The Rosetta Stone

by E.A. Wallis Budge

E.A. Wallis Budge was an English philologist and writer who worked for the British museum. Budge wrote a lot on the ancient East after taking multiple trips to Egypt and the Sudan. This edition of Budge’s The Rosetta Stone includes a table of contents.

Genres: History, Egypt, Language, Archaeology, Nonfiction, Linguistics, Egyptology

76 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1913

About the author

Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East.

Reviews

[Andrew Bayles]

The subject itself is fascinating, but the way it's presented in this book is repetitive and feels unorganized to a modern reader.

The three different language texts were each presented on their own, and then in translation, followed by commentary, and then multiple translations of other copies of the same text. A more modern edition would be better served by having side-by-side translations, or interlinear text, or something similar.

In nearly all cases, the English translations in this book are actually translations of translations to German or French, and while the translations themselves seem fairly faithful, this always introduces some linguistic noise.

In addition, significant scholarship on Egyptian hieroglyphs has happened in the nearly 100 years since the book was published, and so of course some of the transcriptions and translations in this book would benefit from updating.

All that said, for a book originally written in 1929, this does provide a very good summary of the process of translation, the different translations that happened, and the individuals involved. In some cases, it's clear that the author has communicated directly with some of the individuals involved in the original processes of translation, which is something that couldn't be captured in a modern book.

[Dawn Pisturino]

A little dry but interesting.

[Melanie]

"The Rosetta Stone" is a very educational and interesting book. It delves into the history and meaning of the Rosetta Stone from an academic and analytical point of view. I highly recommend it for all of you fellow language and/or history nerds out there.