The Historians' History of the World 01 [Prolegomena; Egypt, Mesopotamia]

Bokh, A., Manetho und die Hundstern-Periode. Berlin, 1845.—Borchardt, Zur Geschichte der Pyramiden, Ztschr. für Aegypt. Spr., 1894.—Boudier, E., Vers égyptiens, métrique démotique. Paris, 1897.—Breasted, I. H., De hymnis in solem sub rege Amenophide IV conceptis. Berlin, 1894.—Brimmer, M., Egypt. Three Essays on the History, Religion, and Art of Egypt. Boston, 1891.—Brugsch, H. C., Geschichte Aegyptens unter den Pharaonen. Leipsic, 1877, 2 vols. Genesis of the Earth and of Man. London, 1880. Die aegyptischen Altertümer in Berlin. Berlin, 1857. Recueil des monuments égyptiens. Leipsic, 1862-1863. Dictionnaire géographique de l’ancienne Égypte. Leipsic, 1877-1880. Thesaurus inscriptionum ægyptiarum. Leipsic, 1883-1891. Religion und Mythologie der alten aegypter. Leipsic, 1890. Die aegyptologie, Abriss der Entzifferungen und Forschungen. Leipsic, 1891.

Heinrich Carl Brugsch was born at Berlin, 1827; died there, 1894. He belonged to that rather large company of German investigators, who are at once scholars and diplomatists. His residence in Egypt was not as an ordinary tourist or investigator, but as an officer of the Egyptian Government, with the title of Bey and later of Pasha. Like his famous countrymen, Niebuhr and Bunsen, before him, he found time in the midst of official duties for a wide range of scholarly activities, and he soon became known, not only as one of the foremost Egyptologists, but as incomparably the highest authority on one form of the Egyptian writing, namely, the demotic. His History of Egypt under the Pharaohs, derived entirely from the monuments, is a work of the most standard authority. It is, in the main, a work rather for the scholar than for the general public; but it is by no means without popular interest, and, notwithstanding its bulk, it has been translated into English. The reader will recall that we have based our chronology upon the system of Dr. Brugsch,—a system confessedly artificial, which, however, meets the difficulties of the subject perhaps better than any other yet devised.

Budge, E. A. W., The Book of the Dead. London, 1895; Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life. London, 1899; Egyptian Magic. London, 1899; The Mummy: Chapters on Egyptian Funeral Archæology. Cambridge, 1893; Egypt in the Neolithic and Archaic Periods. London and New York, 1902.

Ernest A. Wallis Budge, M.A., Litt.D., D.Lit., F.S.A., Keeper of Assyrian and Egyptian Antiquities, British Museum. Dr. Budge has at once the profundity and the versatility of his famous predecessor at the British Museum, Dr. Birch. The list of his writings on oriental archæology is much too long to be cited in full here. Among other things he has put would-be students of the subject under lasting obligations by preparing an elementary treatise on the Egyptian language, and following it up with a more advanced work for the use of the student, He has also made an elaborate translation of the Book of the Dead, utilising the recent advances in the knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphics to improve upon the former translations. His latest work in this field is a popular history of Egypt, in eight volumes, published at London, 1902. In addition to his recognised profound scholarship, Dr. Budge has in a high degree the capacity for literary presentation, and he has not felt himself above considering the needs of the unscholarly public and of the beginner in oriental studies. Thus his catalogue of Egyptian antiquities at the British Museum, which is ostensibly only a guide-book to the collection there, is in itself a work of real literary merit, which would serve as a valuable introduction to the study of archæology even if placed in the hands of students who have not access to the collection which it specifically describes.