters sent by women have been found or only letters thought to have been penned by women - if the latter we probably need a caveat about the possible use of scribes. ϢereSpielChequers 23:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Response Here is the exact quote from the source by Edward F. Wente (1990: 9), QUOTE: "Although women were not generally afforded the advantages of a school education and did not compete with men for posts in the bureaucracy, there were certain positions that were genuinely female, such as priestesses, chantresses, and personnel surrounding the position of Divine Votaress of Amon during the New Kingdom. Although women did not officially compete with men, they were occasionally accorded considerable authority, especially to act on behalf of their husbands (Janssen 1986). Such letters as Nos. 24, 139, 289-91, 303, 311, 315, 319, 321, 324, 336, and 339 provide evidence for women functioning with varying degrees of authority, and certainly some of these women were literate. Occasionally there are references to a woman's writing a letter (Nos. 104, 124, 270, 282, and 297), but one must be cautious in concluding that a woman actually penned the document. Letter No. 124, if my restoration of the passage is correct, provides evidence for a female recipient reading a letter visually (the verb is 'look at,' the same as the one mentioned above in connection with No. 330). Regarding the women of Deir el-Medina, Janssen (1987:167 n. 25) considers it probable that the letters on ostraca sent by women were actually inscribed by them." ENDQUOTE From this, I think it is fair to say that women most likely read letters, wrote letters, and sent letters, with the slight possibility that they dictated while scribes actually penned the documents.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 00:42, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

  Thanks, nicely fixed. ϢereSpielChequers 08:01, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Awesome! Thank you for your support. Cheers.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 08:18, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

• Dabs; please check the disambiguation links identified in the toolbox. Dabomb87 (talk) 14:48, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. It doesn't seem to be working for me (page won't load correctly); could you point out which specific links go to disambiguation pages, so that I can fix them? Thanks!--Pericles of Athens^Talk 15:37, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Try this. Dabomb87 (talk) 19:20, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! It looks like the only problems were "canon" and "vignette", which have now been fixed. Cheers.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 19:50, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

• Strong support Another masterpiece, not China-related!! Definate FA quality. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:42, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's rare when I do a non-Chinese-history article, but when I do, I make sure that I do it right. I'm glad you enjoyed reading the article! Cheers.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 16:01, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support Comments Very good article. Well-written and interesting. However I have a couple of concerns, mainly with the wording of the Lead - which is obviously an excercise in cramming in information.

Resolved issues from Xandar 19:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC))

• • "Ancient Egyptian literature refers to literature written in the Egyptian language during Ancient Egypt's pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination."

Surely this should read "from" rather than "during", since the Roman period was not part of the Pharaonic.

• • "It was not until the early Middle Kingdom (21st century BC to 17th century BC) that Egyptian literature proper was created."

This seems contradictory since the whole article is about Egyptian literature from a much earlier period. Could this not better say; "that a narrative Egyptian literature was created."

• • "The creation of literature was thus an elite exercise, monopolized by a scribal class attached to government offices and the royal court of the ruling pharaoh. However, there is no full consensus among modern scholars concerning the dependence of ancient Egyptian literature on the sociopolitical order."

This seems over-long for the lead. This could be shortened to something like: "The creation of literature tended to be monopolized by an elite courtly and scribal class. There is, however, no full consensus among modern scholars on this."

• • "Scribes of the New Kingdom canonized and copied many literary texts written in Middle Egyptian,"

Canonized to most people, means listed as a Saint. What exactly does the word mean here?

• • "Genres of Middle Kingdom literature, such as 'teachings' and fictional tales, remained popular in the New Kingdom"

This sentence seems to jar without a specifier: "Some genres" or "Several genres" for example.

• • "By the New Kingdom period, the writing of commemorative graffiti on sacred temple and tomb walls flourished as a competitive genre of literature, with similar formulaic phrasing found in other genres."

I'm confused by this. What is a competitive genre of literature? What has the formulaic phrasing to do with this?

• • "Ancient Egyptian literature is found on a wide variety of media."

This brings to mind TV, DVDs etc. Why not "Ancient Egyptian literature has been preserved on a wide variety of media."?

• • Main Text
  • The main problem here is the use of some unexplained terms that could be categorised as WP:Jargon. The chief ones I spotted are Phoneme, Palimpsest, hermeneutics, orthography, and Palaeography. It would be better to say "the study of handwriting, or Palaeography", "the study of writing systems and symbol usage, Orthography," etc.
  • The following sentence from Private letters, model letters, and epistles is obscure: "The Heqanakht papyri, penned by a gentleman farmer, date to the Eleventh dynasty and represent some of the longest surviving private letters of ancient Egypt"

Does this mean the letters were of great length, or are the oldest surviving ones?

Xandar 23:56, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

• Hi again Xandar. Haven't spoken to you since you reviewed Han Dynasty. I'm glad you have enjoyed reading this article. I'll try to address your points one by one:--Pericles of Athens^Talk 00:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "Surely this should read "from" rather than "during", since the Roman period was not part of the Pharaonic."

