Talk:E. A. Wallis Budge

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Word of praise[edit]

I'd like to thank the author for this beautifully-written and very informative article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.229.139.41 (talk) 23:55, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Budge's parentage[edit]

According to one of my instructors in College, Budge owed his position in the British Museum to the fact he was the illegitimate son of one of the Kings of England (which one has long ago slipped my mind), & many of the works published under his name were ghost-written by BM staffers.

True? False? Persistent academic rumor? Can this be documented? -- llywrch 02:19, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it is well-documented that he was illegitimate, but I really don't know anything else off-hand. As for the ghost-writing, I have no idea, but frankly would not be at all surprised if that were the case. Other well-known Egyptologits who claim a massive output of texts and hold senior levels of responsibility are rumoured to have done the same... (naming no names...) —Nefertum17 07:00, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No one knows who Budge's father was, though he certainly was illegitimate, something he obviously avoided talking about in public. The wilder guesses, such as that his father was King Edward VII or Prime Minister Gladstone, all derive from the fact that no one could accept that a poor, illegitimate, working class boy with no connections could gain the help of a man such as Gladstone without being related to him. It is true that Gladstone helped Budge to take his degree at Cambridge University, and Budge, a life-long Liberal, always talked up his relation to Gladstone. Yet, Gladstone was just one of several prominent men who pitched in to help Budge, and not even the most active of them. John Stainer, W.H Smith and Smith's business partner William Lethbridge were the driving force behind Budge's escape from his clerical position in Smith's business, and none of them were his father, either. As for the notion that Budge had his works ghosted, again, there is absolutely no proof of this. Budge was a workaholic, he was driven by a need to prove himself, he was a professional writer who wrote many fairly similar books for a popular audience, and he was prone to rush books into print without sufficient attention to details. Not only is there no proof for the ghosting, there is proof that he used his publishing know-how to help his departmental juniors and some of his friends to push their works through the press. One must be very careful when listening to rumours concerning Budge. He had many enemies who became very prominent men, and who trained another generation of prominent men, who lost no time in spreading a wealth of crazy stories about him. He could be a hard man to deal with, but his enemies were just as bad. The difference is that they won the war for posterity's ear. (The above was written by 194.170.173.3 07:09, 18 December 2005)

Heh. I can make do quite well if these rumors happen to be true (& I'm glad someone stepped forth add some information about them, even just to say that there is no solid evidence for or against them), but I wish he taken more care with his writing. Having read his A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia a couple of times & finding that he too often express one judgement on an issue then a few pages later will contradict himself, I hesitate to rely on any unsubstantiated comment he makes. -- llywrch 01:58, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The claim that Budge was the son of a King of England is not very plausible. He was born in July 1857, when Queen Victoria had been on the throne for 20 years. There was no King. What we know about Prince Albert would not fit with his impregnating a young woman whose father was a waiter at a hotel in Bodmin. It may be that she lived at the hotel and encountered some other wealthy person there. The future King Edward VII was still 14 years old when Budge was conceived in 1856, and was probably still on a tight rein, which included being caned by his father for doing badly in his lessons. We know that Prince Albert left his deathbed to reprimand him for spending three nights with an actress in 1861.NRPanikker (talk) 21:13, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Verify: 194.170.173.42[edit]

The 16 Dec 2005 additions by the above include:

=Early life=
E.A. Wallis Budge was born 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 young man, and eventually came to live with his grandmother and aunt in London.

[?? not by the above:Budge became interested in languages before he was ten years old, but given that he left school at the age of twelve in 1869 to work as a clerk at the firm of W.H. Smith, he mostly studied Hebrew and Syriac with a volunteer tutor. Budge became interested in learning Assyrian in 1872, when he also began to spend time in the British Museum. Budge was introduced to the Keeper of Oriental Antiquities, Samuel Birch, and his assistant, the Assyriologist George Smith, and Smith helped Budge occasionally with his Assyrian, whereas Birch allowed the young man to study cuneiform tablets in his office and obtained books for him to read from the British Library. ]

