2011. Retrospect: Wallis Budge—for or against?

Wallis Budge Matthew Ismail Hardinge Simpole hardingesimpole.co.uk HS Wallis Budge Magic and Mummies in London and Cairo Matthew Ismail with a Retrospect by Julian Reade Cafe in Istanbul, c. 1900 (Arseven, Constantinople, de Byzance à Stamboul) Wallis Budge Magic and Mummies in London and Cairo Matthew Ismail with a Retrospect by Julian Reade Hardinge Simpole Hardinge Simpole Publishing, The Roan, Kilkerran, KA19 8LS, Scotland, U.K. For a complete list of titles, visit http://www.hardingesimpole.co.uk e-mail: admin@hardingesimpole.co.uk First published 2011 Text Copyright © Matthew Ismail 2011 Retrospective © Julian Reade 2011 Cover photograph: © Every efort has been made to trace possible copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of any copyright material. he publishers will gladly receive information enabling them to rectify any error or omission for subsequent editions. ISBN-13 978 1 84382 218 9 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Acknowledgements he infrastructure supporting academic research, such as research and travel grants, sabbaticals, release from teaching to make time for writing, nine month work contracts, and a variety of colleagues and audiences on whom to try out one’s ideas over the process of writing, is not available to an independent writer such as myself. I worked in my spare time and at my own expense, and had to make the best use possible of the opportunities I had to travel to England to carry out my research. It is my particular pleasure, therefore, to acknowledge the generosity of a variety of individuals and institutions for extending their timely assistance and making the present work possible: Irving Finkel, Sarah Collins, St. John Simpson, John Curtis, Gary horn, Morris Bierbrier, and Patricia Usick of the British Museum; Jaromir Malek and staf at the Griith Institute, and Diane Bergman of the Sackler Library, University of Oxford; Carol Collingburn of the W.H. Smith Archive; Philip Croom and Amr Kamel of the Rare Books and Special Collections Library at the American University in Cairo; the librarians and staf at the University of Cambridge Library, Trinity College Library and Christ’s College Library, University of Cambridge; Dietrich and Daniel Tost, who took the trouble to obtain the German text of Ludwig Meyer’s “Moderne Industrieritter” for me in Berlin, and Daniela Selanik for the English translation; Larry Parks, of the Cornwall Family History Society, for sending me information concerning Budge’s early life; Geraldine Beskin, proprietor of the Atlantis Book Shop, in Museum Street, London, for contacting the author Robert Gilbert with a question on my behalf; Neil Asher Silberman for reading my analysis of Flinders Petrie; Colin Merton, the Honorary Librarian at the Savile Club, London; David Swords for reading some early chapters and ofering encouragement; Anthony Still, for sharing with me his family history research (W. St. Chad Boscawen); and Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad for suggesting one day in Sharjah that I write on Budge instead of Sir John Malcolm. It was an inspired suggestion. Warm thanks are due to the staf of the Middle East Department of the British Museum for their hospitality and to the Trustees of the British Museum for granting me access to the archive material in their possession and allowing me to quote from them in the present publication. I would also like to thank the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan in the British Museum and the British Museum Central Archives, for making important materials available to me. he British Library Manuscripts Collection provided access to their Additional Manuscripts, for which I am very grateful; he Centre for Kentish Studies allowed me to quote Budge’s letters to Lady Stanhope from the Stanhope Manuscripts; he Wingate Papers are reproduced by permission of Durham University Library; the W.H. Smith Archive has allowed me to quote from their letters from Budge to W.H. Smith; the Renouf Papers are used by kind permission of he Master, Fellows and Scholars of Pembroke College in the University of Oxford. My wife, Jennifer, while not particularly interested in Budge, still tolerated my v time in the study with good humour. I don’t think my children, Sarah and Benjamin, knew that I was writing a book. hey just knew that I spent a lot of time reading and writing and telling them I’m too busy to play. Now that the book is inished I will correct my priorities and play with you two, instead. Matthew Ismail Cairo April, 2011 vi Contents Acknowledgements v Illustrations ix Abbreviations xi Foreword xiii Chapter 1: Young Man Budge 1 Chapter 2: he Patrons: W.H. Smith and John Stainer 18 Chapter 3: Budge at Cambridge 30 Chapter 4: he Search for a Suitable Career 45 Chapter 5: Budge Enters the British Museum 53 Chapter 6: Budge’s First Mission to Egypt 64 Chapter 7: Leak of Antiquities From the British Museum’s Sites in Iraq, 1887 86 Chapter 8: Budge’s Second Mission to Egypt, 1887-1888 111 Chapter 9: Budge’s First Mission to Iraq: he Leaks Continue, 1887-1888 120 Chapter 10: Budge in Istanbul, 1888-1889 132 Chapter 11: Budge in Mosul, 1889 155 Chapter 12: Rassam Enraged, hird Mission to Egypt, 1889-1890 174 Chapter 13: Mosul and Baghdad, 1890-1891 189 Chapter 14: Baghdad and Egypt, 1891 204 Chapter 15: Renouf ’s About-Face, Rassam’s Righteous Indignation 219 Chapter 16: “hese horrid broils . . .” Rassam Sues For Libel, 1892-1893 239 Chapter 17: Budge in Charge, 1892 - 1895 261 Chapter 18: he Keeper, 1894—1896 275 Chapter 19: Budge and Murch, 1896 289 Chapter 20: Budge, Wingate and the Sudan, 1897 303 Chapter 21: Budge, Wingate and the Sudan, 1898 316 Chapter 22: Budge and “he Boys”: King, Hall and Campbell hompson 340 Chapter 23: Boscawen and the Kindness of Budge, 1898-1912 360 Chapter 24: Budge, Lady Meux, and Amelia Murch 372 Chapter 25: Budge and the Brother Ghosts, 1899 – 1911 389 Chapter 26: Budge and Lady Stanhope, 1910 - 1920 408 Chapter 27: Elderly Budge, Retirement and Last Love, 1923 - 1934 428 Retrospect: Wallis Budge—for or against? 