Talk:Second Intermediate Period of Egypt

Second Intermediate Period of Egypt

please do not move this article to Second Intermediate Period as the general term is used in fields other than Egyptology Nefertum17 10:11, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd really question how Egypt fell into 'disarray' in the Hyksos period; maybe we should be looking at why we assume the FIP, SIP, Amarna periods, etc, are not part of canonical Egyptian history.--220.239.0.8 08:52, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Incomprehensible

As someone who loves Wikipedia, I am dismayed at this article. It is incomprehensible.

What DATE did this period begin?

What DATE did this period end?

A range of dates is fine but discuss what the controversy is in scholarly publications that make it hard to date precisely.

In fact throughout there is a stunning lack of dates. Did Manetho write about this period 100 years later or 1000? How about a best guess, if this is not known well?

There must be a strong tradition among Egyptologists to avoid dates, and use names of Pharaohs in their place. My guess is that this tradition come from the 18th century when it was impossible to date anything that old with any accuracy. The real mystery to me is that in the "History" section of the Wiki article Egypt gives dates.

-Original First Paragraph-

The Second Intermediate Period marks a period when Ancient Egypt once again fell into disarray between the end of the Middle Kingdom, and the start of the New Kingdom. It is best known as when the Hyksos made their appearance in Egypt, whose reign comprised the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties.

-My Revision-

The Second Intermediate Period marks a period when Ancient Egypt once again fell into disunity between the end of the Middle Kingdom, and the start of the New Kingdom. It is best known for being the time of the first alien ruling dynasty in Egypt, that of the Semitic Hyksos. The Hyksos invaders took over much of Lower Egypt around 1650 BC, and founded a new capital at Avaris. They were eventually driven out by an Upper Egyptian force led by Ahmose I, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty, c. 1550 BC and relocated the capital from Memphis to Thebes. The Hyksos comprised the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties.

Notice how it is now clear

• what year this period begins and ends,
• what distinguishes it,
• what event marks its begining,
• what event marks it ending?

I very much do not want to sound harsh here but someone who knows ancient Egyptian history needs to go through all of these articles and date them.

Nwbeeson 17:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Our understanding of egyptian history during this period is too limited to make an article as clear as I am afraid you would like. The period doesn't have dates, really, since the decline into the period isn't marked by a cataclysmic battle like 476 and the fall of Rome marks the middle ages. I am afraid your change in fact, while trying to make it more clear, does so by adding wrong information. the date of 1650 for instance is flat out incorrect as the start of the period, since most scholars start dating from the end of the 12th dynasty around the 1700s. Thanatosimii 18:45, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Needs a complete reference for "Bourriau 2003"

24.254.238.231 (talk) 14:28, 17 March 2014 (UTC) Mike

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Requested move 7 April 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 22:30, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

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Second Intermediate Period of Egypt → Second Intermediate Period – I have been unable to find any reference to usage of a "Second Intermediate Period" of another country. At present the Second Intermediate Period page is a redirect to Second Intermediate Period of Egypt Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 19:28, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 20:53, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

• @Iazyges and Hzh: queried move request
• Seems like it needs a discussion first, the titling of this article is consistent with the article of other periods - Middle Kingdom of Egypt, First Intermediate Period of Egypt, etc. The discussion might include these other articles as well. Hzh (talk) 20:41, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
• Support. "of Egypt" should be taken off all the history articles. You wouldn't say "Tudor dynasty of England." Just as "United Kingdom" is understood to refer to Britain, "New Kingdom" implies Egypt. Nine Zulu queens (talk) 08:45, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

If "of Egypt" is to be removed from all these article, then disambiguation would be necessary for some articles, for example Middle Kingdom of Egypt. Moving it to Middle Kingdom (Egypt) should be OK, but it depends on whether you think Middle Kingdom of Egypt is a natural disambiguation per WP:NCDAB). Hzh (talk) 11:59, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

