Talk:Four sons of Horus/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 17:27, 7 May 2023 (UTC) I'll have a go at this well-organised article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:27, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Comments

• Wikilink Horus, Isis where first used.

Done.

• Actually, both Horus and Isis need to be introduced (glossed) briefly when first mentioned in the main text, just enough to set them in context. For instance, if Horus is their father and Isis is their mother, what does that say about them?

I've added very slight glosses. The problem is that the sources don't say specifically what the relationship with Isis. Both deities had a very varied range of roles, and giving them a descriptor that emphasizes one of those roles (e.g., "Isis, a goddess connected with funerary rites…") would seem to imply that that role is the one most relevant to the four sons, which would be going beyond the sources. Horus is a little different. Like Isis, he plays a major role in the mythology surrounding Osiris's funerary rites, and until I looked closely at Raven 2005, I assumed that the four sons were an extension of that aspect of their father's mythology. But the sources don't suggest that as their origin, whereas Raven 2005 suggests they were originally celestial instead.

• Wikilink sarcophagus/i.

Done.

• The acronym "PT" is used only twice, just after it was (obscurely) introduced. Suggest it is spelled out instead.

I decided to write "Spell", same as for the Book of the Dead. I hope I've written it in such a way that it's clear which funerary text I'm referring to when I do so.

• In both "Names and origins" and in "Iconography" we have mentions of femaleness of Imsety. Perhaps these belong together?

If you want, though I'll hold off on combining them until the point below is dealt with.

I suggest you do, but it can't be a show-stopper so it's up to you.

• "these two sons were originally male and female pairs of deities." --- So Hapy and Imsety were originally 4 deities? Or the 4 sons of Horus were originally two male-female pairs? Or the Hapy-Imsety pair were originally hermaphrodites? Or....? This does rather need to be clarified.

Taylor doesn't elaborate very much. His exact wording is "In these early sources [the Pyramid Texts], at least two of the 'sons' were pairs of gods, male and female counterparts, an original status reflected in the survival of the grammatical dual-endings -ty/wy in the name of Imsety, and probably also of Hapy (which seems to have originally been Hepwy)." I assume that means Hapy and Imsety were originally four deities.

This passage in Taylor seems to mean that the Pyramid Texts treat Hapy and Imsety as two pairs of deities. But I've read all the references to the four sons in Allen 2005, and if the texts treat them that way, it doesn't come through clearly in Allen's translation. It's rather strange, and I'm not entirely sure how to handle it.

Sounds as if Taylor wasn't sure either. I think we need a footnote saying the sources are unclear here.

I don't know how to go about this. We're not supposed to be making comments on the inadequacy of our sources (except grumbling on talk pages, of course).

I've tweaked the wording to make it clear that these two sons were originally two pairs of deities, so the other interpretations above are excluded. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:27, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

• I'm slightly wondering why we have separate articles for Canopic jar and Four sons of Horus but I think I see the reason. I'd suggest we have a short subsection (under Roles, maybe) on "=== Canopic jars ===" ... "{{main|Canopic jar}}" ... to explain briefly what the jars were for. I think the existing text within "Protectors of the deceased" might well work better if pulled out and slightly reformulated in this way, i.e. something about Horus and his role, something about the sons and their roles, something separately about the jars.

I'm not entirely sure what you're envisioning.

The further link certainly helps to make the relationship of the two articles clearer, thank you.

• It crossed my mind to have a diagram of the body with the four internal organs highlighted (in colour, maybe), with lines in the four compass directions NW NE SE SW to the four sons, pictured, and lines from them to the four goddesses, pictured... Maybe. Not a GA requirement but it might give the reader the impression of understanding something.

Raven 2005 has charts, so maybe I could draw something based on it at some point.

That would be lovely.

• I guess the obvious question, to which there is probably no short answer, is why the four sons are usually mapped to these four organs, what did it all mean? Ideally a one-word clue for each organ ...

It seems no one is sure, although Raven says there may be a connection between the organs and the directions. I've added a sentence about it.

