Template talk:Infobox pharaoh

This template is designed to display the information on Egyptian pharaohs, inclusing their names in Egyptian hieroglyphs. All but the name are optional, the parameters are as below (for a full example see Ramesses II).

Parameters used with this template


 * &mdash; sets the position of the template: left, center or right.
 * &mdash; sets the colours of the template by predefined era: see Template talk:Hiero.
 * &mdash; the name in English for the header.
 * &mdash; the nomen in hieroglyphs with hiero tags.


 * &mdash; sets the common name of the pharaoh (mandatory)
 * &mdash; sets image for the info box (try and 'use a headshot', if possible) (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the Nomen – use format, then the transliteration, and then translation (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the Pronomen (See above) (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the text of the Golden Horus name (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the text of the Nebty name (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the text of the Horus (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the dates of the reign (use alternatives, if known) (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the predecessor of the king (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the successor of the king (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the consort(s) (optional)
 * &mdash; sets any children of the king (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the dynasty of the king (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the father of the king, if known (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the mother of the king, if known (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the year of birth (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the year of death (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the place of burial, where the body was found, etc.(optional)
 * &mdash; sets any major well known monuments of the king (optional)
 * &mdash; sets any alternatives of the name (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the title of the box, defaults to Pharaoh of Egypt (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the hieroglyphic Golden Horus name (See above) (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the hieroglyphic Nebty name (See above) (optional)
 * &mdash; sets the hieroglyphic Horus (See above) (optional)

Titulary?
Why are the various names of the Ancient Egyptian royal titulary out of canonical order? Ok, I can understand having the praenomen and nomen (in that order!) at the beginning, but the rest really ought to be in the Horus name, Neby name, Golden Horus name order IMO. —Flembles 14:15, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * They are like this for historical (to Wikipedia) template reasons. Feel free to change them to an order that is more correct. Markh 11:19, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I am not sure how to do that but will try later if no-one else does. They should be in (pref.) in this order: Praenomen, Nomen, Horus, 2 Ladies, Golden Horus. Also, it might be interesting to have a field for Greek version (with the tag) of a name. The could appear below the Alt. Names area (a bit small though) or in the main area. See what I did on the Amyrtaeus article for an idea. Flembles 12:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I changed the order successfully. —Flembles 05:54, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Persondata template doesn't belong in this infobox
This template probably shouldn't be in the Pharoah Infobox. The Pharoahs should have their Persondata templates placed directly before the categories (and defaultsort), not at the beginning of the article. No other infobox contains the Persondata template. Can it be removed from this infobox please? Thanks. --Rajah 22:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Template fixes
The size of this template has gotten out of control on many pages; it is both very long and very wide in many cases. I've developed a much more compact version of this template. The titulary is now hidden, accessible by hitting [show]. The predecessor and successor are now listed under the photograph; this allows them to be on one line each. The dynasty will follow the reignal years, saving additional space. The cartouches will render better now, particularly the tip and tail, although I haven't found a solution to the topward alignment problem that has always been there. I think the solution would be something like the syntax, only for the vertical dimension, but I'm not sure what the syntax is. The cartouches will also be on their own line, allowing the template to be narrower. The picture will no longer have a frame; this allows the image to fill the space more fully. The default image size will be 250 pixels wide, but the user can manually input a different size where appropriate. I decided to omit the alternate names parameter because we probably shouldn't be reinforcing archaic spellings of names, but it could be added back at any time if there's an uproar over it. Each usage of the new template will probably need to be fixed because a few of the parameter names have been changed, but I am willing to do the work and I don't think the changes are that major. The nomen/pronomen parameters are slightly different, to make the cartouches work correctly, and the "issue" parameter is now called "children", but for now I left the old syntax as an option so at least that parameter will be backwards compatible. Although the transition to the new version of the template may take some time, having the size of this thing under control is long overdue. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 05:53, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Fantastic, the pages now look great. This is such an improvement on what was there before. Markh (talk) 22:08, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, let me know if any issues crop up. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 23:02, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi, I have just been editting the Khasekhemwy and Seth-Peribsen articles and notices that the serekhs don't correctly show the different (i.e Seth creatures) for each of these kings. I'm not sure whether it ever did, but I might have play and see whether it can be fixed. Markh (talk) 22:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Different issue: I notice that everything that appears in an infobox below the area of an image + caption seems to be right-justified (i.e. flush to the right-hand margin). Does anyone else think that looks odd? Captmondo (talk) 03:03, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It didn't use to be that way when I finished the revamp. Will investigate. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 03:08, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I fixed some of the column span values and that seems to correct the problem. Not sure how it happened but it should be OK now. Jeff Dahl (Talk • contribs) 03:40, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I do not think the titularies should be hidden: I am all for reducing clutter in infoboxes, but the royal titulary of Pharaohs is crucial information, and should be accessible at once. I just spent two minutes wondering where the titularies had gone before I saw the "show" button, and I am highly familiar with Wikipedia and its infoboxes. I appreciate the other changes, but I strongly recommend the names should be uncollapsed by default. --dab (𒁳) 09:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Addition of Alternate Titulary?
Recently a contributor originally from the German Wikipedia has been doing some edits to the entries for the early pharaohs, such as Hotepsekhemwy, Raneb, Seth-Peribsen, and Senedj. Unfortunately he has been overwriting the Pharaoh infobox with  the Hieroglyphen (German) infobox. My first thought was to revert, but I think he has a point in that the English Wikipedia is ignoring the alternate names/titles that sometimes for various pharaohs, and not just from the Old Kingdom.

