Talk:Via Maris

What about later incarnations?

• Iron Age
• during the empires, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian & Sons, Roman
• Muslims & Crusaders, who kept on using the Roman roads
• Modern & contemp. hist. Nowadays the main highways follow the same routes, see the photo used.

It's such a topographically obligatory set of routes that it never went out of use. Shouldn't the article cover that too? Even more so as the term is not from the Bronze Age.

I'll add for now the following category - remove it if my question gets a negative answer:

[[Category:Roman roads in Syria and Palestina]]

It should read either Palestina or Palestine. That comes next. Thanks, Arminden (talk) 20:36, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Why "Project: Egypt" only?

? Arminden (talk) 20:38, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Merge proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

To not merge, but to distinguish the content by period or locus of control. Klbrain (talk) 08:29, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

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This should be merged with the newly created Way of Horus (Ancient Egypt) given the WP:Overlap. They are the same route and are not large articles. Would be better to have one article covering the complete history of the route. Aszx5000 (talk) 18:19, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Aszx5000, this has gone unopposed and you should be good to carry out a merge. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:11, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

The proposal to merge the articles is not suitable, since they are of a significantly different nature in terms of text, references and, importantly, historical inconsistency. Via Maris is a geographical description of the routes in the period from the era of Alexander the Great , Way of Horus is part of the history of Egypt from the Old Kingdom of Egypt to the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt, but especially in the New Kingdom of Egypt It includes the construction of fortresses and the organization of military and personnel security along the northeastern coast of the Sinai Peninsula to the Egyptian border town of Rafah. So merging both of these articles would create a kind of freakish dagwood Zemanst (talk) 09:27, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks @Zemanst. While their references and eras are undoubtly different, it does seem like that they are pretty much the same route? Imho, it is always better to have one comprehensive article on a subject than to split over two articles. Less confusion, and you can handle the transitions from one era to another without confusing the reader? thanks. Aszx5000 (talk) 10:52, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

I prepose an alternative, to revise the article Via Maris, so that it would be respected its historical development and importance in the era of the loss of Egyptian sovereignty after the Persian conquest, the period of the Wars of the Diadochi after the death of Alexander the Great, the rise of the Ptolemies and the events of the Romans. Basically, it is also related to the system of transport routes in the Levant and its historical development. However, I will have to study the relevant sources for this, if possible with an active approach.

However, there are other alternatives available, to combine the articles Via Maris and King's Highway (ancient), which lacks relevant references, and another valuable processing Incense trade route. As you can see, there is a considerable chaotic dispersion in this area of the same subject series.What is your opinion on this? Zemanst (talk) 13:15, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

I have posted this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Egypt#Merge proposal for Via Maris and Way of Horus to see if we can get any more participation. I do think that it will be less confusing to have one main article rather than create an arbitrary interface, but lets see for a few weeks what the WP AE says? thanks. Aszx5000 (talk) 14:58, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

It looks like one of the most important sources here is Hoffmeier and Moshier 2013. Unfortunately, the online version of it that is linked here omits all the illustrations except the general map that forms Figure 1 in the paper. But if I am reading the text correctly, the Via Maris was distinct from the Ways of Horus for at least part of the route, at least if one thinks of the Ways of Horus as a specific road (some scholars think the term referred to a region instead of a specific route).

The difference seems to be that a geological shift after 1000 BC made the land near the mouth of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile solid enough that Pelusium could be built on it, and formed the barrier islands that enclose Lake Bardawil. So the Via Maris ran from Pelusium east along these barrier islands, in contrast to the Ways of Horus, which started at Tjaru/Tel Habuwa, well inland from Pelusium, and ran along the mainland coast.

Something I wonder is whether the term "Ways of Horus" was still in use in the Egyptian language at the time the Via Maris was in use, and if so, whether the term was applied to the barrier-island route. If it were, then both these articles could be merged under the Ways of Horus title. But it may be best to keep them separate for now. A. Parrot (talk) 00:38, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.