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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Mesopotamian deities/archive1

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

The list was promoted by PresN via FACBot (talk) 00:32, 31 May 2018 (UTC) [1].[reply]

List of Mesopotamian deities

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List of Mesopotamian deities (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Katolophyromai (talk) 03:54, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have completely rewritten this article from scratch over the course of the past month. I would have nominated it for "Good List" status, but there does not seem to be one, so my only option for advancing the article's status seems to be to go straight for featured. This is the first time I have ever nominated anything for "Featured" status, but I have, as of right now, single-handedly brought fourteen articles up to "Good Article" status on my own, and I have significantly assisted in promoting several others, so I think I have a pretty good idea of what I am doing.

This article obviously does not hope to cover every single Mesopotamian deity, but it does cover all the ones I could find entries for in reference works on the subject, as well as a few others. As you can see, all information is fastidiously cited to reliable sources. The only problems I imagine that it might face will be ones perhaps dealing with the image licensing, since, even though I am not aware of any issues in that regard, I have repeatedly found that whole process confusing, and perhaps also confusion over where the cities mentioned are located, since I doubt the modern reader is likely to know much about the geography of ancient Mesopotamia. I did try to find a map to put in the article, but I could not find one that shows all the cities and I do not think it will be that big of a deal, since all the names of the cities are wikilinked and I tried to give explanations of their locations where necessary. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:54, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from Nergaal (talk) 22:09, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
;Comments by Nergaal
  • the first three sections could have a short sentence introducing the context/name of the section a bit
I have added a short introductory paragraph to the first two sections and am working on one for the third. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:51, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Primordial abyss => Primordial abyss entities?
My original section title was "Primordial deities," but another user changed it, disputing whether Abzu is really a deity. I have changed the title to "Primordial beings." --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:51, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • no major cult centers for these primordials?
They are entirely figures from literature and mythology. As far as I am aware, they were never worshipped, or, if they were worshipped, their cults have left behind virtually no detectable textual or archaeological evidence. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:51, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think an "oldest mention" column would be appropriate
I am going to have to disagree with you on this one. My sources do not always include information about the earliest mention of each deity and I think the time periods in which the deities were worshipped is a matter that is best handled in the "Other details" column. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:51, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but currently most of those entries don't mention any sort of dates Nergaal (talk) 19:12, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Every time I mention when the deity is first attested, I always give the historical period from which they are attested. As I explained in my comment above, we do not know the exact dates when deities are first attested because we can almost never date ancient Mesopotamian texts with that kind of exactitude. No one can say that "Zababa (for instance) was first worshipped on exactly 13 September 4978 BC at exactly 1:00 p.m." We do not even know the exact century; all we know is the rough historical era and, even then, there is no reason why he could not necessarily have been worshipped much earlier. The first time I mention a period of Mesopotamian history, I always wikilink it and give the approximate date range of when that period began and when it ended. If I gave the date range every single time I mentioned a historical period, that would be overly redundant. It would be as if I was writing about the history of Europe and gave the date range of the Renaissance every time I mentioned it. In my view, only the first time is necessary. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:26, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
But you can say around 5000 BCE, or 5th millennium BCE. Nergaal (talk) 20:44, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
nvm, after looking a bit, seems it is far more difficult to find dates than I first though. Nergaal (talk) 22:19, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

*relevant: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/0/20394641

This is not really much help; the BBC is not a scholarly source on the history of ancient Mesopotamia and the article barely even mentions ancient Mesopotamia at the very beginning. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:51, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I was not explicit about my point. Those 7 are likely the source of the modern 7-day week. I am pretty sure each of them had an assigned day of the week. Nergaal (talk) 19:12, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. That is correct. (I actually wrote an article about the origins of the days of the week on my website back in September of last year; I wrote it when I knew less about Mesopotamian religion than I do now, but hopefully it is still accurate.) I would still like to have a more scholarly source than the BBC, though. I will see what I can find. If I cannot find anything, the BBC is probably acceptable. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:26, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Nergaal: I have added the source to the bibliography and added some brief information about the seven days of the week originating from the seven planetary deities of Babylonian religion. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:11, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Did they have a specific order of the planets/weekdays set up? Or this is not known? Nergaal (talk) 08:33, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
They may have, but that source does not mention it. I am not entirely sure it is really important enough to go into this article, since this article is supposed to be about the deities, not the days of the week. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:49, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

*maybe first column should also list alternative names? i.e.: Enki (Ea)

