Vol. I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

xlviii Introduction.
of the Dead in the British Museum (No. 9900) has so much in
My edition of common with that of Nu. Taking 115 Chapters from the Papyrus
& T1
^ ^u> 2
R slon'of
5 from tne Papyrus of Nebseni, 27 from the Papyrus of
the Book of Ani, and some half-dozen hymns, etc., from the Papyri of Hunefer,
My
Mut-hetep and Nekht, I prepared an edition of the Egyptian texts
and translated them. When I ventured to suggest to Messrs.
Kegan Paul, who undertook to publish the edition, that text
and translation should be accompanied by a Concordance they
demurred, saying that no one wpuld buy the Concordance, or
Vocabulary, for no one wanted such a thing. Finally they
decided to print 750 copies of the Egyptian text and Vocabulary,
and 1,000 copies of the Translation, thinking there would be a larger
demand for it than for the first two volumes of the work. Two
years later they wrote to me saying
that the whole edition of the
Egyptian text and Vocabulary was sold, and that as about 230
copies of the Translation were unsold they had decided to sell
them as a " remainder," and they did so. Thus it was proved
that there was a considerable demand for an Egyptian Vocabulary
to the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead, and that there
ofth Theban were students who would not buy the Translation unless they
Recension. could have the Vocabulary with it. In printing the Vocabulary
I adopted a plan hitherto untried. I placed the transliteration of
the Egyptian
words in the first instead of in the second column
as was usual, for it seemed to me that it would enable the beginner
to find the word he wanted more easily and quickly. This plan
has been much approved of in England, and as it has been adopted
in an "
"
Glossar published in Berlin in 1904 it has
Aegyptisches
evidently seemed useful to the practical Teutonic mind.
The success of the Vocabulary to the Book of the Dead
and the encouragement of many
friends emboldened me to write
an Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary, 1 and with this object
in view I began to collect words from Egyptian literature
The collection generally. I first laid under contribution the Dictionaries of
of material
Birch, Brugsch and Pierret and verified, as far as possible, all
Dictionary. doubtful readings. From the Vocabularies published with editions
of special texts I obtained much material, and from my own
reading of texts, both published and unpublished,
1
I obtained a
As Brugsch died in 1894, all hope of a new edition of his Wcrterbuch had
to be abandoned. His private copy of this work was purchased by the British
Museum, and is now in the Library of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian
Antiquities. It is interleaved and in several volumes, and the extensive notes
and additions in his own handwriting suggest that he contemplated the issue of
a new edition.