Talk:Ancient Mesopotamia

Guide?

Is this ready to be tagged Guide & perhaps nominated for FTT? If not, what is needed? Pashley (talk) 08:52, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I think it is ready, but I've done much of the recent work so I want a second opinion. Pashley (talk) 02:58, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

We should probably add "Eat" and "Drink" sections, including what we know. The ancient Sumerians are probably the first people recorded to have made beer, with the quantities of raw ingredients ordered and delivered literally carved in stone, and some current-day people have tried to fashion recipes and make their versions of it. Included among those search results, too, is a Babylonian stew, again with some issues, in that case in terms of the meanings of two ingredients and of course what proportions would have been used. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:51, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I've thought about adding a line or two about beer, but I guess most of the area described in this article consists of "dry" (or practically dry) communities where you can't sample any kind of beer, let alone the form brewed in Sumerian fashion, so I've thought that would be an academic addition at best.

Mardin has a mild reputation for its "Syriac wine", but I'm not sure how far back the history and tradition surrounding that product goes. Vidimian (talk) 21:59, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

It's at least historically significant, so I think a summary should be added purely to interest the reader. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:37, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps.

Another candidate for "eat": the much contested origins of baklava might be ancient Assyrians (see w:Baklava#History and the sources linked from there). However, if that claim is true, it has much deviated from its original form. Vidimian (talk) 12:08, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I added something about beer at Ancient_Mesopotamia#Destinations. I'm not sure about adding Eat and Drink sections; would we have enough to say that those would work? Pashley (talk) 03:15, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

You did, but I have never heard anyone say that Israel was ever part of Mesopotamia, so I think that destination is misplaced in this article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:27, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Israel was part of the Fertile crescent which redirects here. Pashley (talk) 06:56, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

The Fertile Crescent was much bigger than The Land Between the Rivers, which is what Mesopotamia is, so if we're redirecting anything, the redirect should go the other way and this article should be renamed. But I think that would be wrong, because the Fertile Crescent normally includes Egypt or at least Upper Egypt, too, and the Canaanite civilizations, coastal Eastern Mediterranean civilizations like Phoenicia, and Aram were all different and had different histories, with influence coming from Egypt as well as Mesopotamia, but Anatolia (notably including the Hittites) and Persia also exerted influence. My feeling is that an article about Mesopotamia should be about the land of the Euphrates and Tigris, period, and that Fertile Crescent can be an extra-region if we really need one but definitely should not redirect to a subset of its area. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:07, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

And this article is not a guide with this IMO serious unresolved issue. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:19, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

I've created Fertile Crescent, though it is nowhere near complete, and moved the problematic destination plus some other stuff there. Pashley (talk) 09:06, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate that. It's substantive and off to a good start. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:11, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Are we there yet? Pashley (talk) 16:11, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Map

Mesopotamia

The article had three maps which seemed excessive, so I removed this one. Pashley (talk) 05:31, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Göbekli Tepe?

I added a listing for Göbekli Tepe (WV/WP) in the past, but it was later removed for being out of geographical scope. Now that the article has been expanded to include a larger geography and timeline, does anyone think it's worth adding back? I think Göbekli Tepe is a tremendously important site (the oldest known temple of humankind), and fits well with the "land between the rivers" definition, but it's Neolithic, so doesn't fit well with the "Sumer → Akkad, Babylon, Assyria → Persian" chronology currently used in the "Destinations" section. Vidimian (talk) 15:01, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it should likely be there. Pashley (talk) 17:05, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Done. I inserted it at the top of Ancient_Mesopotamia#Destinations, before Sumer. Pashley (talk) 17:27, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. A little rewrite wouldn't hurt, though, so that the text is unique across the website, aligns better with the style used in this article, and is more gender-neutral. Vidimian (talk) 22:02, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Moved to new separate Fertile Crescent article. Pashley (talk) 13:22, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Date formatting

As has been discussed at Wikivoyage talk:Time and date formats, an article should use either BC/AD or CE/BCE, and should not mix the two. Which system should this article use? Ground Zero (talk) 11:17, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

I vote for BCE/CE, as there is no specific Christian context that's paramount to this region. When we dealt with the Roman Empire, I argued that it was the perfect case for BC/AD, but Mesopotamia was only briefly part of that empire. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:32, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

I !vote for whatever formatting is used in present-day Iraq. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:38, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

You want to use A.H., then? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:03, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that they use AH. In that case, I vote for using CE/BCE. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:46, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I think I should say something here, as I was the one who switched BCE to BC in the first place. I wasn't really aware of that many subtleties and cultural layers attached, and didn't open the WV:tdf policy to check on it; my intention was to make it cleaner, actually. Sorry, folks. Ibaman (talk) 23:23, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

No need to apologize; this is not a very serious issue. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:19, 2 June 2023 (UTC)