Ernest wallis budge biography of mahatma gandhi
E. A. Wallis Budge
British academic (–)
Sir E. A. Wallis Budge | |
|---|---|
Article announcing Budge's knighthood, | |
| Born | Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge ()27 July Bodmin, Cornwall, UK |
| Died | 23 November () (aged&#;77) London, UK |
| Alma&#;mater | University of Cambridge |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Egyptology, philology |
Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (27 July &#;&#; 23 November ) was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East.[1] He made numerous trips to Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian 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 , he was knighted for his service to Egyptology and the British Museum.
Biography of mahatma gandhi hindi: A memorial service was held at St Paul's, but he was buried, like his wife, at Nunhead cemetery. Glasgow: Hardinge Simpole Publishing, Archaeologists in Print: Publishing for the People. Here, he soon made up for lost time.
Early life and education
E. A. Wallis Budge was born in 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 to work as a clerk at the retail firm of W.
H. Smith, which sold books, stationery and related products.
Ernest wallis budge biography of mahatma gandhi in english Tools Tools. After a short church service, he was buried beside his wife at Nunhead cemetery in London, England. Subscription or UK public library membership required. He also believed in the development of a renewed Christianity that would be in harmony with modern science and evolution.In his spare time, he studied Biblical Hebrew and Syriac with the aid of a volunteer tutor named Charles Seeger.
Budge became interested in learning the ancient Assyrian language in , 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 Austen Henry Layard's Nineveh and Its Remains.
From to , Budge spent his free time studying Assyrian, and during these years, often spent his lunch break studying at St.
Paul's Cathedral. John Stainer, the organist of St. Paul's, noticed Budge's hard work, and met the youth. He wanted to help the working-class boy realize his dream of becoming a scholar. Stainer contacted W. H. Smith, a Conservative member of Parliament, and the former Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, and asked them to help his young friend.
Both Smith and Gladstone agreed to help Stainer to raise money for Budge to attend the University of Cambridge.
Budge studied at Cambridge from to His subjects included Semitic languages: Hebrew, Syriac, Geʽez and Arabic; he continued to study Assyrian independently.
Ernest wallis budge biography of mahatma gandhi for kids He wrote for everyone, from enthusiastic amateurs, visitors to the Museum and travellers, to students and scholars. Next Post. DOI: It is now a veritable history of civilization in a series of object lessons.Budge worked closely during these years with William Wright, a noted scholar of Semitic languages, among others.
Career at the British Museum
In , Budge entered the British Museum, working within the recently renamed Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. Initially appointed to the Assyrian section, he soon transferred to the Egyptian section.
He studied the Egyptian language with Samuel Birch until the latter's death in Budge continued to study ancient Egyptian with the new keeper, Peter le Page Renouf, until the latter's retirement in [citation needed]
Between and , Budge was assigned by the British Museum to investigate why cuneiform tablets from British Museum sites in Iraq, which were to be guarded by local agents of the museum, were showing up in the collections of London antiquities dealers.
The British Museum was purchasing these collections of what were their "own" tablets at inflated London market rates. Edward Augustus Bond, the principal librarian of the museum, wanted Budge to find the source of the leaks and to seal it. Bond also wanted Budge to establish ties to Iraqi antiquities dealers in order to buy available materials at the reduced local prices, in comparison to those in London.
Biography of mahatma gandhi death Budge's tenure was not without controversy. Many people in his day who were involved with the occult and spiritualism after losing their faith in Christianity were dedicated to Budge's works, particularly his translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. To honor the life of an adventurer, a scholar, a writer, public speaker, antiquities collector, curator smuggler and servant of the crown and empire; one of the pioneers in his field who helped to lay the foundations for the Egyptian and Assyrian collections of the British Museum, and who had significantly contributed to the scholarly study of ancient Biblical and Near Eastern civilizations. During his tenure as keeper, Budge was noted for his kindness and patience in teaching young visitors to the British Museum.Budge also travelled to Istanbul during these years to obtain a permit from the Ottoman Empire government to reopen the museum's excavations at these Iraqi sites. The museum archaeologists believed that excavations would reveal more tablets.[citation needed]
During his years in the British Museum, Budge also sought to establish ties with local antiquities dealers in Egypt and Iraq so that the museum could buy antiquities from them, and avoid the uncertainty and cost of excavating.
This was a 19th-century approach to building a museum collection, and it was changed markedly by more rigorous archaeological practices, technology and cumulative knowledge about assessing artefacts in place. Budge returned from his many missions to Egypt and Iraq with: large collections of cuneiform tablets; Syriac, Coptic, and Greek manuscripts; and significant collections of hieroglyphicpapyri.
Perhaps his most famous acquisitions from this time were: the Papyrus of Ani, a Book of the Dead; a copy of Aristotle's lost Constitution of Athens; and the Amarna letters. Budge's prolific and well-planned acquisitions gave the British Museum arguably the best Ancient Near East collections in the world, at a time when European museums were competing to build such collections.[citation needed]
In , the Assyriologist Archibald Sayce said to Budge:
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.
