Talk:List of Egyptian obelisks

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 16:42, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

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The tallest standing Egyptian obelisk, in Rome

• ... that there are only about 30 Ancient Egyptian obelisks left standing worldwide—and Italy has more than Egypt? Source: Allen, D. (2013). How Mechanics Shaped the Modern World. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-319-01701-3. Retrieved 2022-01-23. By the way, there are 29 extant Egyptian obelisks in the world today. Nine are in Egypt, and eleven in Italy (eight of which are in Rome, having been pilfered by the Romans after Augustus defeated Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BCE, thereby conquering Egypt). Others are scattered across the world.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Dalai Lama's escape from China

Created by Onceinawhile (talk). Self-nominated at 06:10, 23 January 2022 (UTC).

• Hi Onceinawhile, great idea for a new list article. However it does not currently meet the DYK requirements. The rules require "a minimum of 1,500 characters of prose (ignoring infoboxes, categories, references, lists, and tables etc.)". I only count around 850 characters outside of your list/table. Also each entry in your list needs a reference to show where the data came from - Dumelow (talk) 09:40, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

@Dumelow: thank you. I have fixed it all now. I hope you like the improvements.Onceinawhile (talk) 11:35, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Onceinawhile, thanks. Length is now good. I am a bit unsure about most of the entries being cited to an 1843 source when it is stating that these are obelisks currently standing (other queries, does modern scholarship still support the details eg. of builder and origin location?). Other parts to sources of 1885, 1922, 1809, 1897, 1899, 1877, 1898. Surely there must be better, modern sources for these? Also the following are presented as sources but I have no idea what they are:

• Petrie, Tanis, I, plate VIII (48, North Obelisk)
• Flinders Petrie, Tanis, I, plate IX (51, North Obelisk)
• Kuentz, "Obélisques", 45-50, plate XIII
• Cairo Museum JE 42955 C (CG 17023 & 17024)

Per WP:VERIFIABILITY it needs to be clear to the reader where they need to go to check this information. Other sources need checking, for example the sources for the Tahrir Square obelisk both only say that it will be erected, not that it has been. Could you also confirm what makes obelisks.org WP:RELIABLE? Another query comes to mind, you state "The list also excludes approximately 40 known obelisk fragments" but the last two on your list are less than a metre tall and represent between a third and a fifth of the original stone. Beyond stating that it comes from obelisks.org, what definition of "fragment" is used? Finally, you ought to include imperial conversions in the table as per MOS:CONVERSIONS. Thanks - Dumelow (talk) 13:58, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Dumelow: many thanks for looking so closely at this. There are many sources confirming the Tahrir obelisk is up; I didn't include them because I felt we already had a lot of sources for that topic. We also have this excellent Dec 2020 photo in the table File:TahrirSQ-2020(1).jpg from user:Faris knight which I figured was evidence enough. I have fixed the four sources in bullets that you mention above.

On your other source comments, I wonder if some of them may be veering into WP:GA level assessments?

I have searched for about a week to find all known scholarly list of Egyptian obelisks. The only ones I have been able to find are Bonomi and Gorringe from the 19th century, and then two self-published websites. On your question re Obelisks.org, I used it only for one sentence, and I believe its usage in that sentence meets WP:ABOUTSELF (and the quality of sourcing on the specific claim is good).

Onceinawhile (talk) 17:32, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Onceinawhile. You may be right, perhaps I have my GAN head on right now. More than happy to hand this off to another reviewer with a fresh pair of eyes. I hope you don't think I've been too harsh on your article, I really enjoyed reading it!- Dumelow (talk) 19:30, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @Dumelow: much appreciated. I have also added a little map to the article. Hope you like it. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:47, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Will review. DigitalIceAge (talk) 18:11, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

New enough, long enough, neutral, no close paraphrasing detected. Regarding Bonomi Jr., he seems to be well-regarded (1, 2, 3), or at least his work cited without challenge, in modern scholarship, and I've certainly seen sources just as old cited heavily in featured lists, so I trust that the 1843 book is good enough. Gave it a light copyedit and tweaked the formatting of the table a little. I also changed the comma to an em dash in the hook to make the "punchline" stand out more.

The first paragraph of the "Number" section should have a citation. Also I wasn't clear on what some of the parenthetical meter measurements were supposed to represent—if they are outdated measurements, the correct ones also should have a source. Overall great work @Onceinawhile: DigitalIceAge (talk) 19:03, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi DigitalIceAge, thank you for the review and the excellent improvements. On the parentheticals, they are intended to show the height including the base or plinth that the obelisk sits on (often the base is not original). I had included that in the column header but I now see that it wasn’t clear. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:58, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I see now, thank you. I've undid my edit and added in "with base" for added clarity. Should also note that the QPQ has been fulfilled, just waiting for a citation for the hook fact in the body. DigitalIceAge (talk) 00:14, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

@DigitalIceAge: thank you very much. I have added the citation as requested. Onceinawhile (talk) 09:27, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

