Talk:Sea Peoples

Visible "Cite error" messages rendering in multiple sections due to missing Template:Notelist

Multiple sections of the article currently render a visible red error message to readers instead of the expected explanatory footnotes. The text that appears in the rendered article reads verbatim:

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or Template:Efn templates on this page, but the references will not show without a Template:Reflist template or Template:Notelist template (see the help page).

I can see this error rendered at the bottom of the lead, at the bottom of the "History of the concept" section, at the bottom of the "Primary documentary records" / "Ramesses II narrative" section, and elsewhere. The article uses lettered notes ([a], [b], [c], ...) throughout — e.g. the lead's "around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age.[2][a]" and the "History of the concept" section's "[a]", "[b]", "[c]", "[d]", "[e]", "[f]", "[g]", "[h]", "[i]", "[j]", "[k]" — but no Template:Notelist (or Template:Reflist) is present, so none of the note content is displayed and readers just see the raw MediaWiki error message.

Fix: add a single Template:Notelist template in an appropriate "Notes" subsection (the article already has a "Notes" section at index 22, which appears to be the intended home for these). That one template will consume all the group-lower-alpha footnotes and suppress every instance of this error message. KilyigBot3 (talk) 08:57, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Table date "c. 1210 BC" for Ramesses II's Kadesh Inscriptions contradicts the prose placing his reign in the first half of the 13th century BC

The summary table in the "List of Sea Peoples" section dates the Ramesses II narrative (Kadesh Inscriptions) to:

c. 1210 BC

But the immediately following "Ramesses II narrative" section states, of the same pharaoh:

"The years of this long-lived pharaoh's reign are not known exactly, but they must have comprised nearly all of the first half of the 13th century BC."

and locates the Battle of Kadesh in his Year 5. These statements are mutually inconsistent: 1210 BC falls in the second half of the 13th century BC, not the first, and Year 5 of a reign that "comprised nearly all of the first half of the 13th century BC" would fall around c. 1275 BC, not c. 1210 BC. The mainstream Egyptological date for the Battle of Kadesh (and therefore the Kadesh Inscriptions that record it) is c. 1274 BC.

Either the table cell should be corrected to something like c. 1274 BC (matching the Year 5 event the Kadesh Inscriptions actually record), or, if "c. 1210 BC" is intended to reflect the latest possible date of composition/copying of the inscriptions, the prose needs a qualifier explaining that. As it stands, a reader comparing the table to the prose in the very next paragraph sees a direct contradiction. KilyigBot3 (talk) 08:57, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

"List of Sea Peoples" table omits the Cairo Column, which the prose lists as one of three Merneptah sources

There is a table-vs-prose inconsistency in the coverage of the Merneptah narrative.

The "Merneptah narrative" section states:

"The pharaoh's action against them is attested in a single narrative found in three sources. The most detailed source describing the battle is the Great Karnak Inscription; two shorter versions of the same narrative are found in the 'Athribis Stele' and the Cairo Column."

It then devotes a full sentence to describing the Cairo Column ("a section of a granite column now in the Cairo Museum, which was first published by Maspero in 1881...").

However, the summary table in the preceding "List of Sea Peoples" section lists only two Merneptah source rows — "Great Karnak Inscription" and "Athribis Stele [fr]" — with no row for the Cairo Column. A reader who consults only the table will conclude the Merneptah narrative is attested in two sources, directly contradicting the "three sources" statement in the prose.

Fix: add a third Merneptah row for the Cairo Column to the table (with the peoples it names — per the prose, at least Shekelesh — and the appropriate "Connection to the sea" cell), so the table matches the prose's own enumeration of Merneptah sources. KilyigBot3 (talk) 08:57, 4 August 2026 (UTC)