Talk:Tapputi

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 January 2020 and 3 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): RayyanKamal7.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Cuneiform

This article needs the original language rendering of Tapputi-Belatekallim, Tapputi, belatekallim, -ninu -- 70.31.205.108 (talk)

Chemist?

The word "chemist" was not used until the 16th century. 121.98.204.148 (talk) 09:58, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Actually in the 16th and 17th centuries many terms were used concurrently, including the many variants of 'alchemist', as well as the word 'chymist' and its variants (see Etymology of chemistry#From alchemy to chemistry). But historians do not regard only those named 'chemist' (which would be mostly 19th-century and beyond) as part of the history of chemistry. Please see, for example, William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe (1998), "Alchemy vs. Chemistry: The Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake," Early Science and Medicine, vol. 3, pp. 32-65. History of chemistry books, such as for example Robert P. Multhauf (1966), The Origins of Chemistry, London: Oldbourne, generally start with the archeological findings from the prehistoric period and early antiquity.

In this case, the source, which is published by Indiana University Press and so presumably reliable, clearly calls Tapputi a 'chemist'. Unless other sources would contradict that, Wikipedia shouldn't call this 'dubious'. I reverted your edit accordingly. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 14:47, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Needs a serious check for factual accuracy & better sources

Almost the entirety of this article is disputed as misinformation, misrepresentation, or just plain wrong, in https://deathscent.com/2022/07/12/tapputi-belatekallim/ – a piece with a lot of seemingly quality as well as well-referenced information. I've removed the most blatant ones (e.g. calling her Babylonian when she was actually Assyrian) but the rest will need to go through assessment of sources. Apologies for the seemingly excessive dispute tags, it really is that bad. Slovborg (talk) 04:32, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

In general I agree that this article is of a very low quality and in multiple respects downright misleading, as is often the case with articles like this on WP. But as editors we should try to improve it, rather than complain about it and tag it to hell and back again. I agree with the general tags at the top, but the in-text tags seem a little over-the-top and perhaps not very well-motivated.

Kass-Simon, Farnes & Nash 1999 certainly isn't ideal, and in the presence of better sources it would indeed be unreliable in context, but being published by Indiana University Press I think it meets basic WP requirements. Tagging Rayner-Canham & Rayner-Canham 2005 as unreliable also seems exaggerated at this point. Some of the tags seem to have been made purely because McBride 2022 disagrees, but this is a bit strange given the fact that McBride 2022 is published on a blog and that McBride doesn't seem to be a published expert (yet?) on the topic. Actually McBride 2022 should be tagged as better-source-needed.

I also checked Levey 1973 and he seems to describe what the article says about the calamus distillation. He also affirms that she is the earliest chemist known by name. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 13:08, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

I think that with all the improvements and the removal of the last uncited/dubious the stuff, the article is decent now, and so I removed the general top tags. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 13:29, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

OK. I need to go through the copiously provided primary sources at the end of the McBride piece (which indeed might be better suited as further reading?), this can also help us establish whether the previously cited sources can be considered reliable or not. I am a little bit wary against using sources focused on the history of women (which may introduce a bias – in a bid to promote your study subject as more relevant than it actually was) if the provided information is disputed by actual assyriologist sources. Slovborg (talk) 14:18, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

I share your concern about the sources focused on the history of women, written as they are by people who have no expertise on ancient Mesopotamia. These are tertiary sources anyway, which often contain inaccuracies and are not the best for WP articles. The references given by McBride, on the other hand, look excellent to me (note that there are four sources by Martin Levey among them; he seems to be a highly relevant scholar for this subject). If you should go through these, you will probably find a lot to improve this article with. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:12, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

OK I'll find time and give it a go. I also feel we could somehow preserve information from the tertiary sources, as those are what actually provides relevance to the subject. In my opinion it makes sense to just split that into a separate section. Slovborg (talk) 11:47, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether we're on the same page as to what primary/secondary/tertiary sources are here.

In STEM, a 'primary source' is an individual study of a subject, a 'secondary source' a review or analysis of many such studies on a certain subject, and a 'tertiary source' a general and broad treatment that mainly cites secondary sources. But in the humanities, 'primary source' normally refers to a historical or otherwise significant text or artifact (e.g. the text on the clay tablet), while a 'secondary source' is an individual modern study of such a text or artifact, and a 'tertiary source' is the same as in STEM.

So in the humanities, any study of a subject is at least a secondary source. On the other hand, unlike in STEM, understanding of the subject matter is not cumulative but dilutative: a study of studies (always tertiary) is often not creating important new insights, but rather summarizing existing insights and losing a lot of accuracy on the way. So while secondary sources are the lowest-level study of any subject in the humanities, that's precisely what makes them the gold standard: they are the only sources whose interpretation of the subject can fully be trusted.

So what I mean with avoiding tertiary sources in this humanities-related subject is to avoid broad treatments by scholars who rely on other scholars, but have never studied the actual subject matter (the ancient texts or artifacts) themselves. The existence of significant secondary sources is more than enough here to establish the relevance of this subject. Of course, feminist treatments of history of science may have their own relevance, but in the context of this subject these should actually be regarded as primary sources, and from a WP point of view we would need secondary sources discussing feminist views on Tapputi to write a separate section about that subject. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:17, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I actually disagree with the typical STEM treatment myself :) to me, a primary source would be raw measurement data, lab notes, &c. Any analysis of data should imo already be considered a secondary source. I don't understand why the discrepancy (and it's not helpful for getting STEM topics onto Wikipedia, since a lot of the sources which should be considered secondary self-identify as primary, making themselves ineligible...) Slovborg (talk) 09:49, 25 February 2026 (UTC)