Portal talk:Ancient Near East

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Looks nice. A few things:

1) The Cradle of civilization seems to have been hijacked by a bunch of other early civilizations. The ANE only has a couple paragraphs in it now. You might think about either cutting out the pointer or else changing the line to "a cradle" as opposed to "the cradle"

Yeah, sometimes I'm not sure whether or not link some of these articles. Maybe the state they're in will motivate other people to get involved editing... Y Done removed

2) Under Akkad, I think you want Naram-Sin rather than Naram-Suen. Different guy.

Actually they shared the same name - the spelling for both is Suen, or Sîn.

The contents of the article for Naram-Suen says it better than I could. :-)

"Naram-Suen was a king of the Old Assyrian kingdom. He reigned from ca. 1872 BC to 1845 BC-1843 BC. Not to be confused with Akkadian king Naram-Sin who shared the same name."

Both the Akkadian and Assyrian names refer to the same Semitic god - Sîn or Suen (the Sumerian Nanna)

Ok, last try. :-) Yes, Suen is another name for the akkadian moon-god. Yes, one of the rulers of Akkade was named Naram-Sin also sometimes called Naram-Suen. Alas the Assyrians (if we beleive their history) also had a king named Naram-Suen (along with a Sargon). The wikipedia page Naram-Suen points to the Assyrian king. So, you need to either point to the Naram-Sin page OR get the assyrian king page changed to Naram-Suen of Assyria or some such.

Ah, now I get it. I'll shuffle the pages in place later, with a disambig. "Suen" is the name that should be used for both. Y Done

3) The article may be a bit too wide. I had to expand firefox CONSIDERABLY to read it.

Y Done fixed format

Yeah, the portal.

Hmm. Now I think it's the table of maps that's doing it. Y Done reduced map sizes

4) Fertile Crescent. I'm almost certain that it doesn't include Egypt. For example see http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/east/ ok, not your portal but I thought I'd mention it. :-)

ditto 1) Y Done removed

5) Timeline of ancient Mesopotamia has been renamed History of Mesopotamia

Y Done thanks

6) Hm, I don't seem to remember the Assyrians being Amorites. Don't be fooled by Shamsi-Adad, an (presumed) Amorite who ruled Ashur for a bit and whom the Assyrians then tacked into their King List for cred. I'm pretty sure the Chaldeans aren't Amorites either. On the other hand, the Mari became Amorite eventually and then Kassite. And Isin became Kassite later too. I guess maybe I'm saying that the division into cultural groups may not be a good idea. On the other hand, since the Amorite babylonian empire ran til 1531, the end date on Amorites should be at leaast that.

Y Done changed tabbing, and moved the compare & contrast Babylonia and Assyria article.

7) As for the Persia section, I don't think there is any data for where the heck the Guti came from. At the very least, use the article Guti (Mesopotamia) as a pointer instead of Gutium. No one is really sure where the Kassites came from either but I don't want to get into that argument.

I'm of two minds about this - I think the Gutium article should be improved.

Do you think the Guti and Kassites should not be listed under Persia?

Guti - definitely not. People have NO IDEA where they came from. Or went for that matter.

Kassites- Nobody thinks they are from Iran either, even the reference 2 cited on the wiki kassites page doesn't even say that. Of course, if somebody feels strongly about this, it's no skin off my nose.

Ploversegg (talk) 22:52, 10 May 2008 (UTC)ploversegg

There are Sumerian texts that refer to the Guti as coming down from the mountains, and for Southern Mesopotamia, that would be the Zagros. [1] [2]

I'm not immediately aware of any primary sources for the Kassites - I think there's just an assumption that unknown groups come from remote valleys deep in the mountains, rather than from the open plains.

That said, since we have no record of either of these groups outside of Mesopotamia, perhaps I should move them. Y Done moved

PS I never really looked at the Kassite article before. Oof what a load of nationalist BS. Like so many other "articles" in the ANE!