To accommodate that I suggest adding "alt_name_hiero1" through to "alt_name_hiero5" (all of them optional) which hopefully will cover off the majority of alternate hieroglyphic names/titles that might exist. Alternately it could also be "alt_nomen_hiero1" - "alt_nomen_hiero5", "alt_horus_hiero1" - "alt_horus_hiero5", "alt_nebty_hiero1" - "alt_nebty_hiero5", and "alt_golden_hiero1" - "alt_golden_hiero5", though this might be seen as an unnecessary proliferation of optional elements.

Thoughts? Opinions? Captmondo (talk) 16:08, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Hello!^^ With the overwriting of the infoboxes once always used here, I did NOT mean to vandalize or to ignore rules by purpose! As to users like Chewings72, Captmondo and AnnekeBart, I already explained why I prefer to use the boxes originating from German Wikipedia.
 * The blue boxes of en.Wikipedia are incomplete. No Horusnames, no Goldnames and no Birthnames. Also no possibility to present hieroglyphes for special titles. The blue boxes lack the technical issues of making the hieroglyphic names visible.
 * The blue boxes of en.Wikipedia give informations about the moms and dads of nearly all egyptian kings. This is highly problematic, since Egyptologists have nearly no clues or prooves to validate their theories about any innerfamiliar kinships. With other words: with few exceptions the mommahs and poppahs are unknown! But the infoboxes implicate that and this is, in my humble opinion, intolerable. An encylopedia shall never sell theories and ideas as facts!

Now to the German boxes. Our boxes give the technical possibilites to show all sorts of royal or civil names and titles. German Wikipedia uses a wide varity of boxes, usable by will and want. With this boxes en.Wikipedia was able to present all names and titles as they are proofed by archaeology and egyptology. Our team of the Portal:Egyptology will be always ready to share its boxes with en.Wikipedia. Cheers; --Nephiliskos (talk) 18:03, 28 September 2011 (UTC)


 * It looks to me as though there are two issues here? The old pharaoh boxes record such facts as predecessors and successors, wives, and other facts if known. There is a place to display the 5-fold titulary of the pharaoh as is shown on the page of Amenhotep III for instance. So it is not really true that there is no place for the Horus, Gold and Nebty names. They just happen to be hidden in the standard view and one needs to click the show feature to have them displayed.
 * The problem with using the pharaoh box is that is leads some editors to record speculative information or load them with too much detail (lists of children for instance) and in those cases they become more of a misinformation box than anything else.
 * The pages mentioned above - Hotepsekhemwy, Raneb, Seth-Peribsen, and Senedj - are better off with the German versions IMHO. There are only a couple of dynasties for which the "blue pharaoh box" makes sense: The 12th, 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties come to mind as having enough information about the pharaohs to warrant the more detailed pharaoh box. For many of the other dynasties the German version makes more sense to me. The intermediate periods and the first 3 dynasties suffer from a scarcity of facts and trying to create a factual pharaoh box seems a bit much to ask. Just my thoughts :) Cheers - Anneke --AB (talk) 02:27, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
 * This makes a lot of sense to me. I agree that the current box gets loaded with stuff that really shouldn't be in an infobox as it is too speculative and would have to be handled carefully within the article itself. I appreciate the help from our German colleagues. Dougweller (talk) 15:39, 29 September 2011 (UTC)