Excellent point; fixed it.

• • This seems contradictory since the whole article is about Egyptian literature from a much earlier period. Could this not better say; "that a narrative Egyptian literature was created."

Once again, good point, fixed it.

• • "This seems over-long for the lead. This could be shortened to something like: 'The creation of literature tended to be monopolized by an elite courtly and scribal class. There is, however, no full consensus among modern scholars on this.'"

I don't think you fully understand this. Yes, literature tended to be monopolized by the scribal class, but a distinction should be made between the scribal class and their relationship to the pharaoh's court, the latter which embodies the "sociopolitical order", not the scribal class as a whole (which, it is argued, could act independently of the court and politics). Perhaps I should have made this clearer to begin with. In any case, there is no scholarly dispute that the creation of literature was monopolized by scribes. So your suggestion would be patently false.

• • "Canonized to most people, means listed as a Saint. What exactly does the word mean here?"

Well, I thought that linking "canon" to its Wiktionary definition would resolve any doubts about its usage, but to make things very clear, the use of canon here does not refer to Christian saints, but to "A group of literary works that are generally accepted as representing a field." Canonized in this context is certainly not WP:JARGON. It simply means that the Egyptians designated certain texts as being more important than others and deserving of the label of "classic", such as how we designate Heart of Darkness and Moby Dick as classics of modern English literature.

• • "This sentence seems to jar without a specifier: "Some genres" or "Several genres" for example."

This is a good point and I have fixed the article accordingly.

• • "I'm confused by this. What is a competitive genre of literature? What has the formulaic phrasing to do with this?"

Hmm. Now that you mention it, it does sound confusing if one does not take into account the graffiti section of the article; I have reworded this. I hope that it sounds much clearer now.

• • "This brings to mind TV, DVDs etc. Why not 'Ancient Egyptian literature has been preserved on a wide variety of media.'?"

That's a good suggestion, I've used your wording exactly.

• • "The main problem here is the use of some unexplained terms that could be categorised as WP:Jargon. The chief ones I spotted are Phoneme, Palimpsest, hermeneutics, orthography, and Palaeography. It would be better to say 'the study of handwriting, or Palaeography', 'the study of writing systems and symbol usage, Orthography,' etc."

I have fixed all of these according to your suggestion, except for hermeneutics. I can't think of a good way to reword that sentence in order to include a brief definition of what hermeneutics is. Every rewording option I've thought of simply breaks the natural flow of the sentence and sounds choppy. If you can think of something good, I'll use it. Otherwise, I think this one should be left alone and we should settle only for a wikilink if someone is confused by the word.

• • "Does this mean the letters were of great length, or are the oldest surviving ones?"

No, not the oldest surviving, just the longest-written letters that we have from ancient Egypt; I have reworded that sentence to clarify this point.

• I hope you find these copyedits sufficient and satisfactory. Cheers.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 00:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Greatly improved. I think that deals with most points. I still don't like "canonized" but I can't think of a word or words that explains things better. As for the very last sentence: "Scholars are increasingly following a hermeneutic approach to studying individual literary works, which can be used as case studies to reconstruct the main features of ancient Egyptian literary discourse." Since this is quite important, and the conclusion to the article, how about completely recasting and extending this, for example as:

Scholars are increasingly using a multifaceted hermeneutic approach to the study of individual literary works, in which not only the style and content, but also the cultural, social and historical context of the work are taken into account. Individual works can then be used as case studies to reconstruct the main features of overall ancient Egyptian literary discourse. Xandar 00:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That's an excellent suggestion! I will amend the article to include this revised sentence word for word.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 16:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Great. That resolves all my issues. Xandar 19:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Excellent! Thanks for reviewing the article.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 23:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Image review by NuclearWarfare (Temporary Oppose until the major issues are fixed.)

• Could you please make sure that the images don't cause edit bunching?
• File:Egyptian harvest.jpg - Could you please fill in as much of this as possible? Thanks.
• File:EgyptianScribe.jpg - Could you link to the original link on the website please.
• File:Loyalist Teaching-beginning.jpg - Can this be categorized any further?
• File:TurinPapyrus1.jpg - Could you please clarify where the original upload was, and what "Photograph at the Turin Museum courtesy of J. Harrell", because it suggests that the file might be copyrighted.
• File:Maler der Grabkammer des Nacht 001.jpg - Could you please provide an English translation?
• File:Heratic script limestone.jpg - Needs to be deleted per WP:CSD#F8.