This might be worth considering, but I have been trying to only list one name in the first colmun to avoid confusing the reader with alternatives until they reach the "Details" section. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:51, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't have to include all the known variations. But I see many entries beginnign with "X, later known as Y". In those cases say X (Y), like with Ishtar. Nergaal (talk) 22:22, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Nergaal: I have added the most common alternative names for the deities to the first column underneath the first occurrence of their names in a smaller font. I have also provided citations to support the alternative names. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:33, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • if there is a list of 2k dieties, how come less than 100 are listed here?
I already touched on this in my introduction above. I do not hope to cover every single deity ever mentioned in any obscure text written over the entire course of ancient Mesopotamia's 3,500-year history. Most of the some 3,000 deities that we know the names of are only mentioned in a single obscure list of deities, and we know nothing at all about them except their names. I have, however, included in my list here every deity that I could find information about in scholarly reference works. Regarding the An = Antum list of 2,000 deities, I do not have access to any translation or copy of it, nor do I know of anyone who does. Black & Green 1992 casually references its existence, but says little else about it. They do mention that many of the extant lists of deities have not yet been translated or published. They wrote this almost twenty years ago, but my guess, given the extremely slow rate of ancient Mesopotamian texts being translated, that it is doubtful anyone has even started on most of them. Katolophyromai (talk) 17:51, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nergaal (talk) 13:44, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • There seem to be images for a few more gods, like Anshar and Dagon
@Nergaal: I know exactly which images you are referring to. The image that is claimed to be Dagan is not him at all; it is a "fish-garbed figure", probably an āšipu or magician, although this is uncertain. It is definitely not Dagan, but images such as this one were unfortunately misidentified as him by early scholars due to Dagan's occasional associations with fishing. Black & Green 1992 explicitly states that the "fish-garbed figure" is not Dagan. The other image that you identify as Anshar is, in fact, Ashur, the national god of the Assyrians, who already has an image in the article. They have similar names, but they are different deities. I am not aware of any extant anthropomorphic representations of Anshar, who is largely an obscure ancestral deity. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:28, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nergaal (talk) 21:15, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Nergaal: Yes. It is beautiful; there are actually many stunning ancient Mesopotamian statuettes and figurines of worshippers. Unfortunately, none of these depict deities, so I do not think any of them are suitable for this particular article. They may, however, be suitable in the article ancient Mesopotamian religion, which I plan to work on eventually. --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:03, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]


@Nergaal: I believe all the deities listed in the categories are now in the article, except for a few that were not really Mesopotamian (e.g. several that were actually Levantine) or were not really deities (e.g. the word dingir, which means "deity," but is not actually the name of one). --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:53, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I was always taught that, when writing in prose, one should always write out the names of numbers less than three digits, which makes perfect sense in my opinion, since I think mixing prose with mathematical ideograms should only be done if it is inconvenient to do otherwise. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:33, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but you say March 1st, not March First. Dates are one of the exceptions to that rule IIRC. Nergaal (talk) 22:06, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Nergaal: I think the numbers of the centuries and millennia are different from dates like "May 7th" and such. For instance, the title of one of the books cited in the article is Sumerian Mythology: A Study in Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C. by Samuel Noah Kramer. In any case, I would prefer to spell out the numbers and I think that, as long as they are consistent, that is all that really matters. It is only when a writer starts mixing the two that the style really starts to become problematic. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:57, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suspect you will have to do some cleanups on the image pages (not sure what the exact FL criteria are for images)
@Nergaal: Yes, the oldest recorded deities are from Mesopotamia. I have been trying to avoid giving too much general information about ancient Mesopotamian religion, since this article deals specifically with the deities in particular. Nonetheless, I can certainly add more information if you would like me to. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:51, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a source for a statement along the lines "the oldest record for a worshiped deity anywhere around the world is from ancient Mesopotamia, deity X"? Nergaal (talk) 19:12, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Nergaal: I think perhaps you may be misunderstanding what I said; there is no single "earliest attested deity," for several reasons. Firstly, the Mesopotamians were always polytheistic and, at any given point in their history, they always worshipped a vast multitude of deities alongside each other. Any text talking about the gods will almost always mention at least several, even if it is a hymn devoted to one particular deity. Secondly, our chronology for the early history of Mesopotamia is extremely rough; we can sometimes determine which period a text comes from, but it is nearly impossible to determine with any exactitude which exact text from that period could be considered the "earliest." Finally, we know for certain that there were deities before Mesopotamia; those deities just are not directly attested. Archaeologists have found plenty of prehistoric sculptures and rock carvings that might, or, in some cases, almost certainly do, depict deities of some kind, but we cannot be absolutely certain and the names of these deities are not recorded. I will see if I can find a source stating that the earliest attested deities come from ancient Mesopotamia. I doubt that will be terribly difficult. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:26, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The prehistoric deities is a good point. Still having in something like "deities in the M cultures have been suggested as early as XYZ BCE" should be in. How about oldest temple? Nergaal (talk) 20:43, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Nergaal: I have just added another paragraph to the lead section of the article giving a very basic, general historical overview of Mesopotamian religion and the development of the pantheon. I believe I have now addressed all of your criticisms. Do you have any more for me to address, or are you willing to support this article for "Featured List" status now? --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:04, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, that is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for. It might need a bit more tinkering but looks great otherwise. Nergaal (talk) 05:34, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support very interesting topic, very different list from the usual run-of-the-mill stuff that goes on here. It's well put together, and this kind of work should be encouraged by reviewers at FLC. Great work, and ping me up if you need some future feedback on similar subjects like to this one. Nergaal (talk) 05:34, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comments by bloodofox

Support. @Katolophyromai:, this is an impressive and challenging undertaking. My first impression: where are the attestations? But after reading above, I understand why the list is structured as it is. This list doesn't raise any red flags for me, and looks solid. I'll give it a more thorough lookover and get back to you if I see any issue. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:42, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Squeamish Ossifrage

I can't find any immediate fault with the list contents. However...

