WALLIS BUDGE’S Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary

E.A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934), former keeper of oriental antiquities at the British Museum, produced among other landmark words a two-volume dictionary:

Budge, Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis. 1978. An Egyptian hieroglyphic dictionary: with an index of English words, king list, and geographical list with indexes, list of hieroglyphic characters, Coptic and Semitic alphabets, etc. 2 vols. New York: Dover Publications. Original edition, "Republication of the work originally published. by John Murray, London, in 1920."

Here is a typical page from Wallis Budge’s dictionary:

Fig. 1 Page 31 from Wallis Budge’s dictionary

Unfortunately Wallis Budge does not seem to have explained the structure of his entires.

BASIC ENTRY

Fig, 2: Basic entry

The basic form of an entry appears to be:

— a respelling in easy-to-read form, using the Roman alphabet;

— the glyph sequence for the word;

— a source (if available)

— English meaning

In the Hierolex database the above entry appears as:

(åu-t: iwu-t)

"posterity"

...... what is

WBDic

[31.1:15]

<fawn bun bone PLURAL>

SUMMARY 1 iwu-t: posterity

EQUIVALENCE SHOWN BY COMMA SEPARATING EXAMPLES

Wallis Budge (EAWB) includes elaborations on this structure. For example, he might give two different glyph sequences for a word, separated by a comma:

Fig. 3: Basic entry featuring a comma separating alternatives

Does EAWB intend the comma to suggest complete alternatives for the rendering of the headword åu (iwu or iyu)?

EQUALS SIGN BETWEEN EXAMPLES

If a comma denotes eqivalences, what then is the significance of the equals sign /=/ in the following pair of examples?

Fig. 4 Basic entry with two glyph versions separated by /=/

(åu: iwu)	"river"	stream	WBDic	[31.2:8.11]	<reed coil waters>
(åu: iwer)	"river"	stream	WBDic	[31.2:8.12]	<reed coil mouth waters canal>
(åui: iwi)	"flood"	inundate	WBDic	[31.2:9.11]	<fawn coil reeds waters canal>
(åui: iweHe)	"flood"	inundate	WBDic	[31.2:9.12]	<fawn quail rope waters>

TABLE 1 iwu: river, stream

The members of each pair of words are related, but the pronunciations of them as indicated by the glyphs are not the same.

The equals sign perhaps indicates equivalence at least in the stem, iwu / iyu. 
Is this then how the equals sign is intended to differ from the comma example in Fig. 3?

EQUALS SIGNS AFTER TRANSLATION

(a) Example 1

Consider another example. Here the equals sign occurs after the translation:

Fig. 5 AqA and qAyA

(aqa: AqA)	"filth"	vomit	WBDic	[11.1:2.1]	<eagle slope eagle egg: ears>
(qaa: qAyA)	"filth"	vomit	WBDic	[11.1:2.2]	<slope eaglex2 pot: pour>

Table 2 filth: AqA and qAyA

These two examples are similar but not the same. 
Does the equals signs here indicate merely that a relationship exists?

(b) Example 2
In Fig. 6 below, the ‘equals sign’ coming after the translation is used differently. It might mean there is a relationship in the meaning but not in the sound of the word. That is, could the equals sign mean that it is another but entirely different spelling of ‘offal, filth’?

Fig. 6 filth: iwu-...

[In Fig. 6 the <eagle>-style glyphs in the top line are confusing. They have been adjusted in Table 3 below. See the ‘Eagle digression’ section at the end.]

(åu-t: iwuti-yu)	"offal"	filth	WBDic	[31.2:10.1]	<reed quail eagle-like ring PLURAL>
(åu-t: iwuti-yu)	"offal"	filth	WBDic	[31.2:10.21]	<fawn coil eagle-like STROKE egg: ears PLURAL>
(åu-t: HewAt)	"offal"	offal	WBDic	[31.2:10.22]	<rope lasso bun egg: ears PLURAL-v>
(åu-t: )	"foul or stinking water"	......  [sludge]	WBDic	[31.2:10.3]	<waters canal heeler: flag>
(åu-t: iwu-t)	"foul or stinking water"	filth what is [sludge]	WBDic	[31.2:10.4]	<fawn bun waters>
(åu-t: iwu-t)	"filthy one"	filth what is	WBDic	[31.2:10.5]	<fawn coil bun captive: pole R>

TABLE 3 filth: iwu-...

The examples may have been clarified by sorting out the eagles as shown in the top two rows of Table 3 in accordance with the digression at the end of this article, but the significance of Wallis Budge’s equals signs is still unclear. Specifically, what does the equals sign really signify in the segment that comes in the second line of Fig. 6, reproduced in Fig. 7 below:

Fig. 7 = rope lasso bun egg: ears PLURAL-v: HewAt

The headword is åu-t (uwu-t / iyu-t). But as can be seen from Fig. 7 these signs spell HewAt, so nothing like iwuti-yu, as shown in the ‘eagle digression’.

