Talk:Ramesses II

Ramesses II in hieroglyphs
Ramesses II in hieroglyphs
	𓂋𓂝𓅓𓋴𓇌𓋴

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Military history: Biography / African / Middle East C‑class

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Ancient Egypt Top‑importance

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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.

Egypt High‑importance

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Ramesses II was one of the History good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
December 8, 2005	Good article nominee	Listed
June 23, 2006	Good article reassessment	Kept
July 19, 2008	Good article reassessment	Delisted
Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on May 31, 2009, May 31, 2010, May 31, 2011, and May 31, 2014.
Current status: Delisted good article

Hieroglyphics not given?

Surely this basic data is essential?

92.15.223.1 (talk) 17:09, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The full royal titulary is provided in the infobox. It is collapsed (or hidden) by default due to the amount of space it occupies. Mr rnddude (talk) 17:32, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks fur that - I didn't see it.

So that begs the question, why is everything in graphics? If you do Ctrl+F and enter the Unicode 𓅭𓇳, nothing comes up. It must be hurting the SEO as well.

The problem is that Unicode doesn't seem able to arrange hieroglyphs in vertical groups. For example, "Setepenra" should be

but Unicode renders it as 𓇳𓍇𓈖. There is talk on the technical side of Wikimedia about the prospect of replacing WikiHiero (the system we now use) with Unicode, but unless Unicode can replace all of WikiHiero's functionality, it may not get done. A. Parrot (talk) 19:19, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A mummy with a passport (redux)

In April, User:Temerarius captioned a photo of the mummy with a brief mention of the claim that it was issued a passport when it was taken to France ([1]). He did include a cite, although to a podcast without a timestamp. For the sake of being thorough, I listened to the whole thing. Unhappily, it contained not one mention of mummies, passports, or any combination thereof.

I’ve removed the passport claim.

The archived talk page has a detailed discussion of this, but briefly: A user added the passport claim in 2006 ([2]) without a cite. It stayed there until 2019, never having acquired a reliable source, despite various “verification needed” tags. At that time, after doing some research, I removed it: the claim is ludicrous, wasn’t mentioned in any of the contemporaneous news articles, and isn’t present on e.g. the French-language version of the page. Unfortunately, since 2006, the claim has spread across the internet via citogenesis.

I thought it worthwhile to add this talk page section to mention this brief clip from a 2023 BBC HistoryExtra podcast interview with Toby Wilkinson. He’s a bona fide Egyptologist and author of a Ramesses biography, who calls the passport claim “nonsense”. Flamerule (talk) 00:34, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I'm sorry you had to go to all the work. I'll get you that timestamp at least. Temerarius (talk) 16:06, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not hearing it on that episode either, I'm sorry. I'll find it for you, but it might take time. Greg is quite careful about citing reliable sources. Ie his standards are higher than Wikipedia's. @Flamerule Temerarius (talk) 16:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It might have been the Moe Berg one. In a teaser for a longer story on the futilitycloset website? It was at the end of an episode, unusually. Temerarius (talk) 19:38, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, don’t sweat it. Before posting I did search their website using the obvious search terms and didn’t see anything relevant. Flamerule (talk) 20:18, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Flamerule for your thorough work!

Temerarius - I am inclined to believe a respected, professional Egyptologist over a non-subject expert podcast host. Merytat3n (talk) 21:57, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I found it, episode 358: The Radium Girls at the 25 minute mark. It is a "lateral thinking" game between the two hosts. The notes say the factoid was sent in by a listener, providing a Heritage Daily article from 2020 as support. Heritage Daily says:

In 1975, Maurice Bucaille, a French doctor studying his remains said that the mummy was threatened by fungus and needed urgent treatment to prevent total decay. French laws dictated that entry and transportation through the country required a valid passport. To comply with local laws, the Egyptian government issued a passport to the Pharaoh.