  • You're throwing several reference template errors.
@Squeamish Ossifrage: I would be more than happy to fix the reference template errors, but, unfortunately, I cannot see them at all, nor do I know of any means of detecting them. Something similar to this happened months ago at Talk:Pythagoras/GA1, where an editor said there were "lots and lots" of reference errors, but I could not see anything, so the other editor ended up having to list all the sfns with the errors in them. I am guessing there is probably some tool somewhere for detecting them? --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't remember, I may have a script installed to warn me of these. In any case... all reference numbers as of this version, for sanity in bookkeeping. One is an easy fix. Ref 52 (McEvilly 2002) lacks a target; in the bibliography, McEvilley 2002 shows as unused. I'm not sure whether the author's name is correct with or without that extra e, but that's no problem otherwise. Ref 45 (Kramer 1983) lacks a target; I imagine that Kramer ref is intended to either point to Kramer 1963 or Wolkenstein & Kramer 1983, but you'll need to double-check which. The other errors are all references that do not have a corresponding bilbiography target at all: ref 24 (Falkenstein 1965), ref 129 (Richter 2004), and ref 239 (Dever 2003b). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 21:47, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Squeamish Ossifrage: I have now fixed all of the errors you have listed here. If you find any others, let me know. --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:02, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm pretty dubious that the "Vv.Aa."-authored reference is at all referenced correctly. That's a journal publication, for one thing, and so the actual work cited should have a title, weirdness of the claimed author notwithstanding. I poked around a little bit but couldn't conclusively determine what this is supposed to be.
That citation happens to be one of a handful that were added by a particularly helpful IP user while I was in the midst of rewriting the list. I do not know what the source is exactly, since the title of the article is not given. I do know that "Vv.Aa." is an abbreviation for "various authors," though. The article is only cited once in the entire article, so it probably will not be too difficult to find a replacement for it, I imagine. I will see what else I can find. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed the improperly-formatted and unidentifiable source, along with the tiny snippet of information that was cited to it. There seems to be extensive discussion of this subject in really old, outdated sources, such as J. Norman Lockyer's 1893 The Dawn of Astronomy, but I have not found a single newer source that even mentions it. The unidentifiable source that was previously cited there is from 1951. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:36, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • You're allowed to use whatever citation format you so desire, but you have to be consistent. There's a mix of {{citation}} and {{cite}} templates in use here, and that's not okay.
Done. I have changed all the sources in the bibliography to say "citation." The ones that said "cite book" were a mistake. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not technically a requirement, but it should be. You have a mix of ISBN-10s and ISBN-13s, some of which are hyphenated properly, and some which are not. Hit up an ISBN converter (like this or this).
  • Web sources (like Brisch) probably need a retrieval date (the APA has dropped that requirement, but it's still best practice here).
I have added today's date, since none of the articles have changed since I last visited them as far as I can tell. I hate giving accessdates because, then, every time I reuse the same source I have to update the date. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • For book-format sources, publisher locations are optional, but they're all-or-nothing. I didn't audit closely, but on quick review, Wright lacks one. I'm reaaaallly not fond of the location laundry-lists like in the George reference, but I can't find anything in the MOS expressly prohibiting it.
Fixed. I also managed to find a few others that were missing publisher locations. I believe I have now corrected all of them. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In any case, conditional support on the reference issues getting addressed before promotion. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 18:33, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Not exactly. ALT text is different from a caption. It's intended as an accessibility aid (for screen readers), and is one of those things no one ever even hears about until they hit FAC/FLC, where suddenly it's an expectation. Where a caption tells you what the image is, ALT text is a brief snippet of text telling you what the image looks like. WP:ALT has some examples. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 21:53, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

While I think the alt-text could be a bit more descriptive, I don't think it's a blocking issue. What is, however, is that the tables don't meet WP:ACCESS requirements- you need colscopes and rowscopes. E.g. '! Name' should be '!scope="col" | Name', etc., and the first line of each row, e.g. '| An', should be '!scope="row" | An'. --PresN 02:11, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@PresN: I have now added colscopes and rowscopes to every single column and row respectively. That was an unbelievably monotonous task, but now it is over with. Do I have your approval? Moreover, now that they have been added, is there any particular reason why the colscopes and rowscopes are necessary, other than the obvious purpose of driving me insane? They do not seem to change very much. --Katolophyromai (talk) 05:30, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, it's quite boring to add after the fact if your table isn't set up nicely for a quick find-replace call. And yes, it doesn't change much visually); what it does its make the table parseable by screen-reading software or text-only browsers, and therefore accessible to blind or visually-impaired readers.
Speaking of monotonous: source review revealed no problems, except that the bibliography was using a mixture of unformatted, formatted, and semi-formatted ISBN-10 and ISBN-13s. I've gone ahead and converted them all to formatted ISBN-13s. With that, source review passed, and promoting. --PresN 16:26, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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