Talk:Pyramidion

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WikiProject Ancient Egypt to-do list:

Needed articles.

We should have an article on every pyramid and every nome in Ancient Egypt. I'm sure the rest of us can think of other articles we should have.

Cleanup.

To start with, most of the general history articles badly need attention. And I'm told that at least some of the dynasty articles need work. Any other candidates?

Standardize the Chronology.

A boring task, but the benefit of doing it is that you can set the dates !(e.g., why say Khufu lived 2589-2566? As long as you keep the length of his reign correct, or cite a respected source, you can date it 2590-2567 or 2585-2563)

Stub sorting

Anyone? I consider this probably the most unimportant of tasks on Wikipedia, but if you believe it needs to be done . . .

Data sorting.

This is a project I'd like to take on some day, & could be applied to more of Wikipedia than just Ancient Egypt. Take one of the standard authorities of history or culture -- Herotodus, the Elder Pliny, the writings of Breasted or Kenneth Kitchen, & see if you can't smoothly merge quotations or information into relevant articles. Probably a good exercise for someone who owns one of those impressive texts, yet can't get access to a research library.

References (Gilding)[edit]

Just in case anyone wants to revert the change about the capstones being covered in gold leaf, the entry from page 197 of The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Ancient Egypt is this (emphasis mine):

Capstone at the top of a pyRramid. Called benbenet in ancient Egyptian, it associated the pyramid as a whole with the sacred BENBEN STONE. Pyramidions may have been covered in gold leaf to reflect the rays of the sun; in the MIDDLE KINGDOM, they were often inscribed with ROYAL TITLEs and religious symbols. The black granite pyramidion of AMENEMHAT III from his monument at DAHSHUR is one of a number of pyramidia now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

And the relevant passage from page 267 of I.E.S Edwards' The Pyramids of Egypt (1993) is

An inscription found by Jequier at the pyramid of Queen Udjebten refers to the gilded capstone on her pyramid, which suggests that these stones were, at least sometimes, overlaid with gold. The earliest known example was discovered in 1982 by the excavators of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo at the northern stone pyramid of Sencferu at Dahshur. Made of Tura limestone, it had no inscription or decoration and it showed no sign of having been overlaid with gold or any other metal. It was badly damaged when it fell from the pyramid, but the broken pieces have now been reassembled; its base measurement has been found to be about 5 feet square and its height about 2 feet 7 inches. Part of another Old Kingdom capstone, made of black granite, was found in the season 1984-5 by the Czechoslovak expedition under Miroslav Verner near the pyramid of Reneferef at Abu Sir.

--tronvillain (talk) 13:09, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like the article does not accurately represent the source material's claims. The article claims that pyramidions were generally covered in gold leaf, but the sources cited say that they "may have" been covered and the only cited example refers to a reference of the pyramid of queen udjebten, which was a minor pyramid in the funerary complex of pepi II, and also shows that pyramidions of several larger pyramids had no gilding.

The claim should be better-sourced or updated to be clear that there is some level of evidential conflict and the prevalence of gilded/ungilded capstones is unknown instead of claiming, unsourced, that gilded pyramidions were the norm. 81.96.59.207 (talk) 11:20, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]