Talk:List of ancient Egyptians
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The rationale for saying "ancient Egyptians" rather than "Ancient Egyptians" is that "ancient" is a modern convention for a particular time period in Egypt, not an actual name of a country. In other words, nobody on this list ever said "I am an Ancient Egyptian" as someone might today say "I am a New Yorker". Another way to look at this is to say it's a subset of list of Egyptians, namely the ones that lived in ancient times (which is not well-defined BTW - Pharoanic? Hellenistic? pre-Arab? the list head should say), which is an adjective applied to Egyptianness, not a different proper name. One could have a list of Upper Egyptians, because "Upper Egypt" is a proper name. Finally, this form of list corresponds with list of ancient Romans and list of ancient Greeks. Stan 04:58, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
- Yes that is true but they would not have referred to themselves as Egyptians either. We substitute the name of the country Kemet for ours Ancient Egypt. However you are also correct in the nebulous nature of Ancient Egypt, as it generally includes the Pharaonic, Hellenistic, and Roman periods but generally excludes the Byzantine and pre-dynastic periods. I am not particularly upset over the move, just curious as to why you moved it and intereseted in discussing your reasoning. As you already know from our encounter over Fouquieria, I am not fond of the nebulous. So, since we have both agreed on the nebulous nature of the term, and since there is already a precedent, I will accept the move. In other words I buy your rationale, sort of. :)
- -JCarriker 06:10, May 31, 2004 (UTC)
- I'd never heard of "Ancient Egypt" as a literal synonym for Kemet, but I'm no Egyptologist. I guess the intent is to have the list just be Pharaonic-era people, though? Any later named Egyptians are going to be Greek, Roman, etc, they'll have Greek/Roman names and kind of look out of place, plus which they're on the other lists already. By that reasoning your original name is right - the alternate list of Pharaonic Egyptians will auto-discourage additions of people from later eras, but that title will be too mystifying to most readers. Stan 06:54, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
- Actually the list will include Egyptian born Greeks from the Ptolomaic Dynasty because th Ptolomies were still Pharaohs. Egypt was a multicultural civilization, I known that their is an Egyptian of Canaanite descent already on the list and there is already one Ptolomaic period person present as well. The usual end of Pharonic civilization is given as the Roman Conquest of Octavian. So the youngest people on the list should be Cleopatra VII's children or ther contemporaries.
- You might want to check out The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, ISBN 0-19-280293-3.
- If you like Romans you might also want to read Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt, ISBN 0-375-50746-9
- It is my favorite historical biography of all time, I'm currently reading it for the third time. Everitt writes soooo well!
- (Sorry for the typos it's 3:30 am in East Texas).
- -JCarriker 08:51, May 31, 2004 (UTC)