Budge became assistant keeper in his department after Renouf retired in , and was confirmed as keeper in He held this position until , specializing in Egyptology. Budge and collectors for other museums of Europe regarded having the best collection of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the world as a matter of national pride, and there was tremendous competition for such antiquities among them.
Museum officials and their local agents smuggled antiquities in diplomatic pouches, bribed customs officials, or simply went to friends or countrymen in the Egyptian Service of Antiquities to ask them to pass their cases of antiquities unopened.
During his tenure as keeper, Budge was noted for his kindness and patience in teaching young visitors to the British Museum.
Budge's tenure was not without controversy. In , he was sued in the high court by Hormuzd Rassam for both slander and libel. Budge had written that Rassam had used his relatives to smuggle antiquities out of Nineveh and had sent only "rubbish" to the British Museum.
The elderly Rassam was upset by these accusations, and when he challenged Budge, he received a partial apology that a later court considered "ungentlemanly". Rassam was supported by the judge but not the jury. After Rassam's death, it was alleged that, while Rassam had made most of the discoveries of antiquities, credit was taken by the staff of the British Museum, notably Austen Henry Layard.
He was one of the first authors to write about the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, and also one of the first experts to give an analysis of artifacts found there.
His observations on the subject were published in The Times. He called the exploit of Howard Carter and his financier Lord Carnarvon a "crowning discovery". In particular, he praised Carnarvon's willingness to financially support the entire venture: "England may congratulate herself that even in these days of the 'Axe' men can be found willing and magnanimous enough to spend treasure merely with the idea of increasing the sum of human knowledge."
He retired from the British Museum in ,[citation needed] and lived until
Literary and social career
Budge was also a prolific author, and he is especially remembered today for his works on ancient Egyptian religion and his hieroglyphic primers.
Budge argued that the religion of Osiris had emerged from an indigenous African people. Budge's contention that the religion of the Egyptians was derived from similar religions of the people of northeastern and central Africa was regarded as impossible by his colleagues. At the time, all but a few scholars followed Flinders Petrie in his theory that the culture of Ancient Egypt was derived from an invading "Dynastic Race", which had conquered Egypt in late prehistory.[citation needed]
Budge's works were widely read by the educated public and among those seeking comparative ethnological data, including James Frazer.
He incorporated some of Budge's ideas on Osiris into his ever-growing work on comparative religion, The Golden Bough. Though Budge's books remain widely available, since his day both translation and dating accuracy have improved, leading to significant revisions. The common writing style of his era—a lack of clear distinction between opinion and incontrovertible fact—is no longer acceptable in scholarly works.
According to Egyptologist James Peter Allen, Budge's books "were not too reliable when they first appeared and are now woefully outdated."
Budge was also interested in the paranormal, and believed in spirits and hauntings.
Budge had a number of friends in the Ghost Club (British Library, Manuscript Collections, Ghost Club Archives), a group in London committed to the study of alternative religions and the spirit world. He told his many friends stories of hauntings and other uncanny experiences. Many people in his day who were involved with the occult and spiritualism after losing their faith in Christianity were dedicated to Budge's works, particularly his translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Such writers as the poet William Butler Yeats and James Joyce studied and were influenced by this work of ancient religion.
Ernest wallis budge biography of mahatma gandhi Budge was one of them and a member of the Ghost Club. He willed that his body be interred in a Jerusalem cemetery and his head, now languishing in the back room of some institute in London, be donated to science. This friend, a scholar of Islamic Studies who is interested in the occult, shrugged and said. Seager had taken him to meet Samuel BirchBudge's works on Egyptian religion have remained consistently in print since they entered the public domain.
Budge was a member of the literary and open-minded Savile Club in London, proposed by his friend H. Rider Haggard in , and accepted in He was a much sought-after dinner guest in London, his humorous stories and anecdotes being famous in his circle.
He enjoyed the company of the well-born, many of whom he met when they brought to the British Museum the scarabs and statuettes they had purchased while on holiday in Egypt. Budge never lacked for an invitation to a country house in the summer or to a fashionable townhouse during the London season.
In , he published his sprawling autobiography, By Nile and Tigris.
His last work was From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt ().
Awards and honours
In , Budge was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society.[10] Budge was knighted in the New Year Honours for his distinguished contributions to Colonial Egyptology and the British Museum.[11]
Personal life
In Budge married Dora Helen Emerson, who died in [12]
Notable works
- The History of Alexander the Great: Being the Syriac Version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes,
- Reprinted edition: The History of Alexander the Great, Gorgias Press,
See also
References
Works cited
Further reading
External links
- Texts
- Others
- "E.A.
Wallis Budge", British Museum
- Geoffrey Graham, Yale University - list discussion of Egyptian dictionary, How to best use Budge's work and appreciate his ability to synthesize - get some education first, Rostau
- Budge, E. A. Wallis (20 January ). "Obituary for Mike The British Museum Cat". Time.
- Coptic Martyrdoms etc.
In Dialect of Upper Egypt, Volume 1, edited with English translation by E. A. Wallis Budge. London: British Museum, , at Coptic Library website
- Coptic Martyrdoms etc. In Dialect of Upper Egypt, Volume 2, edited with English translation by E. A. Wallis Budge. London: British Museum, ], at Coptic Library website