Customer Reviews

Egyptian Book of the Dead

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Taken directly from the papyrus of Ani, an Egyptian scribe, The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a great collection of hieroglyphic information. Everything about the passage into the underworld is described in detail. Not only that, you can also learn some of the Egyptian hieroglyphs as y ou read along with Ani. Give this book a toss in your shopping cart , all you lovers of Egyptian myth and culture

Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani
Very well documented,a must in the matter. I regredthat the vignettes were not in colour! But any way it is a good book.

Mr. Budge's ineptitude is a well-known shame; his translations (dare I call them that?!?) are notoriously inaccurate and full of blunders. In fact, most of his texts were regarded even in his day as outdated and flawed. Please, there are too many other splendid translations (I recommend Dr. Faulkner Raymond's "The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day" or Normandi Ellis' "Awakening Osiris : The Egyptian Book of the Dead" - both are gorgeous) available to justify wasting one's money on such a compilation of solecisms as this.

[Disclaimer: no defamation of character is intended. That has already been accomplished by Mr. Budge himself. Anyone familiar with Budge's work is already aware of his incompetence.]

Budge's work is great. Yes, his style of English is out of date and his tranliterations are different. For example, modern writers prefer to transliterate "ntr" as: NEJER or NECHER. Budge uses NETER. Many points of Egyptian grammar remain very unclear and much of what passes for "modern translations" are more guess work than actual translations.
The real reason Budge is trashed so often has nothing to do with his translations at all!

After many, many years of study Budge abandoned the pure assertion that ancient Egypt was an "Oriental" or "Eastern culture". Based largely, I imagine, on Hegel's pure assertions that "The History of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the beginning." These ideas have become part of European intellectual DOGMA. Africa is not a part of human history; Ancient Egypt belongs to Europe. This is pure DOGMA. But, perhaps we should expect Dogma from a German theologian! Hegel's children are still among us.
But on the other hand, after years of objective study of the language, religion, society and customs of the ancient Egyptians, Budge was led screaming and kicking, I might add, to the realization that the religion of the Egyptians was BLACK AFRICAN. The concept of the "ka" and the "ba" are found almost everywhere in Black Africa today! The language was a BLACK AFRICAN language and the customs were purely African. The ancient Egyptians were: "African negroes" or "Nilotic negroes" wrote Budge in several of his later works. In spite of the anti-African racism that we find in his earlier and even his later works, Budge rose above the prejudices of his time and followed the facts. The facts led to the heart of Africa, not to Asia.
Many modern African scholars have confirmed that the language of ancient Egypt was a "typical Black African language. For example Dr. Theophile Obenga(ORIGINE COMMUNE DE L'EGYPTIEN ANCIEN DU COPTE ET DES LANGUES NEGRO-AFRICAINES MODERNES) has proven the genetic linguistic relationship between the language spoken by the ancient Egyptians, Coptic and modern Black African languages. No competent linguist can demonstrate that the language of ancient Egypt has any genetic relationship to the Semitic languages....it can not be done!!!
When you study the language of ancient Egypt you study an ancient Black African language, like it or not!!
In a nutshell, that is the real reason that Budge is so often trashed. And perhaps why he is so viciously trashed.......