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by idoubtit 1747 days ago
If a web site claimed it was "Programming Languages - The Complete List", with a list of a few dozens items, would it be popular? It would describe POP-1 in one sentence, same as Lua, B or Caml. Some influential languages would be missing, while others would appear in the list though they were in used for a limited time in a single lab. And the most important point: would it mean anything to anyone who does not yet know the various paradigms of programming?

I see little value in such lists. The few paragraphs of general introduction are more interesting, but I don't think it's enough to understand how gods were perceived during the 3 millenniums of Ancient Egypt. For instance, there was an essential concept of "Maat" (order of the world). And some Egyptian gods could age and die.

If you're interested in the subject, I strongly recommend "Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt" by E. Hornung.

1 comments

>I see little value in such lists.

Maybe to people especially interested in the subject, but to those with a casual interest, such lists can be a fun introduction to a subject as it provides a way to write a lot of little vignettes. Witness other comments to this post calling out and talking about some of the things they saw in this list that they liked.

The problem is that, sometimes, simplistic introductions do more harm than good to understanding of a subject - especially when they are presented as introductions to a subject.

This list is similar to explanations of quantum computing that claim the qbits solve all versions of the problem in parallel - it may give you a wrong intuition about what the subject even is. In this case, it may make you think that there were actual humans that worshiped all of these gods and only these gods - when in fact, over 3000 years of Egyptian civilization, gods changed and merged and so on; and most likely the very idea of worship and humans' relationship with the gods changed.