No source is given for this specific statement. The only cited source in the article is this 1976 NYT article, which says Ramesses was flown to France on 26 September 1976 for treatment, and was met by government officials and the army. It says Ramesses "received special treatment at Le Bourget Airport" but nothing is mentioned about a passport. Merytat3n (talk) 03:28, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks yes, the Times article feels familiar. I'm sorry I fouled up the citation; I'll be sure to add a timestamp and double check the address next time. Thanks for looking out after accuracy. We might want to ask the refdesk if France does require passports of incoming cadavers. Temerarius (talk) 18:39, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How do you like the podcast, right? Pretty good stuff. Temerarius (talk) 18:40, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Consulate General of France in LA, to bring a body into France (for burial) requires a death certificate, a disposal permit, a medical certificate stating cause of death (and that it was not caused by a contagious disease), signed authorisation by family/other appointed person requesting the remains come to France, a French permit for burial, and a statement from a funeral home that the remains are securely contained in a coffin. In view of this, maybe it would be easier to just issue a passport!

Anyway, if we can find a reliable source for the passport claim from before it appeared on Wiki, that would be great :) Merytat3n (talk) 21:21, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Merytat3n, does this help? It's a children's book but the author seems a reliable chap:

In 1974, experts discovered that Ramses II's skin was being destroyed by a mysterious infection. The royal mummy was flown to Paris three years later for medical treatment. International regulations required him to have a passport, which gave his occupation as "King (deceased)". When he arrived in France, a team of conservators successfully cured the infection, which turned out to be a fungus...

Putnam, James (1998). Ancient Egyptians. London: DK Publishing. p. 122. ISBN 978-0789414090.

Alansplodge (talk) 18:43, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Alansplodge: that is something!

In doing a quick survey with Google Books, I find that Peter J. Brand mentions the passport on p.486 of Ramesses II: Egypt's Ultimate Pharaoh. Footnote 85 doesn't say anything helpful, like mentioning a source for the claim, only that the images online are fakes and that the Egyptian govt has never released a photo of the real passport. As previously mentioned, Toby Wilkinson dismisses the claim Ramesses had a passport.

I wish that, in all the repetitions of the story, someone cited a source >_<

License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport by Paul Bixby discusses RII's passport on pages 24-26, listing all the various reasons given for why he apparently had one. Bixby notes that "for all its notoriety, the passport of Ramesses II does not reside in any archive. Reporting on the transfer of the mummy in 1976 makes no mention of the passport, and no such document is to be found in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, or in the Musee de l'Homme, Paris." He then goes on to say that the story of the passport is either a hoax or a fabrication by the internet.

The only source close to the time that might possibly say *something* is La Momie de Ramses II: contribution scientifique à l'égyptologie (1986) by Balout and Roubet, who worked on the royal mummy in France, and records the circumstances around him coming to France. Or it might not mention it at all. As it stands, it may be worth putting a note on the page mentioning that the claim he had a passport is oft repeated by not verifiable. Merytat3n (talk) 03:43, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that seems the best solution (also, I didn't realise that Putnam had the wrong year). At least we now know that the story predates Wikipedia. Alansplodge (talk) 14:59, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I posted the link to this fact check by French news agency Agence France-Presse on the ref desk, Alansplodge asked me to copy it here. This disputes the story of the passport and points to a possible origin of the confusion. This seems to be the work mentioned by Merytat3n (although from 1985, [3]), where the term passeport is used in inverted commas, i.e. metaphorically, to describe the negotiations necessary to make the transfer of Ramesses happen. This was a very special operation and it seems therefore futile to look at standard procedures for the transfer of (usually recently) deceased persons. Since the negotiations involved the highest levels of the French and Egyptian states (the Presidents!) it would seem incredibly petty for France to demand a standard-form passport. --Wrongfilter (talk) 19:35, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fantastic! Seems like the nail in the proverbial coffin or should I say, a stamp on the (nonexistent) passport. Thank you everyone!! Merytat3n (talk) 21:33, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a brief note ("e" in the Notes section) should the question arise again. Please feel free to edit or delete if it doesn't fit the bill. Alansplodge (talk) 12:54, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ramesses II and His Passport

In 1974, during the transportation of the mummy of Ramesses II to Paris for restoration, Egyptian authorities issued a valid passport for the ancient pharaoh. The passport included a photograph of his mummified remains and formally recorded his occupation as "King (deceased)." Sarabdalla05 (talk) 16:02, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 10 October 2024

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

"Though scholars generally do not recognize the biblical portrayal of the Exodus as an actual historical event,[113]" This line of text is supported by only a single, hard to access source that cannot be verified. A statement this broad requires requires more proof or evidence. 2601:601:D47F:10B0:2701:3548:2ED2:946 (talk) 15:01, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. PianoDan (talk) 16:17, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]