Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Near East

message: There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Naqiʾa#Requested move 16 January 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 13:27, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move at [[Talk:Naqiʾa#Requested move 16 January 2023]] 

message: Would anyone be potentially interested in working collaboratively on brining the articles of individual broadly "Syro-Mesopotamian" weather gods to an acceptable level reflecting modern consensus? At the moment, while Teshub and Wer thankfully do have their own articles (I'm done with the latter - which tbf did not require much due to limited attestations - and will soon, probably in 2-3 weeks, work on the former), Hadad and Adad/Ishkur were merged a few years ago which seems rather unreasonable. German wiki seems to have a much better division of the material, with a "weather god of Aleppo" treated separately from the Mesopotamian weather god, ie. Sumerian Ishkur = Akkadian Adad = Aramaic Hadad. I'm pretty sure Polish wiki and a few other editions also treat Ishkur separately though that's much more nebulous and English wikipedia is not consistent on the Sumero-Akkadian names issue. I would be in favor of separation due to analogy with cases such as Nergal and Erra, Hendursaga and Ishum, or the individual medicine goddesses, since Ishkur's low position in the early sources sets him apart from his northern peers, but it's not a pressing issue and it could be remedied just with splitting the article into Mesopotamian and "Aleppo-focused" ones, similarly to how there's 0 need for splitting Utu and Shamash (on the other hands, separate articles for Gibil and Girra - with the latter not even using the common spelling - feel like an elaborate joke, especially when as late as 2021 there were distinct arguably more major deities like Ilaba with no articles). I've outlined some issues with the Hadad article on the talk page, but they were not met with any response there, sadly. There's also the matter of entire major sites which are left out as is - Adad had 1500 years worth of Elamite evidence due to introduction to Susa (with attestations as late as in the Persepolis Fortification Archive; recently treated by Wouter Henkelman), and let's not even get into Ebla and Emar.
There's also an incredibly nebulous Baal article which is all over the place and, at least for my liking, does not exhaust the topic even with regards to sites as major as Ugarit, while the Phoenicia-focused section is a sad joke (where are the well attested Phoenician "Baals" with own wiki articles? The only statement there seems fringe to me, El is pretty rare in Phoenician sources, the various Baals obviously are not). Some of the sources used are from the 19th century, and the article as a whole, at least to me, seems to have a generally biblical (in at least some paragraphs - distinctly protestant), rather than Assyriological, flair which I would argue goes against the neutrality principle. There'a also obviously no such a thing as a singular "Semitic religion" contrary to the heading used there indicates; this creates a false sense of homogenity between every non-Abrahamic source, and an equally false sense of distunity between Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic ones. I suppose doing something about that would also be in scope of the proposal. 
The reason why I am asking for help is because I am under the impression the sheer volume of material is simply too much for one person to handle, but the current state of affairs is difficult to bear with. Of course, I am not asking if anyone is ready to commit an enormous amount of time right away, I'd be aiming more at the second half of this year or so if anyone would be interested with working together on this project. I'd be willing to provide the sources and even do the bulk of the work needed, especially on the early attestations or "peripheral" sites like Susa or Emar or circle of deities linked with Adad or his western counterparts, but sadly I can't viably do everything (especially when it comes to material I'm not very fimilar with, like the first millennium BCE Aramaic evidence which is a big deal in this case). HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 12:36, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Messy state of weather god articles - request for help 

message: I've been editing the articles relating to the Scythians over the course of several months, and since most editors tend to favour splitting pages after they reach a certain size, I split two further pages, Iškuza and Scythia, covering the phases of Scythian history respectively in West Asia and in Europe, out of the main page covering the Scythians.
However, trying to split it has resulted into three articles, with both Iškuza and Scythia requiring large amounts of material regarding the role of the prior and subsequent histories of the Scythians in the creation and destruction of those states copied from each other and from the Scythians page to exist since they are both about immediately preceding/succeeding states created by the same continuous population group. And because Iškuza and Scythia both cover immediately preceding/succeeding but also partially overlapping parts of the history of the Scythians, multiple sections and sub-sections of each page covering the culture, population, external relations, etc of these states also had to be copied from the Scythians page (e.g. the "Background" sub-section and "Society" section in Scythia, and the "Origins," "Impact," and "Legacy" sections of Iškuza). Moreover, the Scythia page as it exists now also functions as a WP:Semi-duplicate, given that most of the information relating to this polity also is also the same basic information that is required on the Scythians page.
Given this resulting situation, I have started a merger proposal to resolve this issue, per WP:MERGEREASON: Overlap, Context, not because I support a merger for the sake of merging itself, which I do not favour, but because Iškuza and Scythia require too much context and the information on these pages is too intertwined with each other.
The problem is that, despite months having passed, the discussion for the merger proposal is still at a deadlock, with three users opposed to the merger, and three users (including myself) in favour of it. In this difficult situation, I have been advised to bring this issue to the various WikiProjects which are relevant to Scythians as a way to possibly resolve the deadlock, and all good faith assistance to reach a consensus would be much welcome. Antiquistik (talk) 18:11, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assistance required to end deadlock in merger proposal discussion 

