Egyptology, Orientalism, and ancient religion

E. A. Wallis Budge

1857 – 1934

Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge served as Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum from 1894 to 1924, amassing vast collections of papyri and manuscripts while publishing over one hundred scholarly works. He is best known for his translations of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Papyrus of Ani, and numerous Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopic texts, making the primary sources of ancient Egyptian religion and magic accessible to Western readers on an unprecedented scale. Though some of his interpretations have since been superseded, his translations remain standard references and gave esotericists direct access to Egyptian funerary and magical literature for the first time.