EA Wallis Budge

Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge , mostly quoted as EA Wallis Budge, (born July 27, 1857 in Bodmin , Cornwall , † November 23, 1934 in London ) was a British Egyptologist , orientalist and museum curator . He was known through many books on ancient Egypt and worked for the British Museum in London, for which he collected many antiques, manuscripts, cuneiform tablets and papyri while traveling to the Middle East .

life and work

Budge came from a humble background. His mother was the daughter of a waiter in a hotel in Bodmin, his father was unknown. He grew up with his aunt and grandmother in London. He left school in 1869 at the age of twelve to work for the WH Smith retail chain. In his spare time he studied Syriac and Hebrew and attended the British Museum, primarily to acquire knowledge of Assyriology . He was supported by the Egyptologist Samuel Birch and his assistant, the Assyriologist George Smith , at the museum. Organist John Stainer noticed his regular lunchtime reading at St Paul's Cathedral , who won over high-ranking personalities (including Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone ) to enable him to study at Cambridge University ( Christ's College ). From 1878 to 1883 he studied Oriental Studies at Cambridge (including Arabic, Old Ethiopian, Hebrew, Syriac) and Assyriology, with the support of William Wright . He was a Tyrwhitt Hebrew Scholar there.

From 1883 he was initially in the Assyriology Department at the British Museum and soon after switched to Egyptology, where he was taught by Samuel Birch and, after his death in 1885, by Peter le Page Renouf .

From 1886 to 1891 he was commissioned by the librarian of the British Museum Edward Augustus Bond to investigate in Iraq and Istanbul the source of the embezzlement of cuneiform tablets from their own depots in Iraq, which flooded the London market and had to be bought up there by the museum at inflated prices . He was also supposed to obtain excavation licenses in Iraq from the Turkish authorities in order to excavate more cuneiform texts. At the same time, on trips to Egypt (first in 1886) and Iraq, he made contacts with many traders and acquired papyri and cuneiform tablets. Among them the papyrus of Ani, the papyrus of Athenaion politeia (then ascribed to Aristotle) ​​and panels from Amarna . The acquisitions were in stiff competition with other European museums and dealers, and his successes soon gave him an excellent reputation. In Egypt and Sudan he was nicknamed "Father of the Skulls" and "Father of Antiquities".

In 1891 he succeeded Renouf Assistant Keeper and in 1894 Keeper of Egyptology at the British Museum, which he remained until 1924.

He published numerous books on Egyptology, especially the ancient Egyptian religion and introduction to the hieroglyphics . In contrast to the prevailing view at the time that the ancient Egyptian religion and the cult of the pharaohs had been established by conquerors of Caucasian origin in Egypt, especially represented by Flinders Petrie , he assumed an African origin. James Frazer adopted Budge's view of the Osiris cult in his book The Golden Bough . His books on ancient Egyptian religion and his interest in the occult (he was a member of the Ghost Club and believed in supernatural phenomena) enjoyed great audiences and were often reprinted later, even though they were scientifically outdated. Among other things, he published translations of the Egyptian Book of Kings and the Book of the Dead , as well as Ethiopian and Syrian manuscripts. Through his position at the museum, he came into contact with many high-ranking personalities in English society, who often left him with their acquisitions. In 1891 he became a member of the Savile Club at the suggestion of his friend Henry Rider Haggard . In 1895 he was accepted into the American Philosophical Society .

In 1893 he was involved in a legal battle with Hormuzd Rassam after he had accused him of smuggling antiquities from Nineveh past the British Museum under their excavator Austen Henry Layard . Rassam was wrongly accused and sued in court.

In 1920 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London .

In 1883 he married Dora Helen Emerson. In his will, in memory of her, he endowed a scholarship for young Egyptologists in Oxford and Cambridge (Lady Wallis Budge Junior Research Fellowship), which was first awarded in 1936.

In 1929 he published as a private print a biography of Mike the cat who "guarded" the main entrance of the British Museum from 1909 to 1929.

Fonts (selection)

• Easy Lessons in Egyptian Hieroglyphics with Sign List. London 1889 and more often (Reprint Dover 1983).
• The mummy. A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1893. 2nd edition 1894 (Reprint Dover 1989).
• First steps in Egyptian: a book for beginners. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, London 1895.
• An egyptian reading book for beginners. London 1896.
• The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, London 1898 ( digitized version ).
• Egyptian Magic. 2nd edition, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, London 1901.
• Egyptian religion. London 1900 (Reprint, Bell Publ., New York 1959).
• The gods of the Egyptians; or, Studies in Egyptian mythology. 2 volumes, Methuen & co., London / Chicago 1904 ( digitized volume 1 , volume 2 ).
• The Nile. Notes for Travelers in Egypt. Cook, London 1890. 10th edition 1907.
• The Egyptian Sudan. Its History and Monuments. 2 volumes, Kegan Paul, London 1907.
• Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection. 2 volumes, Warner, London 1911.
• By Nile and Tigris. A Narrative of Journeys in Egypt and Mesopotamia on Behalf of the British Museum Between the Years 1886 and 1913. Murray, London 1920 (autobiography).
• The Rise and Progress of Assyriology. Hopkinson, London 1925. Archives
• From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1934 (Reprint Dover 1988).

literature

• R. Campbell Thompson: Ernest Alfred Wallis . In: Journal of Egyptian Archeology , Volume 21, 1935, pp. 68-70.
• Toby Wilkinson : Budge and his Legacy. Egyptology at Christ's College . Christ's College, Cambridge 1995.
• Adam H. Becker: Doctoring the Past in the Present: EA Wallis Budge, the Discourse on Magic, and the Colonization of Iraq In: History of Religions , Volume 44, 2005, pp. 175-215.
• Robert Morrell: Budgie .... The Life of Sir EAT Wallis Budge . Private print, Nottingham 2002.
• Matthew Ismail: Wallis Budge: Magic and Mummies in London and Cairo . Glasgow 2011.

Web links

• Biography at the British Museum
• Budge books at Project Gutenberg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See biography at the British Museum .
2. ↑ Member History: EA Wallis Budge. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 24, 2018 . 
3. ^ The London Gazette . Supplement No. 31712, December 30, 1919, p. 2 .
4. ^ The Lady Wallis Budge Fellowships in Egyptology . In: Journal of Egyptian Archeology 63, 1977, pp. 131-136.
5. ^ "Mike" the Cat Who Assisted in Keeping the Main Gate of the British Museum from 1909 to January 1929 . London 1929 ( digitized ).