• Support. Second Intermediate Period is fine for me, as it seems, there is only one Second Intermediate Period used in history writing. In contrast, Middle Kingdom of Egypt should remain, as China is often called the Middle Kingdom too; the same for Old and New Kingdom, as these terms are also used for periods in other cultures. bw -- Udimu (talk) 12:51, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. Over enthusiastic abbreviation hurts recognisability with no upside. “Second” and “intermediate” and “period” are common words applicable to many subject areas, the proposed is begging for widespread mis-recognition. Period doesn’t imply ancient history. The proposed could equally refer to a study of the second row of Tarantino metals in the periodic table. The consequential needs to parenthetically disambiguate other things, and introduce hatnites to articles,are all downsides, all indicators that you are making a reasonable title worse. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:00, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
  • We should follow usage in the reliable sources, not make up a name that sounds reasonable to us as nonspecialists. See this ngram. Nine Zulu queens (talk) 06:05, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, largely per SmokeyJoe. I grant that the title is more often used without qualifier, but then that's because it's primarily described only in books about history of Egypt, where the context is apparent. However, COMMONNAME is only one of five WP:CRITERIA: we are a general encyclopedia, however, and the proposed title could signify just about anything in any scientific discipline: we owe our readers WP:RECOGNIZABILITY as well. Plus, there's already nice WP:CONSISTENCY with the First Intermediate Period of Egypt and the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. No such user (talk) 10:41, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

  @No such user: I was planning to nominate First Intermediate for a similar removal of the "of Egypt", although I will admit Middle Kingdom would likely have to break off from this consistency, given that China calls themself such. -- Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 12:54, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

  @Iazyges: Fair enough, but you should have done that in the nomination. However, I would nonetheless !vote the same – it's been my long-standing position that technically unique but intrinsically ambiguous and relatively obscure titles, such as this one, benefit from a qualifier (often, a country name) for added recognizability and context. Feel free to count in First Dynasty, Second Dynasty,... Eighteenth Dynasty, all (AFAICT) redirecting to Egyptian dynasties, New Kingdom etc. No such user (talk) 13:09, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

  I agree with you for New Kingdom, Old Kingdom, etc., however I think the dynasties could reasonably be moved (although I doubt consensus is such), as few if any other dynasties are numeric, something which is done due to the consistent lack of dynastic connection (or at least lack of evidence for such). Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 13:15, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

  Where will the of [country] infestation end? It's like "on wheels." It's a phrase you can add to the end of any article title: "President Emmanuel Macron of France", "Romanov dynasty of Russia", "Isaac Newton of England". What people seem to forget is that the article titles are attached to articles. The opening of the article is where the who, what, and where questions get answered. Nine Zulu queens (talk) 23:21, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

  I'm not a fan of slippery slope arguments. Or, I can pose the question in a different way: where will the "over-enthusiastic abbreviation infestation" end? Personally, I have a rather clear idea where the line should be drawn, and it encompasses the following cases: wherever the title is 1) not widely known to the general public 2) is so ambiguous-sounding that is applicable pretty much anywhere, and thus don't mean anything for non-specialists 3) is either some kind of moniker (usually given post-hoc) rather than a personal name or title (First Dynasty), or represents a generic class (e.g. government ministries and military units, e.g. 1st Air Defense Artillery Regiment). And of course, there are gray areas, subject to editorial consensus; I can grant that "Second Intermediate Period" approaches one, but I still think a qualifier is helpful. And, what people seem to forget is that the article titles are not necessarily attached to articles – they also appear in context-free environments such as search tooltips, search results and categories. Do you know where the Sixth Republic redirects to? In which country is the Ministry of Human Resource Development? While conciseness and precision are important factor to be considered, so are recognizability and naturalness. No such user (talk) 07:30, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

  "however I think the dynasties could reasonably be moved (although I doubt consensus is such), as few if any other dynasties are numeric" You are wrong here. Babylon had 11 dynasties which are usually disambiguated by numbers, though we only have an article on the First Babylonian Dynasty. See List of kings of Babylon. Dimadick (talk) 07:13, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

