Actually it was Erman who realized that Egyptian evolved over time just like any other language. He developed the classifications of Old E, Middle E or classical, Late E, demotic and Ptolemaic. For Budge Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespear, Twain, Bob Dylan and Tupac Shakur would all have the same grammar, syntacs and vocabulary.
I may not be a linguist but I "borrowed" one of their tools of comparing words from different periods. What I did was make an excel spread sheet with the various Gardiner symbols and then took "samples" from Budge's various books where he had the heiroglyphic texts and just copied the number of times the 'ntr' symbol appeared the 'nfr' 'goose' 'owl' etc. after that I tabulated the results and made a graph of what I found. And wow what a difference!!!! Everybody says that the Hymn To Aten is taken from the Hymn to Amen. However my graphs said otherwise! They had no more in common than "Amazing Grace" had in common with "I got a phone call from heaven and Jesus was on the line".
You might remember from your Shakespear (probably quit a long time ago) in the anotations that many words had completely reversed their meaning. It's a common phenomenon in language. Like bad meaning good in ghetto.
Actually "bad" no means bad, like in the current Gangsta english saying "my bad" which means you really screwed up.
That particular one may become standard or die away(I hope), but that's what languages do. That's the kind of thing Budge ignored; so some of his translations are complete nonsense. But they're in the public domain so they keep being reprinted.
The thing that grates on my nerves with his translations is his constant translating them into Shakesperean english. "Doth thou not seest Amon as he approacheth his shrine?" Give me a break the Egyptian's didn't talk that way.
However his books that aren't primarily translation are wonderful compilatons of infomation and I happen to be an information junkie. Just while we were having this back and forth I realized for the first time that his Guide to the First, Second and Third Egyptian Rooms and the other BM guides were the first comprehensive guides to a major egyptian collection, packed with information and in a form that was inexpensive and available to the general public. Probably two generations ahead of any other. smiling smiley
Yep I agree they are a compilation of the damndest stuff that I've ever read. Cannibals, sexual rites, you name it nothing escaped Budge's notice. Right, wrong or indifferent it was never boring.