(åu-t: HewAt)

"offal"

offal

WBDic

[31.2:10.22]

<rope lasso bun egg: ears PLURAL-v>

SUMMARY 2 HewAt

SEMI-COLON SEPARATOR

Fig. 8 Semi-colon separator, then two examples and a source, and meaning

The ‘rope lasso’ example featured in Fig. 8 is followed by a semi-colon. This presumably is to indicate a new sub-entry. Two glyph groups then follow the semi-colon, separated by a comma — followed by a source, and a meaning (‘foul or stinking water’) as expected by the pattern of the basic entry seen at the outset in Fig. 2.

(åu-t: )	"foul or stinking water"	......  [sludge]	WBDic	[31.2:10.3]	<waters canal heeler: flag>
(åu-t: iwu-t)	"foul or stinking water"	filth what is [sludge]	WBDic	[31.2:10.4]	<fawn bun waters>
(åu-t: iwu-t)	"filthy one"	filth what is	WBDic	[31.2:10.5]	<fawn coil bun captive: pole R>

TABLE 4 Repeats the  last three rows of Table 3

However, while the second of these examples (<fawn bun waters> ) would sound out as iwu-t as indicated it should in EAWB’s head word, the first does not. So this seems to explode the hypothesis that a comma is used to separate equivalences.

In fact the first of these examples (<waters canal heeler: flag>) gives more the impression of  three determinatives rather than a word on its own. SHould it genuinely be a word then when spelt out it could read mu-mer:

Fig. 9 mu-mer? <waters canal heeler: flag>: Is this a word on its own, or suffix/determinatives following a previously indicated stem?

From the headword, Wallis Budge appears to suggest this ‘word’ reads åu-t (iwu-t), but from the yellow bars the best it would appear capable of reading is mu or mu-mer.

The improbability of Figs 7 and 9 reading anything like iwu-t makes one wonder if these groups are intended as alternative suffixes, including determinatives to the iwu stem, whether  as the glyphs <reed quail> or <fawn coil>:

Fig. 10 Stems iwu- and 10 iwu- (extracted from the first line of Fig. 6)

EQUALS SIGN IN HEADWORD(S)

The two uses of the equals signs in Fig. 11 suggest a relationship is intended, rather than equivalence.

Fig. 11 aa = a-t: Relationship but not equivalence? 

(aa = a-t: AA)	"field"	field	WBDic	[1.1:8.01]	<eaglex2 rails STROKE>
(aa = a-t: At)	"field"	field	WBDic	[1.1:8.02]	<eagle bun rails>
(aa = a-t: iyAyA)	"field"	field	WBDic	[1.1:8.03]	<reed eaglex2 arrowhead>

TABLE 5 aa = a-t

SOURCE ATTRIBUTION

From the illustration below it would appear that the source attribution relates only to the glyph sequence immediately preceding the attribution.

Fig. 12 WBDic 11.2:9 Aker: Source attribution

 Thus ‘Rec. 26, 65’ relates to:

Fig. 13 WBDic 11.2:9:12 <eagle cup mouth ness-4 CROUCH>

. . .and not to the preceding seven glyph sequences .

SOURCE STRUCTURE

A source is generally presented in three or four parts:

— the abbreviated name: e.g. Rec.

— two or three number groups

These might be volume, page and line, or volume, section and line, or volume, chapter and page. 

Fig. 14 Source structure

As many sources do not have separate volumes, that may be why a number group is often missing.

While it might seem untidy to have differences in the numbers given after a source, in practice when a source is checked in a library, the numbers used by Wallis Budge might be readily understood even though they meant different things in particular entries in the dictionary.

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Eagle digression

First, some eagle hieroglyphs:

row	glyph	name	Gardiner Number	sound	respelt
1		eagle	G1	3	A
2		eagle-like	G4	tyw	tiyu
3		eagle: tie	G21B	nḥ	neHe
4		WB-eagle: tie	EAWB used for ‘eagle-like’
5		WB-eagle	EAWB’s version of ‘eagle’

TABLE 6 eagles

Wallis Budge appears to use the character Row 4 < WB-eagle: tie> for Row 2 <eagle-like>, as seen in the  first example in Fig. 6, and as rendered below in Hierolex:

(åu-t: iwuti-yu)

"offal"

offal

WBDic

[31.2:10.1]

<reed quail eagle-like ring PLURAL>

SUMMARY 3 WBDic 31.2:10.1 iwuti-yu

Wallis Budge’s Row 5 < WB-eagle> must be an error for < WB-eagle: tie> and so intended to be equivalent to <eagle-like>, in order to arrive at the /t/ (as in tiyu) sound.

Fig. 16: EAWB’s glyphs spell iwA

The second EAWB example in Fig. 6 appears to spell iwA, but if the intended <eagle-like> replaced his character, the example becomes, in Hierolex, iwuti-yu:

(åu-t: iwuti-yu)

"offal"

offal

WBDic

[31.2:10.21]

<fawn coil eagle-like STROKE egg: ears PLURAL>

SUMMARY 4 WBDic 31.2:10.21 iwuti-yu

... and similar in sound to Summary 3 above.