NW (Talk) 01:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Nuclear Warfare (that's a cool name btw). I have fixed (and in one case replaced) every image mentioned, except for File:Heratic script limestone.jpg. How do I go about deleting this image? Where should I go to alert an administrator that this image needs to be deleted so that its Commons version can be used instead? Thanks.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 02:24, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

As for Heratic script limestone.jpg, I tagged that for deletion myself, so it should be deleted eventually. That's not really a pressing issue though, I don't believe. I checked the image that you replaced, and it looks great. Striking my oppose; great job. (And thank you for the remark regarding my username) NW (Talk) 02:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Excellent! I'm glad all of that is settled. On a completely different note, would you be interested in reviewing the article? Or are you busy with other things at the moment? Regards.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 02:44, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Rather busy unfortunately; I am checking in on Wikipedia just about once a day, and that's all I can manage for a week or two. Sorry! NW (Talk) 11:47, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

• Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:15, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

• Comment Is there a reason why single quotes are used instead of double? The article looks very interesting, will try to review later if possible. Dabomb87 (talk) 21:55, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

You raise an excellent question and I have amended the article to replace all single quotation marks with double quotation marks, except, of course, in the case of quotations within quotations, which employ single marks within double marks. If there's anything else, let me know. Regards.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 23:29, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support - Well, PoA does it again. The research, the prose, the extensive cites, the numerous refs from major scholars... it's incredible how most of this was done by a single person. PoA, sometimes I wonder if you have more than one head. Anyway, fantastic work. One thing though: is it not appropriate to have the Ancient Egyptian names for the pieces of literature mentioned in the article? Like, in parentheses the first time it appears in the article? ~ AMorozov ^〈talk〉 21:21, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

That's another excellent question! First of all, thanks for the support! And the very kind words you have to say about my articles. At first I wanted to include the ancient Egyptian pronunciations for these literary works, but I realized that I was unable to find them all! Also, I think it might distract a little too much from the flow of the prose by adding a bunch of Egyptian pronunciations in parenthesis; I think a better option would be to include pronunciations for each literary work in their separate and respective articles. This model, as you might already know, is followed by written Chinese character names and pronunciations; if a Chinese person/place/thing/idea has its own article, there's no need to include the character name or pronunciation in a ton of other articles. Thanks for taking interest! And I'm glad you enjoyed reading the article. Cheers.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 22:04, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Support Comments from Dabomb87 (talk · contribs) This is very good, and I have only a few nitpicks:.

• "Besides the glorification of kings,[129] poems were also written to honor various deities, and even the Nile." "also" is largely redundant here.
• I think the article is a bit overlinked, meaning that the valuable links are diluted by more unnecessary ones. In the lead alone, consider delinking words such as "genre", "author" (piped in "authorship"), "graffiti", "hymn", "poem", and maybe even "Nile" (which is probably one of the most well-known rivers in the world). Also, don't link more general terms when you have more specific links nearby (e.g. "literacy" when there's "literacy rate")
• "However, Edward F. Wente cautions that, even with explicit references of women reading letters, it is possible that women employed others to write documents." Not sure "caution" is the right word; it has a connotation of "warning", which is not what we're looking for here.
• "Egyptians was the 'teaching' or sebayt genre" We still have single quotes here.
• "that can serve to instruct as well as entertain" "serve to" is unnecessary.
• "manuscripts which have their original contents" "which"-->that
• "This, alongside tearing off pieces of papyrus documents to make smaller letters, also suggests that there were seasonal shortages caused by the limited growing season of Cyperus papyrus."
• "Moreover, Wente calls this a "...polemical tractate" which counsels against the rote, " "which"-->that
• "c. 484 BC–c. 425 BC" Not sure why circa needs to be linked twice here; the en dash should be spaced.
• "amongst " "among" is plainer, and works just as well.
• "Nevertheless, there is speculation amongst scholars that ancient Egyptian literature" Make this stronger. "Nevertheless, scholars speculate that ancient Egyptian literature"
• There's inconsistency in italicizing. I see "c." in italics sometimes, and other times not.
• "was the first to compile a comprehensive history of Egypt" Why is "history" italicized? For that matter, why is it linked?
• "Prior to" "Before" is shorter and sweeter.
• File:Graffiti Kom Ombo.JPG crowds the text on my screen (Firefox 3.5, 1280x800). I think if you could slightly shorten the image directly above it, that would solve the problem.

As you can see, most of these are language nitpicks, and I will be more than happy to offer my support when these are resolved. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:39, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dabomb87. Thanks for reviewing the article! I have copyedited the article and amended it according to your suggestions; I hope you find my edits sufficient. Cheers.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 23:20, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Looks great! One more comment: "The Harper's Song, found on a tombstone of the Middle Kingdom and on Papyrus Harris 500 from the New Kingdom, was to be performed for dinner guests at formal banquets." I don't think they found the song itself, but it's lyrics. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:31, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi again! I always considered that to be implied, but since you want something more explicit, I have included the word "lyrics" to make things absolutely clear. :) Regards.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 00:44, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm a very literal person :) Dabomb87 (talk) 01:30, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

For an online encyclopedia, that's probably for the best. Cheers and thanks for the support!--Pericles of Athens^Talk 01:55, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.