From 1869 to 1878 Budge spent whatever free time he had from his job at W.H. Smith studying Assyrian, and he often went to St. Paul's Cathedral over his lunch break to study during these years. When the organist of St. Paul's, John Stainer, noticed Budge's hard work, he decided to help the boy to realize his dream of working in a profession that would allow him to study Assyrian, and Stainer contacted Budge's employer, the Conservative Member of Parliament W.H. Smith, as well as the former Liberal Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone, and asked them to help his young friend. Both Smith and Gladstone agreed to help Stainer to raise money for Budge to attend Cambridge University, where Budge studied Semitic languages, including Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic and Arabic from 1878 to 1883, continuing to study Assyrian on his own. Budge worked closely during these years with the famous scholar of Semitic languages William Wright, among others.

=Career at the British Museum=
Budge entered the British Museum in the re-named Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in 1883, and though he was initially appointed to the Assyrian section, he soon transferred to the Egyptian section, where he began to study the ancient Egyptian language with Samuel Birch until the latter's death in 1885. Budge continued to study ancient Egyptian with the new Keeper, Peter le Page Renouf, until Renouf's retirement in 1891. Between 1886 and 1891, Budge was deputed by the British Museum to investigate why cuneiform tablets from British Museum sites in Iraq, which were supposedly being guarded by local agents of the museum, were showing up in the collections of London antiquities dealers. These collections of tablets were being purchased by the British Museum at London market rates, and the Principal Librarian of the museum wished Budge to find the source of the leaks and to seal it, as well as establishing ties to Iraqi antiquities dealers to buy whatever was available in the local market at much reduced prices. Budge also travelled to Istanbul to obtain from the Ottoman government a permit to excavate these Iraqi sites in order to obtain whatever tablets remained in them. Over the years, Budge also sought to establish ties with local antiquities dealers in Egypt and [[Iraq] so that the British Museum would be able to obtain antiquities from them without the cost of excavating -- a decidedly 19th century approach to building a museum collection. Budge returned from these missions to Egypt and Iraq with enormous collections of cuneiform tablets, Syriac, Coptic and Greek manuscripts, as well as significant collections of hieroglyphic papyri. Perhaps his most famous acquisitions from this time were the beautiful Papyrus of Ani, a fragment of a lost work by Aristotle, and the Tell al-Amarna tablets. Budge's prolific and well-planned acquisitions gave the British Museum arguably the best Ancient Near East collections in the world, and the Assyriologist Archibald Sayce remarked to Budge in 1900, ". . . What a revolution you have effected in the Oriental Department of the Museum! It is now a veritable history of civilization in a series of object lessons . . ." }}some of last sentences added subsequenly{{

Most of 3 paragraphs were added. Look at the history. The accuracy needs to be checked. The reason is that the excerpt about Aristotle has been here for a 1 1-half year time. If it was done on purpose, then the entire additions need to be verified. (after sticking in the dagger, giving some final twitches to it(with the addition)). (from the SonoranDesert(Arizona)- -Mmcannis 17:10, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The comments about Petrie[edit]

Were completely hilarious and if true should prove just how non scientific, fringe based and bias our western society is capable of. I also find it quite odd how Budge's work is always referenced (even by his peers) and yet his work is classified as "outdated"? A serious and concise analysis (and let's throw in a non bias for extra measure) of his work needs to be performed for overall accuracy and literal relativity by comparison to so-called "respected" egyptologists. Nuwaubian Hotep 01:15, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Budge's work is referenced on the British Museums site. I find it hard to believe that they are urging his work to be avoided all-together, as this page suggested. Some of his works are outdated, that is true, but I find it hard to believe that they would say that the work done in their Museum was trash. Why would I visit the British Museum if past work of curators was considered trash? That doesn't make sense. Budge was an honest man and that burns some people up.

