Customer Reviews

An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary, Vol. 2: With an Index of English Words, King List, and Geographical List with Indexes, List of Hieroglyphic Characters, Coptic and Semitic Alphabets

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This two book set has some merits as an extensive base of heiroglyphic information. It is put together in a fairly easy to use format. HOWEVER!

Please be wary that this is the second half of the complete book. The first volume, or the first half of the dictionary, is not available for purchase. Before you think of purchasing this title, be sure that you have found the first volume, otherwise the back half is more than useless. I purchased this thinking I would easily find the first half, but was proved wrong.

Due to the outdated nature of this material, I recommend you find a more contemporary dictionary of Ancient Egyptian that is in its entirety.

This book contains many hieroglyphs, and offers translation keys, but...

Let me just warn people that real archaeologists, real Egyptologists don't have a whole lot of respect for the author of this book anymore. A lot of conventions in translation have sort of moved on since his time. In the movie "Stargate," they make fun of him a little. They do this because, in the 21st century, people don't really use his writings anymore. You need to be very careful of anything Budge says.

Look for "Egyptian Grammar" by Sir Alan Gardiner. That's the standard textbook, used by real Egyptologists. The magazine KMT is good to know about, too. It's all about ancient Egypt, and is easy to find online.

If you enjoy this type of puzzle-solving, let me recommend a few titles. "The Decipherment of Linear B," by John Chadwick, "Breaking the Maya Code" by Michael Coe, and "The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries" by David Ulansey are all still in print. "Forgotten Scripts" by Cyrus Gordon, and "Voices in Stone" by Ernst Doblhofer are harder to find, but if you ask your local librarian to search for them using interlibrary loan services, he or she will probably find them. It's really worth it... Also, there are still a few ancient scripts out there that no one has deciphered yet. The Indus Valley Script, the Easter Island Script, and the Meroitic script are three of them. The Meroitic script could shed light someday on the issue of how much contact there was between Ancient Egypt and pre-historic Africa. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, at ..., has the best collection around on Meroe, and Meroitic, if anyone's interested. A good book for that script is "Ancient African Civilizations," edited by Stanley Burstein, which contains several useful chapters.

Well, happy deciphering to you!

This book is very, very old. There's nothing wrong with the scholarship in this book - Budge was no nut case - but about 10% of what's in here is flat wrong because it is outdated. We've learned a considerable amount since the days of Budge. Use Gardiner's Middle Egyptian Grammar, E. O. Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, and/or Allen's grammar. Budge is still useful, but only for advanced students who know enough to know which parts are wrong. For heaven's sake, if you're just starting out, avoid this book!

This book is only of antiquarian interest. It is no longer useful as a lexical reference. If you are interested in a good dictionary of hieroglyphic Egyptian, I would recommend R.O. Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian or Leonard H. Lesko's A Dictionary of Late Egyptian. Budge's work, while readily available, is simply too outdated to be of any serious use.

Even though the information in this set is somewhat out of date, after having it for a day, i have learned SO much about hieroglyphics and Egypt. Even though i don't even have the second book yet, I love it! It has a very simple layout. Even a person that knows nothing about Egypt can benefit from this book. I have learned so much from the first volume in one day. This is the best and most complete Hieroglyphic Dictionary that i have come in contact with. I can't wait to find out what else this volume and the second have in store. I would HIGHLY recommend this book to experts and amateurs in the field of Egyptology. I hope everyone benefits from this book as much as i have.

I've noted numerous complaints about the elusive Volume 2 to Budge's heiroglyphic dictionary. Worry not, Amazon does in fact carry it. I querried them and received an e-mail the next day with all of the information I needed to order Volume 2. And even very old, the dictionary is in fact highly valuable. True, there are some oddities with the way he treats the spelling of gods' and kings' names and with other vocabulary, but it's not difficult to get past that stuff. Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian is another good source, but it is much too concise...Budge contributes significantly more detail. Just be mindful of the dictionary's age and all we've learned since his time.

This book has had very mixed reactions from those who have read it. Budge was writing at a time when people were unsure of the exact values of certain characters, and when many things about the Ancient Egyptians were still unknown. For this reason there are some strange mistakes in his dictionaries that many advanced scholars now criticse him for.

However, this book does offer one of the largest hieroglyphic dictionaries currently available and for this reason it is indispensable.A casual learner, who wants to be able to read the cartouches that appear on monuments and stelae can do so with Budge's king list.

An advanced scholar though, who needs to know the unusual words that can be found only in Budge's dictionaries, will have enough knowledge to correct his outdated transliteration.
For the casual student I recommend this book intensely, as it helps greatly with cartouches and formulaic inscriptions.
For the more advanced Egyptologist I also recommend this book, as it offers as I have said a far less "concise" version of Faulkner's Concise Dictionary.

P.S If you buy Volume One, do not forget to purchase Volume Two!

I have used this particular reference book many times in my own research and found it invaluable. So when I saw it advertised @ Amazon.com, I was very tempted to add it to my own library, however! Vol 1 only contains the first half of the Egyptian Hieroglyphic dictionary and my search for Vol 2 returned a negative outcome. Surely if Vol 1 is available... Vol 2 could also be offered? Therefore I am not willing to purchase Vol 1 until I am sure Vol 2 can be acquired. (How 'bout a package deal on these two items 'Amazon'?)

This book was out of date when it was 1st published in the 1920s. It certainly is not any better now. If you want a dictionary of Egyptian, look for Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian. Don't fool yourself into thinking Budge's work is good. He is generally scorned by professional Egyptologists, including those around when he was alive, because of his shoddy and inaccurate "research"

Both the serious student of Egyptology and the amateur will benefit from owning this book. Both volumes are necessary however, to get the full benefit.

The intro section in volume 1 covers other languages that were contemporary to or were descendants of the hieroglyphics. Actual alphabets are presented as well as similarities and differences in words.

Volume 2 has an extensive king list as well as a section on geographic names. This is useful for students of history, Bible studies, and other subjects besides Egyptology.

Overall, an excellent resource for your library.

Dr. Constance Johnson, Ph.D.