The Book of the Dead: Fully Illustrated

The Book of the Dead by E. A. Wallis Budge. Because of the substantial amount of hieroglypics interspersed in the original text, I have omitted the ### 'glyph' placeholder where context permits, for readability. Only actual illustations have been inserted into the file. Due to space considerations the interlinear translation, which is primarily of interest to students of Ancient Egyptian, will not be posted. This should not be a hardship, since the Dover reprint edition is still in print and widely available. The file above, which appears at on the Internet at Sacred-Texts for the first time is a faithful e-text of the 1895 edition of the E.A. Wallace Budge translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. In November of 2000 I inventoried my library and found that I was missing Budge's Book of the Dead. So when a copy of the Dover reprint came up at the local used bookstore, I purchased it. To my dismay, the version of the text widely posted on the Internet did not seem to match the Dover reprint of the 1895 version. According to John Mark Ockerbloom, the proprietor of the excellent Online Books Page, the version circulating on the Internet is a highly edited version of Budge from a much later date (1913). He writes: "I did a little legwork, and it appears that the "mystery text" is in fact from the Medici Society edition of 1913. According to a 1960 reprint by University Books, for this edition "The translation was rewritten... [and the] greater part of the Introduction was also rewritten by Sir Wallis, who concluded a preface to it with the pleased words, 'and the entire work thus becomes truly a "New Edition"'." It's unclear whether Budge himself did the rewrite of the translation, but it's clear that he at least claims responsibility for it, . and it does appear to draw fairly heavily on his earlier translation." Thanks to Mr. Ockerbloom for clearing up this mystery.

About the Author :
Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (27 July 1857 - 23 November 1934) was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East. He made numerous trips to Egypt and the Sudan on behalf of the British Museum to buy antiquities, and helped it build its collection of cuneiform tablets, manuscripts, and papyri. He published many books on Egyptology, helping to bring the findings to larger audiences. In 1920 he was knighted for his service to Egyptology and the British Museum. E.A. Wallis Budge was born in 1857 in Bodmin, Cornwall, to Mary Ann Budge, a young woman whose father was a waiter in a Bodmin hotel. Budge's father has never been identified. Budge left Cornwall as a boy, and eventually came to live with his maternal aunt and grandmother in London. Budge became interested in languages before he was ten years old, but left school at the age of twelve in 1869 to work as a clerk at the retail firm of W.H. Smith, which sold books, stationery and related products. (It continues to do so.) In his spare time, he studied Hebrew and Syriac with the aid of a volunteer tutor named Charles Seeger. Budge became interested in learning the ancient Assyrian language in 1872, when he also began to spend time in the British Museum. Budge's tutor introduced him to the Keeper of Oriental Antiquities, the pioneer Egyptologist Samuel Birch, and Birch's assistant, the Assyriologist George Smith. Smith helped Budge occasionally with his Assyrian. Birch allowed the youth to study cuneiform tablets in his office and obtained books for him from the British Library of Middle Eastern travel and adventure, such as Sir Austen Henry Layard's Nineveh and Its Remains.