Biography of e a wallis budge
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Budge eventually studied at Cambridge from 1878 to 1883, learning about Semitic languages, including Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic and Arabic, continuing to study Assyrian on his own. Budge also traveled to Istanbul during these years to obtain from the Ottoman government a permit to reopen the Museum's excavations at some Iraqi sites in order to obtain whatever tablets remained in them.
Budge returned from his mission to Egypt and Iraq with enormous collections of cuneiform tablets, Syriac, Coptic and Greek manuscripts, as well as significant collections of hieroglyphic papyri.
Budge was also a member of the literary and open-minded Savile Club in London, proposed by his friend H. Rider Haggard in 1889, and accepted in 1891. Budge left Cornwall as a young man, and eventually came to live with his grandmother and aunt in London.
Budge became interested in languages before he was ten years old. Budge's tutor introduced him to the Keeper of Oriental Antiquities, the pioneer Egyptologist Samuel Birch, and Birch's assistant, the Assyriologist George Smith.
New York: Dover Publications. 1932. Bond also wanted Budge to establish ties to Iraqi antiquities dealers to buy whatever was available in the local market at much reduced prices. The British Museum was purchasing these collections of their own tablets at inflated London market rates, and the Principal Librarian of the Museum, Edward Bond, wished Budge to find the source of the leaks and to seal it.
London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.
New York: Dover Books. Stainer contacted Budge's employer, the Conservative Member of Parliament W.H. Smith, as well as the former Liberal Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone, and asked them to help his young friend. He said of Egyptian religions in Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (1911):
- "There is no doubt that the beliefs examined herein are of indigenous origin, Nilotic or Sundani in the broadest signification of the word, and I have endeavored to explain those which cannot be elucidated in any other way, by the evidence which is afforded by the Religions of the modern peoples who live on the great rivers of East, West, and Central Africa...Now, if we examine the Religions of modern African peoples, we find that the beliefs underlying them are almost identical with those Ancient Egyptian ones described above.
Budge then continued to study ancient Egyptian with the new Keeper, Peter le Page Renouf, until Renouf's retirement in 1891. Budge and the other collectors for the museums of Europe regarded having the best collection of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the world as a matter of national pride, and there was tremendous competition for Egyptian and Iraqi antiquities among them.
Budge was a strong proponent of liberal Christianity and was devoted to comparative religions. By Nile and Tigris. Both Smith and Gladstone agreed to help raise money for Budge to attend Cambridge University.