Legends of the Egyptian Gods: Hieroglyphic Texts and Translations

By E.A. Wallis Budge and Sir E A Wallis Budge

Book Overview

Former Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, E. A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934) was one of the great Egyptologists of the century and author of a host of books on ancient Egypt. For this collection, he carefully selected nine of the most interesting and important Egyptian legends and published them in hieroglyphic texts with literal translations on facing pages. The result is a wonderful sampling of typical Egyptian literature in the best and most complete form possible. This convenient edition enables students to study these ancient myths for their linguistic, literary, and cultural meanings -- all in one inexpensive volume. The legends included are: The Legend of the Creation The Legend of the Destruction of Mankind The Legend of Ra and the Snake-Bite The Legend of Horus of Edfu and the Winged Disk The Legend of the Origin of Horus A Legend of Khensu Nefer-Hetep and the Princess of Bekhten The Legend of Khnemu and a Seven Years' Famine The Legend of the Death and Resurrection of Horus The Legend of Isis and Osiris According to Classical Writers Any student of ancient Egyptian literature, language, or culture will welcome this classic compilation, enhanced with 19 illustrations from Egyptian art.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486280225
• ISBN13: 9780486280226
• Release Date: June 1994
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Understand the Egyptian pantheon and some spiffy spells!

People can learn the names of the gods and what they are best known for. Like the Edda tells the tales of the Norse gods, this presents some key papyrus and other sources that tell the tales of the Egyptian gods and their personalities. We learn of amulets, spells, and histories of the gods and their people. There are other sources, but this one is unique in organizing the different tears of gods and their relation to each other. ----------------- Now we have a problem with mixed versions. The hard copy has great sketches of the papyri and cartouches. Still, it is missing some simple helpful graphs like “The Great Ennead of Heliopolis” and some comparison of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. Because they are mixed versions, the star rating is for the book in general.

Great corpus

This book has a great amount of text to learn hieroglyphs. Unfortunatenaly, I don't know if the translations are good, because I'm starting to learn...

for students of egyptian

Kim Ringenbach's review would seem to refer to a different book - this one consists entirely of Egyptian legends presented in their original hieroglyphic form with Budge's translation. One would have preferred photostats or photos of the actual documents - as it is, the texts are written in Budge's font style, which is clear and easy to read, but doesn't give much practice in reading actual texts. However, this is a very useful document for those who are studying Egyptian. I was hoping for some more populist legends like the story of Sinuhe or the Shipwrecked Sailor - these are the typical "official" stories of creation and the gods.

All This Boring Intellectual Stuff! Classic Egyptology!

Gimme back my Marvel Comics! Who wants all this stuff with all words and no color comic panels? Yech! They expect me to read all these paragraphs!!! Come on, if you don't know anything about the subject material, stick with Captain Marvel and reading boxes of Cheerios. This is one of the modern world's greatest Egyptologists presenting nine of the greatest myths of ancient Egypt, translated directly from the hieroglyphs. It doesn't get much better than this. No, you won't see any color glossies of Harrison Ford, and they do use long words made up of even six, seven, sometimes eight characters. And some of the sentences even contain as many as ten words! Or more! All in a row! But this is the real stuff, primary source material. Written thousands of years ago. True what the ancient Egyptians had to say probably doesn't quite compare to visceral, heady thrills of the adventures of Captain Marvel. But for the rest of the literate and educated world, this is required reading if you're seriously interested in ancient Egypt and their mythology.