message: Quality assessments are used by Wikipedia editors to rate the quality of articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a  parameter to , which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.
No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to , and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.
However, if your project decides to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass  a new  parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:56, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project-independent quality assessments 

message: This discussion on whether/how to include an IP's addition to the article Moloch might be of interest to members of this project.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:30, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Weighed on the issue on the talk page, naturally in favor of your approach as opposed to the anonymous user's. Seems like another issue which could be avoided if many articles on wikipedia didn't have a decade+ of basically unrestricted use of long outdated sources, tbh. I think especially the fact that early on it was common to just have users copy paste from vintage religious encyclopedias or Britannica editions from over a century ago contributed to this state of affairs, but this is naturally a digression. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 18:49, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect that the first two paragraphs of their addition are from the old Encyclopedia Britannica 11th ed., but I haven't bothered to check.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:17, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moloch 

message: There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze#Requested move 26 April 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. SkyWarrior 19:18, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move at [[Talk:Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze#Requested move 26 April 2023]] 

message: Hello,Please note that Bible, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! 
Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement! 

message: Please see the project-relevant RM at Talk:Tel_Ashkelon#Requested_move_20_June_2023. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:52, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion about ancient Ascalon 

message: I am not sure if this is within the scope of our project, but I've recently noticed that some wiktionary entries focused on specific cuneiform signs uncritically promote the ridiculous "Proto-Euphratean" theory which assigns Indo-European (sic) etymologies to sumerian words, an example is ex. the gud entry. The state of such articles is generally poor across wiki projects (ex. describing a sign with phrases like "it has many uses in the Epic of Gilgamesh" is a recurring peculiar choice) but this stands out to me as what seems like an attempt at pushing a very specific, largely forgotten and irrelevant fringe theory. I'm not sure what can be done but this seems like a huge problem. A user in the edit history of the gud article specifically claims that there's no consensus in the field but that's a brazen lie, Jerrold Cooper affirms in the Reallexikon (p. 295), which is generally meant to reflect consensus at the time of publication (in this case - the 2010s) that this baffling speculation "won few adherents" and I can't think of a single credible modern Assyriologist who subscribes to it. It seems like the sort of thing you'd mostly see among hobbyists obsessed with Proto-Indo-European reconstructions for less than noble reasons, tbh, much like in the case of some of the more famous Mitanni hot takes. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 07:40, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiktionary issue 

message: There is an RM at Zechariah (New Testament figure) of relevance here. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:25, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:   Zechariah/Zacharias 

message: Hello WikiProject Ancient Near East: 
WikiProject Women in Green is holding a  month-long Good Article Edit-a-thon event in October 2023!
Running from October 1 to 31, 2023, WikiProject Women in Green (WiG) is hosting a Good Article (GA) edit-a-thon event with the theme Around the World in 31 Days! All experience levels welcome. Never worked on a GA project before? We'll teach you how to get started. Or maybe you're an old hand at GAs – we'd love to have you involved! Participants are invited to work on nominating and/or reviewing GA submissions related to women and women's works (e.g., books, films) during the event period. We hope to collectively cover article subjects from at least 31 countries (or broader international articles) by month's end. GA resources and one-on-one support will be provided by experienced GA editors, and participants will have the opportunity to earn a special WiG barnstar for their efforts. 
We hope to see you there!
Grnrchst (talk) 14:23, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Women in Green's 5th Edit-a-thon 

message: Nice, if you are into this sort of thing.
*Video - Tell Khaiber as a Fortified Centre of the First Sealand Dynasty - Daniel Calderbank - ARWA - 2022
Some of the other talks in the series are also good.  Ploversegg (talk) Ploversegg (talk) 02:17, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tell Khaiber video 

message: Western Wall has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good article reassessment for [[Western Wall]] 

message: Ionian Revolt has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Hog Farm  Talk 18:29, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good article reassessment for [[Ionian Revolt]] 

message: Achaemenid Assyria has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:49, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good article reassessment for [[Achaemenid Assyria]] 

message: Hi, there is a request to merge Tunna with Atuna (state) that might interest members of this project. Thanks!  ASUKITE 17:00, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge request at [[Talk:Tunna]] 

message: Isaac has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Spinixster (chat!) 09:59, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good article reassessment for [[Isaac]] 

message: There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Amytis of Babylon#Requested move 12 February 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. asilvering (talk) 05:15, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move at [[Talk:Amytis of Babylon#Requested move 12 February 2024]] 

message: Hello all. Someone gave me advice to the ANE WikiProject for discussion on this (see most recent of my talk page for the detail), my apologies if this is not the right way to do it. I have recently created the page Ancient near eastern cosmology, alongside creating other related pages (like Early Greek cosmology) and cleaning up/expanding on others (like Firmament). But ANE cosmology is the main one I am here to talk of (and I was honestly shocked when I saw that a page for this did not even exist, although there was the related biblical comsology): I have put a lot of effort into it and I wanted to come here for advice on how the page could be improved. My ultimate goal is to get it to Good article status. Pogenplain (talk) 14:19, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ancient near eastern cosmology