The Book of the Dead, Index
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
The Papyrus of Ani
IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
THE EGYPTIAN TEXT WITH INTERLINEAR
TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION,
A RUNNING TRANSLATION, INTRODUCTION, ETC.
by
E. A. WALLIS BUDGE
Late keeper of Assyrian and Egyptian Antiquities
in the British Museum
[1895]
Because of the substantial amount of hieroglypics interspersed in the original text, I have omitted the ### 'glyph' placeholder where context permits, for readability. Only actual illustations have been inserted into the file. Due to space considerations the interlinear translation, which is primarily of interest to students of Ancient Egyptian, will not be posted. This should not be a hardship, since the Dover reprint edition is still in print and widely available.
The file above, which appears at on the Internet at Sacred-Texts for the first time is a faithful e-text of the 1895 edition of the E.A. Wallace Budge translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
In November of 2000 I inventoried my library and found that I was missing Budge's Book of the Dead. So when a copy of the Dover reprint came up at the local used bookstore, I purchased it. To my dismay, the version of the text widely posted on the Internet did not seem to match the Dover reprint of the 1895 version.
According to John Mark Ockerbloom, the proprietor of the excellent Online Books Page, the version circulating on the Internet is a highly edited version of Budge from a much later date (1913). He writes:
"I did a little legwork, and it appears that the "mystery text" is in fact from the Medici Society edition of 1913. According to a 1960 reprint by University Books, for this edition "The translation was rewritten... [and the] greater part of the Introduction was also rewritten by Sir Wallis, who concluded a preface to it with the pleased words, 'and the entire work thus becomes truly a "New Edition"'". It's unclear whether Budge himself did the rewrite of the translation, but it's clear that he at least claims responsibility for it,. and it does appear to draw fairly heavily on his earlier translation."
Thanks to Mr. Ockerbloom for clearing up this mystery.
In any case, the version now at sacred-texts is a completely new e-text, which I believe to be a much better version of this text.
NOTE : Because the original e-text is not readable for "unschooled" readers, due to a mass of refers to other scripts, I removed most of them to make this book a little readable for my readers.
The original full text including all comments, you can find at Sacred Texts: Ancient Egypt.
