Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison of Egyptian and Greek Mythology

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. L Faraone 02:32, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comparison of Egyptian and Greek Mythology[edit]

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The article is not wikified, and it is unsourced. I don't know if we have articles with topics like this. Mediran (t • c) 03:45, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. We do indeed have articles like this (see Comparison of Buddhism and Christianity, and various others listed at Comparative religion), and this particular topic may well be notable (see eg. [1], [2]), but this article as it stands is basically just a list of gods, and would have to be completely rewritten before it could claim to be anything like an encyclopedic review of the subject. DoctorKubla (talk) 08:04, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

~~Keep~~ - Sources have now been added, not that having none was a reason to delete. Not being wikified is also not a reason to delete. As User:DoctorKubla stated above there are other articles with similar topics and it seems notable. The article may not be encyclopaedic at the moment but it was only just created and could be improved and expanded on. I can't see any policy based reasons to delete. Sarahj2107 (talk) 08:46, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to make sure you saw my note below: the topic is already covered under the article interpretatio graeca, which needs source-based development. As pointed out on the talk page, however, it's reductive to create tables of equivalents; that isn't really how the process of syncretism worked in the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods. It might be possible to write an article that differed from interpretatio graeca strictly from the perspective of comparative mythology, but it would be tricky to do without falling into synth unless the sources were impeccably on target. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:49, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - In light of User:Cynwolfe's comment about interpretatio graeca, I now think it should be deleted as the topic can be adequately covered there instead.Sarahj2107 (talk) 07:25, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

But I do think that interpretatio graeca could use a lot more about Egypt (like, a whole section covering Herodotus's efforts to explain Eygptian religion, to the development of Egyptian cults such as those of Isis and Serapis in the Roman Imperial world), so I would encourage editors who contributed to the article considered here for deletion to find sources and work on the topic there. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:46, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC the only real contributor was a student doing this as part of a class project. Not likely to do either. Ansh666 03:11, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - sources that have been added are on the Egyptian gods, and I am sure sources could be found on the Greek Gods, this however is not the problem. What is needed are sources that link the Egyptian gods to the Greek gods. As the article stands it is Original research and should be deleted. The links are not established via references. I remember studding at uni the assotiations of dogs and death in various cultures (Egyptian, Greek, Viking...) and recall saying to my tutor the the link between cerberus and Garmr was obvious; however, he waned me that such links are tenuous at best and caution is needed before jumping to conclusions. Indeed, academic resources were careful not to draw hasty conclusions from similarities between different cultures. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 17:50, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. First of all, the article has the wrong title. Mythology means (very roughly) stories about gods. The article is focused on deities and their basic characteristics, not the stories about them. Second, the actual comparison is very superficial. Third, the sources are hopeless; one citation is a self-reference to a Wikipedia article, while the others refer to a belly dancing website.

No, those issues don't necessarily preclude having an article comparing Greek and Egyptian deities (if the title were changed) or mythologies (if the content were rewritten). But most fundamentally, I doubt that current sources are available to support an article on either subject. As Czar Brodie says, the sources for a comparison must actually perform the comparison. Using sources that say "Horus fights" and "Ares fights" and then putting them together yourself to say "Horus is like Ares" is original research. Modern scholarship on ancient religions seems to shy away from comparison between unrelated religions, possibly because of the danger of overgeneralization, which was a serious problem with scholarship on comparative religion in the past. When writing Egyptian mythology, I desperately tried to find sources that relate Egyptian mythology to the mythology of other cultures, but what little I found was cursory, never treating the comparisons in depth. Scholars writing about Egyptian religion will sometimes contrast Egyptian deities and mythology with those of Greece to illustrate how different Egyptian religion is from our Western preconceptions of ancient religion, but again, it's rather cursory.

Finally, Egyptian and Greek gods/myths/religion were not totally unrelated (unlike, the subjects for the article on comparison of Buddhism and Christianity, which had little contact with each other until the past few centuries, or comparative studies of the Roman and Han empires). In the Hellenistic period and under the Roman Empire, they interacted and integrated with each other a great deal. There could be an article about those interactions, titled "ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek religion", though it would probably have to cover Roman religion as well (they all mixed together in the empire). But it wouldn't simply be a comparison of the two. I just don't think this subject, itself, is viable. A. Parrot (talk) 19:33, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Topic is probably notable, but would need sources which discuss this comparison. At present I see no useful content pertaining to such a comparison. I also have Copyvio concerns, notice this edit, and compare with [3]. Paul August ☎ 22:09, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The topic is incorrectly framed: this kind of material belongs at interpretatio graeca—an article needing some development, but indicating how to frame the topic in scholarly terms. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:40, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - as above, topic is notable, but covered elsewhere. I wouldn't say this is a fork, though, since this is more or less a list of Greek and Egyptian deities with little to no valid scholarly comparison (aka basically not what the title says), so delete without prejudice to redirect. Ansh666 00:06, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - see WP:Education noticeboard#Another class?. Ansh666 00:14, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:27, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:27, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.