 * So maybe we should be looking at a pharaoh infobox variant for the early/problematic pharaohs? I also note that there was an earlier proposal made by another de.Wikipedia contributor on the Ancient Egypt portal which seems to be an English-ized version of the German hieroglyphic template which we might want to start using which you can see here.
 * While I concede the point that the pharaoh infoboxes for the less well-attested pharaohs can be problematic when it comes to family relationships, I find that the new hieroglyphic infoboxes lack historical context, such as when the pharaoh ruled, and who the predecessor/successor were (I know that is often contentious as well, but it still seems better than nothing). Captmondo (talk) 14:36, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I hope I do not sound snappish now, but I see no sense in using the terms "Rulership" and "Predecessor/Successor" within the infobox. The box was thought only for presenting names and titles in hieroglyphs, when the king ruled the reader finds out already in the introduction. Why writing facts double? The infos about predecessors and successors can be mentioned in the intro, too. Otherwise - hey, there´s a tiny box at the end of the article presenting the throne line. Cheers; --Nephiliskos (talk) 15:18, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Well the point of the infobox is "to consistently present a summary of some unifying aspect that the articles share and sometimes to improve navigation to other interrelated articles" (directly from Help:Infobox). For the most part the pharaoh infoboxes share information not only on titles, but on such things as alternate names, predecessors/successors, family, etc. That is why I think we ought to update the pharaoh infobox style rather than do away with it entirely when it doesn't entirely "fit", as it currently does with the early pharaohs. The album infobox lists the chronology of releases before and after a given album. The modern royalty infobox lists predecessors and successors. Ditto the officeholder, Governor General and even the CPU and GPU infoboxes, so *not* having some sort of chronology listed (at least in en.Wikipedia) for a given ruler is not typical, and goes against the usual style. Clearly other people find a value in having that info there (as do I), and is easy to see at a glance where the relationship of one pharaoh to another is (and if that is not known, that too is valuable information). Just my $0.02. Captmondo (talk) 18:19, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmmmm... lemme test something at mah workshop, okie? If it´s successful, I will make a BIG advertisement for it!^^ Cheers; --Nephiliskos (talk) 20:41, 30 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Everyone! Look! Was it thought like this? --Nephiliskos (talk) 20:49, 30 September 2011 (UTC)


 * That looks very nice Nephilikos! The predecessor and successor info is nicely done. I would change Rulership: ca. 43–45 years (2.785 B.C.–2.742 B.C.) to possibly something like Reign: ca. 43–45 years. The proposed dates are something I personally don't like. I really do not like them in the earlier mentioned pharaoh box either. And the listing of birth and death years are a bit of a pet-peeve of mine! For instance on the page for Amenhotep III it mentions a reign of 1391–1353 or 1388–1351 BC. Such a claim of accuracy is utterly misleading. Redford for instance estimates the reign to fall from 1410-1372 while someone like Helck estimates the rule to be from 1379-1340. That's a 3 decade difference! Which makes the claim in the infobox that he died in 1351 or 1353 somewhat ridiculous (IMHO). I think the dating of the reign should be carefully handled in the body of the article and left out of the infobox. I believe we only get to a half-way decently accurate dating of the rule by the time of the 26th dynasty? <*climbs off soapbox*> Cheers Anneke --AB (talk) 15:34, 1 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thx for your compliment, Anneke!^^ Now, look again, please - I´ve changed the most upper section. Better now? ;-) Cheers! --Nephiliskos (talk) 19:32, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Horus name
There is in the moment a problem with the Horus name. It needs to be placed in a rectangular box. In the old template that was done, not in the new one. bw -- Udimu (talk) 07:17, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! --Nephiliskos (talk) 19:03, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Missing parameters
The paramater era mentioned in the Doc does not work. It belongs to. The unmentioned parameter coregency does work.