• The purpose of a title is to tell the reader the name of the subject. Adding other stuff to the title detracts from this purpose. Wikipedia has 5.6 million article titles. I don't know what they all mean. To expect that an ordinary reader will be able to know what is in every article based simply the title is not reasonable. I favor using the name of the subject as it given in the most authoritative sources. Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt has a lengthy article on this subject entitled "Second Intermediate Period." The "of Egypt" variation has no significant usage on Gbooks. We already have titling rules at WP:Article titles. They are nothing like the rules NSU has proposed. Nine Zulu queens (talk) 11:03, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

  How about (emphasis mine): Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize....The choice of article titles should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before those of specialists.... Usually, titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that... Exceptions to the precision criterion may sometimes result from the application of some other naming criteria. with an example Leeds North West is precise enough to be unambiguous, but Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies) specify the addition of the qualifier in Leeds North West (UK Parliament constituency). While I grant that there's no specific NC in place for Ancient Egyptian topics, we already have a de facto one which spontaneously emerged, and I just argue it is not broken.
  The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt is obviously a specialist encyclopedia, and having a qualifier there would be redundant indeed. However, we are a general encyclopedia, and the present title presents an obvious, natural clarification to the reader what is being referred to: any non-specialist can easily infer that the "Second Intermediate Period of Egypt" is an era of Egyptian history, while a bare "Second Intermediate Period" might easily signify a class of elements in the periodic table, a type of a period (typography), or a term from signal processing. That's what SmokeyJoe referred to as Over enthusiastic abbreviation [that] hurts recognisability with no upside. No such user (talk) 14:11, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

  Besides, it's not that we're inventing anything. Here's a random collection of web page titles from first few pages of Google search for "intermediate period", chiefly online encyclopedias, academic overviews and popular history sites. They all provide an explicit or implicit context of Egyptian history in the very title or thereabouts:

• First Intermediate Period of Egypt, Ancient History Encyclopedia
• Ancient Egypt Online: First Intermediate Period, Ancient Egypt Online:
• Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1070–664 B.C.), The Metropolitan Museum
• Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period, University College London
• Beyond Politics: Material Culture In Second Intermediate Period Egypt and Nubia, INSTITUTE FOR ORIENTAL AND EUROPEAN ARCHAEOLOGY, Austrian Academy of sciences
• Second Intermediate period: Egyptian History, Britannica (they have subtitles, we don't)
• Ancient Egypt's 1st Intermediate Period, ThoughtCo
• Ancient Egypt: The History of the First Intermediate Period, Michael Fassbender

No such user (talk) 14:24, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

• Despite all your guideline quoting, your argument goes directly against what the guideline says: “Conciseness – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.” (WP:NAMINGCRITERIA) Wikipedia does put the name in context. Here is the article’s opening: “The Second Intermediate Period marks a period when Ancient Egypt…” How is that not as good as a Britannica subtitle? Notice this section of the guideline as well: “Other encyclopedias are among the sources that may be helpful in deciding what titles are in an encyclopedic register, as well as what names are most frequently used.” Nine Zulu queens (talk) 07:34, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose for now. After reading the comments, I think it is preferable to have a clear reference point for what the article is about. The context is obvious for books or websites on Egypt, but not so obvious here (when you look for articles in Wikipedia, only the title pops up, not the content). I do think there is a need to have a consistent usage pattern, and this is consistent with the other articles. If you change this, then you are obliged to change the others, and you'd end up with a mix of articles with and without "of Egypt". Personally I believe it is better to have something like Second Intermediate Period (Egypt), Third Dynasty (Egypt), Middle Kingdom (Egypt) etc., but that may be another discussion. Hzh (talk) 10:32, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
  • In what situation does "only the title pop up"? Check out what happens when you search for "Egypt's Second Intermediate Period." Nine Zulu queens (talk) 12:00, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