• Horus is falcon-headed; is there any reason that Qebehsenuef has the same head as his father?

Your comment below is correct; nobody seems to know.

• "stars in the northern sky" --- do we know which four stars?

The sources don't specify aside from Mathieu, on which see below.

• This reader's head started to spin with all the periods mentioned. A small timeline in a box somewhere would be helpful.

I'm not sure how to handle this. All articles that cover long stretches of ancient Egyptian history have this problem. There is a navbox about this (Template:Ancient Egypt dynasties sidebar), but navboxes aren't supposed to be used outside the articles they link to.

Mmm. A similar sidebar, perhaps not that exact one, could certainly be used as a timeline. Over in biology, we use explicit timeline structures like Template:Abiogenesis timeline to provide temporal context. That one is quite elaborate, but a much simpler table (for instance, with bordering lines suppressed) could provide a navigable timeline of the dynasties, with dates and significant events (Horus first named...). I'd almost dispute that the sidebar you mention is really a pure navbox as it certainly has a dual role, but specialising it would of course resolve the matter.

• Is it "Ramesseum Dramatic Papyrus" or "Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus"?

• A. Parrot - I see you've fixed this and some other items. If you could mark the ones you've done here in this list as you go along, it'd be appreciated. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:44, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm formulating my replies as I go; hoping to finish in just a bit. A. Parrot (talk) 07:27, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Both are used. Geisen uses R-D-P, but I've changed it to match the WP article title.

• Spot-checks OK.

• The "Further Reading" paper by Bernard Mathieu is interesting, not least for its long list of alternative names for the four sons - the children of Atum, or of Geb, or of Nut.... these do seem rather worth a mention.

The problem with Mathieu, for me, is that I can't really read French. Google Translate seems to be pretty good at rendering French these days, but I'm leery of using machine translation without a human backup. If you want, I can run Mathieu's paper through Google Translate and use it to make additions to the article addressing this point, as well as the others that you list below based on Mathieu, and you can check those passages to make sure I've understood the text correctly.

Yes, let's do that. I tend to forget that people find French difficult! I have of course already provided some human readings of Mathieu below.

• Mathieu says that there is nothing in the Pyramid Texts which mentions the iconography of the four heads (guess this answers the Qebehsenuef question with "we don't know", unless other texts mention the matter).

• Mathieu mentions that the words for Imsety and "liver" are Jms.t and mjs.t, suggesting by paronomasia an ancient connection between the two, which seems rather relevant here.

I've added a sentence about it.

• Similarly, Mathieu writes that Qebehsenuef has the etymological meaning "that which is in the belly", jmj-h.t, hence "intestines".

I don't see that in the translation. Qebehsenuef's name doesn't really resemble jmj-h.t. I think Mathieu is saying that the word for "intestine" means "what is in the belly", so Qebehsenuef's purview can encompass all the organs and thus he can represent the four sons collectively.

• Mathieu also mentions stars both in the northern sky and the southern, including Orion's Belt with 4 stars around it which he suggests could easily be Osiris protected by the Four Sons of Horus. A glance at Orion (constellation) shows these to be Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Saiph, and Rigel.

• Done.

• The images are all appropriately licensed on Commons.

• Image captions are helpful and appropriate. I would suggest though that we accompany the image of the Human-headed canopic jars with a brief statement that this form persisted for many centuries, i.e. it was not limited to the 18th Dynasty.

That feels a bit repetitive of the text in the body. Adding another image of jars from an earlier period would emphasize the point without repeating it (File:Ignota prov., cista con vasi canopi, XII-XIII dinastia, 1938-1640 ac..JPG is a decent one, and it has the advantage of showing the jars in a canopic chest), but that would end up pushing the last image in the gallery onto another line. A. Parrot (talk) 07:49, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Good idea, that would help; we could add the image using Template:multiple image to place the images side-by side, or we could use a gallery with mode=packed to centre the images.

Done.

Summary

This is a fascinating and well-constructed article, suitably illustrated. I hope to see it at GA very shortly. If you could indicate under each comment when you have responded to it, that would be helpful. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:34, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.