BUDGE, sir ERNEST ALFRED WALLIS. - English Orientalist, b. at Bodmin (Cornwall) on 27 July 1857; d. on 23 Nov. 1934. From 1893 to 1924 he was keeper of the department of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum. He directed important excavations at Aswan, Gebel Barkal, Nineveh and in Mesopotamia.
He published many works of Egyptology, among them History of Egypt (8 vols., London 1902); Book of the Dead (3 vols., ibid. 1898; ibid. 1905); The Gods of the Egyptians (2 vols., ibid. 1904); Egyptian Heaven and Hell, Osiris and the Hell (ibid. 1905); Osiris, and the egyptian Resurrection (2 vols., ibid. 1911); The Mummy (Edinburgh 1925); From fetish to God in ancient Egypt (Oxford 1934).
Important are his editions of texts (Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic) of the Christian East: Salomon of Bosra, The book of the Bee (Oxford 1886); Thomas of Marga, The book of governors, the Historia monastica (2 vols., London 1893); Philosenus of Mabbigh, Discourses (2 vols., ibid. 1894); Theodosius of Alex., Severus of Antioch and Eustatius of Trake, S. Michael the Archangel (ibid. 1894); Barhebraeus, The laughable Stories (ibid. 1897); Contemplings of the Apostles (2 vols., ibid. 1899-1911); The earliest knownan Coptic Psalter (ibid. 1898); The History of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the History of the Likeness of Christ (2 vols., ibid. 1899); The Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary etc. (ibid. 1900); The Book of Paradise, being the histories and sayings of the monks and ascetics in the egyptian Desert (2 vols., ibid. 1904); Coptic Biblical Texts in the dialect of Upper Egypt (ibid. 1912); The Coptic Apocrypha (ibid. 1913); Coptic Martyrdom (ibid. 1914); Coptic Miscellaneous Texts (ibid. 1915); Coptic Homilies (ibid. 1916); Mashaba Senkesar, The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church (4 vols., ibid. 1928); A History of Ethiopia, Nubia and Abyssinia (2 vols., ibid. 1928); Monks of Kublai Khan, Emperor of China (ibid. 1928); The Alexander Book in Etiopia (ibid. 1933); George of Lydda (ibid. 1930); Chronography of Gregory Abu'l Farag (2 vols., ibid. 1932); Barhebraeus, Chronicle of Dynasties (2 vols., ibid. 1933); One hundred and ten miracles of Our Lady Mary (Oxford 1933); Stories of the holy Fathers of the Deserts (ibid. 1934).
Erik Peterson