No problem, should be good to go now. DigitalIceAge (talk) 15:45, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Number in Egypt vs Italy

@TompaDompa: wrote that the article is contradictory regarding whether Italy or Egypt has a larger number of these obelisks; the list mentions twelve in Egypt and only eight in Italy (nine if the one in the Vatican is included), but the prose says that there are more in Italy than in Egypt

The "more in Italy than Egypt" comes from ref #5: Allen, D. (2013). How Mechanics Shaped the Modern World. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-319-01701-3. Retrieved 2022-01-23. "By the way, there are 29 extant Egyptian obelisks in the world today. Nine are in Egypt, and eleven in Italy (eight of which are in Rome, having been pilfered by the Romans after Augustus defeated Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BCE, thereby conquering Egypt). Others are scattered across the world."

My guess is that the nine in Egypt exclude the <1m obelisk fragment in the Luxor Museum, the unfinished obelisk, and the new reconstructed obelisk in Tahrir Square. There are good arguments for excluding the first two of these three, so I think the statement that "there are only about 30 Ancient Egyptian obelisks (example pictured) left standing worldwide" remains correct. Onceinawhile (talk) 18:14, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Maybe, but this article and that source are still contradictory. The article is missing two or three in Italy (depending on whether we include the one in the Vatican in Italy's count or not) that the source says exist. Moreover, the article lists 31 total of which twelve are in Egypt, whereas the source says that there are 29 total of which nine are in Egypt, so discounting two or three of the ones in Egypt doesn't resolve the issue since either the total or the number of ones in Egypt will still mismatch. At any rate, it is rather egregious to list a higher number in Egypt than in Italy while this is on the WP:Main page stating that there are more in Italy than in Egypt. TompaDompa (talk) 18:27, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Interpreting the list in the way you are doing is WP:Original research, which we cannot do without sources backing it up. I disagree with way you are interpreting the list; it continues to support the statement. We say “about 30” for exactly the reason you say. And we don’t state the exact number of each location, just the relative position which I believe remains correct. Onceinawhile (talk) 18:38, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm just counting the number of entries. I came here because I saw this on the WP:Main page and wondered how many there are in Egypt and Italy respectively. So I counted the number of entries for each and arrived at an apparent contradiction. So I added a maintenance tag that the article appears to contradict itself, and it does appear to do so. Maybe there is some good explanation for the discrepancy, but unless that explanation is present in the article (which would of course require proper sourcing), the article will continue to appear contradictory to readers. That's rather a problem when the article is currently on the WP:Main page and thus probably getting a lot more traffic than it usually does.

I'm not disputing the "about 30" part—that's borne out both by the cited source and the list itself—I'm asserting that the text and the list don't appear to match. Discounting the three obelisks in Egypt that you suggest means that we still list nine in Egypt which is either one more than in Italy (if the one in the Vatican isn't counted) or the same number (if it is). As for the issue of distinguishing between ones that are still standing and those that are not, the sentence Only about 30 such obelisks are still standing worldwide, and there are more in Italy than in Egypt. is ambiguous—does it mean "Only about 30 such obelisks are still standing worldwide, and there are more [such obelisks that are still standing] in Italy than in Egypt" or "Only about 30 such obelisks are still standing worldwide, and there exist more in Italy than in Egypt"? And even then, the source doesn't actually say "still standing", it says extant, which means "still in existence".

I brought this up at WP:ERRORS, by the way. TompaDompa (talk) 19:12, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I think you raise very valid points. And I agree we could tighten the wording to help fix this. I presume you don’t have any other WP:SECONDARY sources which contradict the Allen 2013 source used to support the point?

Please could you propose how best yo clarify the language? I am sure we can agree something quickly.

Onceinawhile (talk) 19:31, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

This is not an area I'm particularly familiar with, I just came here from the WP:Main page out of curiosity and discovered that the featured hook—which is supposed to be an interesting fact from the article that makes people want to read the rest of the article to find out more—appears on the face of it to be straight-up wrong. That's why I think this is such a big problem—surely others will do the same? This is a rather egregious issue that should have been discovered and rectified well in advance of the article appearing on the WP:Main page. The easiest solution would be to change the sentence in the article to Only about 30 such obelisks are still in existence worldwide. and the hook to ... that there are only about 30 Ancient Egyptian obelisks (example pictured) left worldwide? to avoid both the issue of misrepresenting the source's use of "extant" as "still/left standing" and the issue of the count seemingly being incorrect. That would make it a lot less interesting of course, but it would resolve those two major issues. TompaDompa (talk) 19:41, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks TompaDompa, understood. To try to get best of both worlds, I added a clause explaining how different authors calculate different total figures, and then put the “more in Italy than in Egypt” in David Allen’s voice rather that Wikipedia’s voice. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:42, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

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• Lateran Obelisk HD.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 02:56, 18 February 2023 (UTC)