If they were urging his work to be avoided, then why would they list him on the recommended reading list at the British Museum?

http://www.britishmuseum.org/the_museum/departments/ancient_egypt_and_sudan/reading_list.aspx#general[1]

The British Museum notes that most of his work has been superseded, but lists him for one title. Given all the changes in archeology, which has become a more scientific practice dependent on excavation in place, and a variety of new technologies, it is not unusual for Budge's work to be replaced by more recent scholarship, nor for the Museum to recommend scholarship conforming to current academic practice. There have also been advances in linguistics and translations, etc.Parkwells (talk) 15:24, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The 2008 Encyclopedia Britannica uses Budge's work as a reference under death in Ancient Egypt and refer to him as the renowned Orientalist in the following statement:

According to the renowned Orientalist Sir Wallis Budge, the Egyptians saw the heart as the “source of life and being,” and any damage to it would have resulted in a “second death” in which everything (ka, ba, khu, and ren) would be destroyed. In some sarcophagi one can still read the pathetic plea “spare us a second death.”[2]

It hardly seems like his work "should be avoided" as someone had suggested. Lucky (talk) 01:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He can be both recognized as a "renowned Orientalist", which he was in his time, in a general work and cited for a statement that has likely been supported by recent work, AND superseded as a preferred choice for academic work on Egyptology - nearly another century of work has been accomplished.Parkwells (talk) 15:24, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV[edit]

"...we should remember that he was unusual among scholars ..."

What is this, a lecture? Change the POV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.203.251.157 (talk) 07:25, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Images[edit]

File:Budge.jpg and File:Budge caricature.jpg have been deleted, anyone know why? Replacements would be handy. Fæ (talk) 17:17, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mau or miu, miit or miut?[edit]

Please answer, why according to Sir Budge an Egyptian word for cat was "mau" or it was a word for Ra's personification into a tom-cat? Why other sources give other words? Thank you in advance, -- Zara-arush (talk) 21:43, 13 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know but if User:Harmakheru still looks in you can get an answer from somebody qualified to do so. Failing that you could ask the nice people on Glyphdoctors] forum[3]. I would be interested to know if the spelling used reflects to some degree the characteristic voices of a cat, in this case meow rather than purr. The naming of cats, not just the generic species name, must be of some importance and I'm sure EAWB would not have treated the matter lightly being aware of how sensitive such issues can be. Yt95 (talk) 08:45, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Literary and social career[edit]

I have been reading this article and have found that, for the most part, it is quite well-written. However, I wonder about a sentence in the section "Literary and social career" -- in the 4th paragraph. It is: "It is hardly surprising that the low-born Budge was fascinated not only by the company of literary men, but also by that of the aristocracy." This sentence seems to be explaining why he spent so much time cultivating friendships with literary men and aristocrats. I don't think the facts of his birth and childhood would necessarily make him "fascinated by the company of literary men, but also by that of the aristocracy". Perhaps he was fascinated by them because they were educated, interesting, and articulate, not because he was "low-born". (By the way, to Americans, "low-born" is a strange adjective.) I also think "It is hardly surprising" is one writer's opinion, and I thought Wikepedia articles were supposed to be factual, and that expressions of opinion were discouraged. If someone who knows about either Wikepedia editing or E. A. Wallis Budge agrees, perhaps he or she could edit this section.CorinneSD (talk) 00:01, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that such a statement has to be cited to a specific source for that opinion, which should be in quotes if it is one author's opinion from an RS. It is otherwise a dated idea of class assumptions that should not be included if unsourced.Parkwells (talk) 14:53, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WW2 Pictograph Book by E. A. Wallis Budge[edit]

On ebay I saw a book reported to be by E. A. Wallis Budge titled World War II A Complete Pictographic History. It has a synopsis which reports that the work bears witness from "September 1, 1939, to September 2, 1945." I was just wondering how is this possible when he died in 1934?! contact me coopaubery@aol.com, thankx— Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.115.23.31 (talk) 19:17, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The eBay listing is still available online. The text changes one word in the title from "Pictographic" to "Photographic." The ISBN is the same as a book of the same name by Hal Buell. My explanation is that whoever carelessly transcribed the title for the heading of the eBay listing also copied the wrong author's name from whatever handlist he was using. NRPanikker (talk) 16:13, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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List?[edit]

Is there a list of books he wrote? It will be good for the article.

~~Bill~~ 2607:FEA8:4A2:4100:E4D8:1994:2E91:D60 (talk) 21:23, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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