Please fix.-- Auric    talk  13:58, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Documentation fixed. As far as I can tell using the WikiBlame history search, era has never been in the template. I could be missing something. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:37, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Birth and death places
This template should have a field for inputting the birth and death places for pharaohs. Though it is true that most birthplaces of kings are not known, some do have areas from which they originated (eg Horemheb), something usually put in an infobox for other articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.176.168.21 (talk) 20:28, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Show button
Dear, , , , , , , , as active users editing Ancient Egypt articles, I need your opinion on a simple question. There is a potential problem in the design of the pharaoh infobox as most people seem to miss the [show] button next to "Royal titulary". There are three possibilities regarding this issue: 1) put [show] on by default; 2) make the [show] button more conspicuous (write [click to show], use bold font, a special color, or a combination of those); 3) do nothing, there is no problem. Could you please give your opinion on the matter?Iry-Hor (talk) 07:59, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Iry-Hor, thank you for contacting me, but in fact I don't edit Egyptian articles unless they touch on Biblical matters (e.g. the exodus). I really don't have the knowledge to help, sorry. All the best. :) PiCo (talk) 10:42, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a note on the specific info-box talk page? Template talk:Infobox pharaoh.  Tim riley  talk    16:47, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Done, I have transposed the entire discussion there.Iry-Hor (talk) 17:50, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Hey Iry-Hor, what's up? I never had this issue. Anyway, I've just checked the template page, ybut I lack the required knowledge to show it on by default, I'm sorry. Khruner (talk) 17:09, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Hey! It's good to be back ! So about the show button, the problem is not technical, it works. The issue is with the design of the infobox: casual wikipedia readers and editors do not notice the button at all! See the HERE for an example of a well-meaning editor who put Menkaure's name in hieroglyph at the beginning of the article, presumably because he/she had not seen it in the infobox (the edit survived three months, which shows that he wasn't the only one believeing this info what nowhere else in the article). I have polled a few people and can confirm that c. 3/4 of them have not noticed the button. Iry-Hor (talk) 17:50, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Hello, thanks for bringing this up! (I have little experience in infobox construction/design, so I apologize in advance for not being of more help.) If there is a clear problem with visibility (which there seems to be), I would not oppose a modification. Is there any way to test what kind of modification to the button would be most effective (besides having the text shown by default)? Me, Myself &#38; I (☮) (talk) 06:22, 5 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Iry-Hor I do not find the box perfect, but I think the layout is okaish. On the German wiki there is no button, all names of the pharaohs are all fully visible, but I find the boxes there often too big, especially for lesser known kings, the boxes are often unproportional large in comparison to the short texts. -- Udimu (talk) 22:39, 4 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I thought about making the titualry visible by default, but I checked on a couple of pharaohs' articles and clicked "show" to see how the box looks when the titulary is open. It's very long and pushes the images beneath it a long way down, so I don't think it's a good idea. I'd support making the "show" button larger, as it is pretty small. A. Parrot (talk) 00:44, 5 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I propose to replace the [show] by [click to show] to make it more conspicuous. In addition we could write it in bold if "[click to show]" isn't visible enough.Iry-Hor (talk) 12:38, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