I meant title suggestion that pops up when you start to search. You'd need to search for pages that contain the words (rather than the article title) to see all pages with such words. Hzh (talk) 13:46, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Today part of

In "Today part of" we see just Egypt. But in the map, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Israel, and Gaza strip are shown too. Aminabzz (talk) 22:56, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

16th dynasty list

I deleted the following short paragraph, because it explains a list which is not actually present in this article. I've saved that text here, just in case it rightfully belongs elsewhere (e.g. in the Sixteenth Dynasty article??), or if adding the indicated list is somebody's intended work-in-progress. - Zulu Kane (talk) 14:05, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Ryholt gives the list of kings of the 16th dynasty as shown in the table below. Others, such as Helck, Vandersleyen, Bennett combine some of these rulers with the Seventeenth dynasty of Egypt. The estimated dates come from Bennett's publication.

References

The Thirteenth Dynasty, Salitis being the "first king", and inconsistent dates

The dates in the article are rather inconsistent. The Thirteenth Dynasty is often grouped under the Second Intermediate Period, but its founding king (either Sobekhotep I if you consider the first half to be Second Intermediate Period, or Merhotepre-Ini since they lost control of Itjtawy by his reign) aren't present and neither was its capital of Itjtawy until I just added it. Salitis being the first king wouldn't make sense, as he was considered the founder (in Manethonian tradition, and isn't even fully tied to a historical confirmed figure) of the Fifteenth Dynasty which was not the first dynasty of the period. The dates are also inconsistent, such as the starting date of the period being 1650 BC while the 14th Dynasty is thought to have begun around 1725 BC and ending in 1650 BC. Star11308 (talk) 16:06, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: History of Ancient Egypt

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 January 2023 and 17 March 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Thespongeboy (article contribs). Peer reviewers: CoolQuokka, Lellenkarsen.

— Assignment last updated by Johnstoncl (talk) 19:20, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Second Intermediate Period of Egypt/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Merytat3n (talk · contribs) 00:27, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Starting review : ) Merytat3n (talk) 00:27, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Great! Many thanks. Hopefully we can improve this article. I am very interested in this period so I will endeavour to improve it in anyway possible. Thank you JJNito197 (talk) 11:34, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay here are my thoughts:

Easy fixes:

• The lead mentions Salitis but he isn't mentioned in the body text (lead should only summarise what is in the body of the article)
• Daressy 1906, Montet 1968, Morgan 2010, and Baker & Baker 2001 do not have a full reference.

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   I found the text a bit unclear in parts due to how the information is presented. For example, the section "14th Dynasty" doesn't mention a single king by name; later, it mentions that Ben-Tor disputes Ryholt's chronology but doesn't give a chronology of rulers. This feeds into Section 3, with the text just being too short and incomplete.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (inline citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

   The references are for the most part good Egyptological sources. Requires some more frequent citations in parts (one at the end of each paragraph would be ideal). Earwig's copyvio detector noticed that "There is no agreement in Egyptology either about the length or about how to define the Second Intermediate Period" is from UCL's Digital Egypt, as is "mark the end of the Middle Kingdom as the 'historical moment' when the country became politically divided".

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   The existing text is simply too short to cover the era sufficiently. The existing references could be used to flesh the sections out further eg. naming kings where possible, chronology, and political changes. Art and architecture, and introductions of Hyksos technology could also be included.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   The images used are good as are their captions but would be more effective if the individuals they illustrate also appeared in the text

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   It needs a lot more work to get to GA status but it's great you are willing to tackle it!! I look forward to seeing its progress! The Second Intermediate Period is not my area of expertise so in addition to the existing sources, I can only suggest Grajestzki's The Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt (2006) which has chapters dedicated to the decline of the 12th Dynasty and the 13th Dynasty. Merytat3n (talk) 10:51, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, will start work on the article over the weekend! JJNito197 (talk) 10:18, 12 January 2024 (UTC)