HENRY BRUGSCH. 671 



that we can explain how Brugsch was able to publish so rapidly so 

 many works of importance, and that he found himself able to bring- 

 out, six or seven years after, the Inscriptions Geographiques and the 

 Histoire d'figypte, his Dictionnaire Hieroglyphique et Demotique. 

 The first four volumes contained all that he had learned during the 

 first twenty years of his life, from 1848 to 1867 ; the last three added all 

 he had learned during the ten years following, 1868 to 1880. 1 The 

 Grammaire Hieroglyphique appeared during this interval about 1872. 

 It is not one of his best works; but his dictionary has rendered and 

 still renders a greater service than any other work of any other Egypt- 

 ologist. The savants of this generation have no idea of the length of 

 time and amount of labor their predecessors required to create the 

 tools which they lacked for their work, and especially those in the field 

 of lexicography. They had to transcribe all the texts on slips, word 

 for word, losing or wasting time in work which can now be devoted to 

 more important researches. Brugsch collected for us.a list of words 

 and examples sufficient for the understanding of easy texts. It is only 

 necessary to correct the meanings he proposed to insert the new trans- 

 lations or terms unknown to him, which are but few in comparison with 

 what one had to do before him. Without any doubt errors abounded 

 and serious omissions existed ; it will be necessary some day to do this 

 work over again, but the person who undertakes the work will often 

 merely need to copy Brugsch or to modify him slightly in order to pro- 

 duce a permanent work. 



Such a variety of production would have been sufficient for the activity 

 of an ordinary man. Brugsch could only satisfy himself by joining to 

 this speculations on the astronomy and religion of ancient Egypt. He 

 had begun with investigations on the constitution of the Egyptian year; 

 later he published his Materiaux pour servir a la reconstruction du Cal- 

 endrier Egyptien, 2 and still later he devoted two volumes of his Corpus 

 Inscriptionum Aegyptiacarum to new studies of these unfruitful sub- 

 jects. 3 He had been during his youth a friend of Gladisch, and he was 

 imbued with the more than strange ideas of that scholar. The documents 

 he possessed concerning the mythology and religion of the ancient Egyp- 

 tians he collected into a large volume, confused and without clearness.* 

 This book is already a work of his old age, in which fatigue and dis- 

 couragement are perceptible. Age had taken away nothing from his 

 physical and intellectual vigor, but life had become hard, and he felt 



1 Hieroglypbiscb-Deinotiscbes Worterbucb, enbaltend in wissenscbaftlicber Anord- 

 nung uud Folge den Wortschatz der heiligen und der Volks-Spracbe tind Schrift 

 der Alten Aegypter; nebst Erkliirung (in deutscber, franzoscber nnd arabiscber 

 Spracbe) der einzelnen Stiimme nnd der davon abgeleiteten Formen. Untor Hinweis 

 auf ibre Verwandscbaft mit den entaprecbenden Wortern des Koptiscben und der 

 Semitiscben Idiome. 7 vols. 4°. Leipzig. 1867-1880. 



2 Leipzig. 1863. 4°. 



3 Tbesaurus Inscriptionum Aegyptiacarum: I. Astronomiscbe und Astrologiscbe 

 Iuscbriften. II. Kalendariscbe Inscbriften. Leipzig. 4°. 1863-1884. 

 4 Religion und Mytbologie der Alten Aegypter* Leipzig. 8°. 