People may also want to see Village_pump_(technical) where another solution was having the show button on another line. Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:09, 6 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Dear all, so people at the Village pump (technical) have come up with the following technically possible alternatives: *i) put the show button on the left of "Royal Titulary"; *ii) make it larger; *iii) write another section header below "Royal Titulary" so as to make apparent that "Royal Titulary" is not the section header for what is below. From what I understand, these are essentially the only possible modifications, as otherwise modifying the text of the show button requires one to dwelve into the underlying java code.Iry-Hor (talk) 09:25, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It strikes me, as a non-expert (very non-expert) that a bigger button would be a sensible first resort.  Tim riley  talk    09:48, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
 * One of the pump contributor pointed out that obviously in English you read from left to right and so placing the button on the left of "Royal titulary" would ensure many more people read it. I am contemplating it, namely put it on the left, make it a bit bigger and perhaps if I can manage java replace by [show hieroglyphs].Iry-Hor (talk) 11:40, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I definitely think this information should be made more visible than it currently is, but I understand people's objections with the hieroglyphs often looking a bit rubbish and taking up a lot of space. Would a possible compromise be to default to only showing the prenomen and nomen, and having a button to control the visibility of the more obscure titles? Woscafrench (talk, contribs) 17:30, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Making heiroglyphic names more visible
,, , , , , , , following on from the discussion above (which was quite a long time ago now, but its been bothering me for a while). I think by default wikipedia should be displaying some of the real names for each pharaoh, but even with the show button being made more visible it is not at all obvious that this information is already available. I've seen examples of pages for pharoahs where users have added in this information a second time because they weren't aware of it being in the infobox. I've made a change to the sandbox template so that prenomen, nomen and horus names are visible by default (if they exist). Do you have any thoughts? Woscafrench (talk) 23:49, 24 March 2020 (UTC)


 * About the display of the hierosː I am not fully sure. 99 percent of readers cant read hieroglyphs, for them this is just a nice/fancy decoration of the article, but will not add anything to their knowledge. Those who can read them are happy to open the box (saying thisː i am not a big fan of boxes in general, especially in short article, they take too much space without much information). --Udimu (talk) 09:05, 25 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Frankly I'm satisfied with the status quo. I'm confident that the few readers truly interested in the hieroglyphs will eventually find the "show" button. If someone inadvertently duplicates the titulary, let's simply revert & explain. Khruner (talk) 21:15, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Not usually an editor of these articles, but I was just fixing a bug on a pharaoh infobox and couldn't find where the names were displayed. It was only after looking here that I noticed the "show" link. I agree they are probably too much to be shown by default, but it would be great to make the link more obvious if possible. the wub "?!"  23:30, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Embedding suggestion
I suggest adding the "child" parameter to the template.Sardar(talk) 17:31, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Order?
Hey, I am a Japanese Wikipedian of Egyptology. I have been wondering why the order of the five-fold titulary is not accurate in Enwp?

I had this question when I decided to join this editing volunteer over 1 year ago, but I left this problem out when I improved this Template in Jawp.

Japanese Template was affected by the English version, when the man who was not familiar in Egyptology imported this Template in Jawp. I worry that some people get the order wrong, of course the fact order is; Horus, Nebty, Golden, Throne, Birth. I want to know the reason. Thank you.--Sethemhat (talk) 11:58, 26 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Honestly I have no idea why they aren't in canonical order. A discussion from 2006 poses the same question. My guess is that the throne and birth names are first because they are the most recognisable or the most commonly used names of the royal titulary? Most people using wiki probably can't read hieroglyphs anyway so I'm not sure it affects them which name is first. For me, it would be nice to have the titulary in the proper order :) Merytat3n (talk) 23:58, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The infobox was originally created with the reverse order (B->T->GH->N->H). I guess it made sense to have birth name at the top since most pharaohnic articles take it as their title. Otherwise, I don't know why the current order was implemented. No qualms with implementing the standard order. Mr rnddude (talk) 00:30, 8 March 2022 (UTC)


 * and Thank you for your comments. Over three weeks have passed and I had no objections to this issue. Thus, I've changed the order of the title. If someone has comments on my changes, please write yours below mine.--Sethemhat (talk) 13:52, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Issues with Royal titulary in mobile view
I am using mobile phone. On desktop view everything is fine. But on mobile view, when I touch the "show" link to expand the Royal titulary (present in the infobox) nothing happens (just the yellow ribbon cuts in two). Moreover, when I look at the article logged-out, the show link is missing (again it cuts in two). For example, look at Akhenaten. Aminabzz (talk) 23:56, 29 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I have made this display. It doesn't display perfectly. Someone else should probably work on it until it displays the way it should. Izno (talk) 03:19, 25 December 2023 (UTC)