Talk:Reserve head

A fact from Reserve head appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 5 April 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the term "reserve heads" (pictured), found in Ancient Egyptian tombs, is derived from the prevalent theory that they serve as an alternate home for the spirit of the dead owner if anything should happen to the body?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/April.

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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.

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Nice article, and great photos. It seems a bit odd having the table of contents coming near the end of the article, after the main body of text: is there some way of having an introductory para, and then a heading that encompasses most of the text, such as 'Description and history' or such like? That will bring the table of contents up to near the start of the article, where a reader would expect to find it! 86.140.131.87 17:14, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent idea -- the way to do that is to add section headings. Have just done that, and the Table of Contents now appears near the top. Glad you like the article! Captmondo 17:36, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

was an excellent article that left me wanting for more,interesting thing this reserve head is what exactly the reserve heads are purposed for is though not known might be the belief as mentioned for d souls alternate resting place but what the loop hole is that if such a belief was the reason for making them the royal people too should have had them i guess and more elaborate and better ones for that matter, it might , just might have been a way of relatives expressing their love to the deceased or like made in rememberance -syed saif 59.161.67.214 18:35, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reserve heads from Giza

I was able to find a list of reserve heads from Giza by looking at Porter and Moss. I wasn't sure how much detail to include. Thought it was interesting the Giza heads mainly date to the 4th and 5th dynasty. I was thinking of including a small picture in the table when available? --AnnekeBart (talk) 15:53, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, terrific work! By all means if want to include a thumbnail image of the corresponding reserve head in the table as well, please do so. I gather that image galleries are increasingly being frowned upon, so feel free to cannibalize the material there.

By any chance do you have access to a copy of "Newsletter of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities" 5, no 1 (1974)? It contains an article by A.I. Kelley (or perhaps "Kelly") that may have been the originating source for the theory that the heads were originally used as sculptor's prototypes. So far haven't been able to find a copy online. Cheers! Captmondo (talk) 17:42, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have not see a copy of that article. I will have to look around a bit. I will go ahead and put a thumbnail image in the table. --AnnekeBart (talk) 14:01, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I did find a summary of Tefnin's book Here: Blog --AnnekeBart (talk) 03:52, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately my knowledge of French is not up to this (though Google Translate helps). I have been able to find reviews in English of Tefnin's work on JSTOR though. Given the preference for references in the same language, am going to go with that for now (though the pictures in the file you linked to are interesting).

I finally tracked down my old copy of KMT which contains Peter Lacovara's theory about the RHs. He makes the argument that the ear mutilations are due to tomb robbers' mishandling of the objects, and that the cranial grooves are essentially artist's lines. Am not wholly convinced--especially after having seen what appear to be distinct chisel marks in the RH I saw a couple of weeks ago in Vienna--but it is a theory that clearly ought to be mentioned here. (If you would like a scanned copy of the article, send me an email).

What I find interesting is that this article seems to be the first "post-Internet" collection of all of the pertinent ideas, pictures and theories on the RHs. Its well on its way to being one of the most comprehensive, broadly-based articles I've seen on the topic. It's also interesting after having had a look at a lot of the primary sources to see where other, subsequent publications have gotten their ideas from. Some take Tefnin to heart, others the earlier authors like Junker and Reisner. Lacovara's ideas don't even rate a mention, which I find surprising since he was curator of the Ancient Egyptian collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (home to what may be the largest single collection of RHs), when he wrote the article for KMT.

In any event, it is good working with you and I certainly appreciate the help! Cheers! Captmondo (talk) 13:13, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It has been fun working on this article. I was surprised to find no other article on the other language wikipedias. There is a rough draft of a German wikipedia article but that's it. I have been trying to find out more about the head(s) from Dashur. Those may be some of the earliest, possibly dating to the time of Snefru. It's hard to find something that can be used as a solid source though. I think I will at some point put in references for those heads that are mentioned in Porter and Moss. I will take you up on the KMT article. I have some of the later issues, but not that one. --AnnekeBart (talk) 20:06, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Images of reserve heads and copyright

I have placed some links to images when copyright issues prohibit a direct display. Should a copyright statement be added? I did that for the Swansea head, but I'm not sure is that is overkill or not. --AnnekeBart (talk) 14:10, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe that this is necessary, in fact I am almost certain of that, if only because I can't think of an instance where I've seen that up on WP. Links to images (or anything else for that matter) are just that, with no copyright attribution needed from the WP end of things. If the image actually appears on the page that's a different matter entirely, and unless it is impossible for a freely-available image to be available (which is typical of historical events, for example) they are invariably quashed.

There do seem to be some images of reserve heads that do not appear here on Flckr, such as [1] and [2] and possibly more. Might be worthwhile asking the takers of those pics as to whether they would consider open sourcing them in terms of their licenses and allowing them to be posted to Wikimedia Commons. (Unfortunately there are also pics of most of the reserve heads at the Cairo Museum, see [3], taken before picture-taking there was banned, and the fellow who took them now only licenses them through Getty Images, so likely no luck there. Ought to be able to link to them however). Cheers! Captmondo (talk) 15:51, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I took the comment out. If it's not standard the there's no need to "clutter" the table with extraneous information I think. It would be nice to get the images from Flickr. --AnnekeBart (talk) 17:24, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Table of contents

Reserve heads from Giza

Images of reserve heads and copyright