A museum career and its legacy
Budge entered Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1878 and joined the British Museum in 1883. He became Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in 1894 and held the post for thirty years. Alongside his museum work he published extensively, producing editions of ancient texts and books for readers beginning to explore Egyptian religion.
His collecting helped enlarge British museum collections through the removal of objects from Egypt. Christ’s College now acknowledges the harm of those practices and the limited attention he paid to local communities. Later Egyptologists have revised many of the translations and interpretations on which his popular books depend. At his death in 1934 he left funds to support Egyptology fellowships in memory of his wife, Dora.
Images of protection and the underworld
Amulets and Superstitions gathers protective objects and beliefs from many traditions. Budge places drawings, inscriptions and explanations beside one another so readers can examine a charm’s form as well as its words. The Egyptian Heaven and Hell follows a more sustained sequence of religious images. Lumitheca holds the first volume, The Book Am-Tuat, dated 1906. Its boats, gods and serpents accompany the sun’s passage through the underworld. The volume belongs to a three-part work, and its opening note directs readers to the other volumes for the wider introduction and general index.