444 Notes 465 Bibliography 507 Index vii Retrospect Wallis Budge—for or against? by Julian Reade Ernest Alfred hompson Wallis Budge was a major igure in the history of European involvement with the cultures of the ancient East. Born illegitimate in 1857 in Cornwall, he worked his way into the upper levels of the English social hierarchy. From 1883 to 1924 he was employed at the British Museum, and had an important role in its development. He was known more widely too, with over 150 books to his name. He was rewarded with a knighthood in 1920 and with a memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1934. He left most of his estate to establish Fellowships in Egyptology at Oxford and Cambridge.1 Obituaries and short accounts of this versatile and successful man are available in works of reference, but the irst biography to be published was apparently Warrisu Bajji Denki, by Denroku Sakai (1987), written in Japanese. It contains 421 pages, with illustrations and extensive references, and appears to be a thorough account of Budge’s oicial life and activities. Robert Morrell was told that a plan to publish a translation in the United States had been dropped.2 I myself was told that a second biography was being planned by a U.S. scholar in the 1990s, but am unsure if it was completed. hen, in 2002, Morrell produced “Budgie....” The Life of Sir E. A. T. Wallis Budge, a most informative but short book, printed privately in a limited edition. So Budge by Matthew Ismail is the irst extensive biography of Budge in English. hat is slightly surprising since academics often enjoy describing one another. Evidence for Budge’s private life is scant, either because he concealed it as much as possible or because papers were destroyed after his death, but his public life is well documented. He was far more than a master of museum politics, and plenty of biographies were written in the twentieth century about people who led duller lives of less distinction. hree of his own books, The Egyptian Sudan (1907), By Nile and Tigris (1920) and The Rise and Progress of Assyriology (1925), incorporate long sections covering his life and some of his adventures. he books are page-turners written in an easy-going humorous manner, with dramatic accounts of events in which he is usually the hero but never ofensively boastful. hey spotlight his ingenuity, courage and enterprise, in performances inimitably choreographed by himself. hrough his prose we are given an inkling of his conversational skills. His own books naturally do not present the other side of the story, the views and justiications of his contemporaries who included, besides people from his own society and from Europe, those with whom he dealt in the Nile valley and the Ottoman Empire. Whatever one’s opinions on issues like nationalism, imperialism, orientalism, markets and cultural restitution, all of which must arise in any consideration of Budge’s career, he presents himself as a classic model of the Englishman (or Cornishman) born to rule, so that his life is an invitation to dialogue. hrough it we can survey broad and signiicant trends in British history and social conventions. 444 An additional problem in describing Budge, however, is that he was a more controversial igure than a simple list of his achievements indicates. Much of what he did can be viewed from radically diferent angles, as laudable or deplorable, as good or bad, or as both good and bad at once. he attitudes people adopt towards him are naturally dependent on their own experiences and prejudices, and biographers tend to write about people they like or respect. Accordingly, Morrell and Ismail are both sympathetic towards Budge, but people who dislike Budge have been less inclined to spend time on him. he present essay, which assumes familarity with the comprehensive research of Morrell and Ismail, addresses some aspects of Budge’s life and character that have come to my own attention. What everyone would acknowledge is that Budge was able, ambitious, assiduous and persistent. He rose initially through prodigious hard work, learning Hebrew, Syriac and Akkadian as a boy, and subsequently Ancient Egyptian and Coptic, while he must have spoken adequate Arabic and Turkish, and possibly spoke or read French and German; he continued to work very hard throughout his life. Sidney Smith, who worked under Budge, reported that he used to rise at 5.30 every morning in order to write. He had many faces, which matured with success. R. Campbell hompson, the Assyriologist, whose academic career began under Budge at the Museum in 1899, commented on his “ferocious bark, which could turn to biting if need be”, but also on his kindliness.3 Besides hurling books when angry, another habit reported by Sidney Smith, Budge could be friendly with people of all classes, and in his later years generous with time and money. He was also evidently, when he chose, extremely persuasive and even charismatic, and became celebrated as a raconteur. here is one description of Budge by someone who on arrival was neither friend nor foe. James Breasted, the Chicago orientalist, on his irst visit to the Museum in 1895, aged 29 and endowed with a brand-new Berlin doctorate, noticed a mistake on a label in the Egyptian gallery, and “during the next few days, I turned up innumerable similar blunders. So I went one morning to pay my respects to the Keeper, a pudgy, logy, soggy-faced gentleman named Budge, whose hand when I attempted to shake it—he withdrew it half-shaken—had all the friendly warmth of a ish’s tail. He gave me no greeting and stared at me morosely, inally remarking that he had ‘heard of me’. I was a little nettled and asked him to accompany me for a moment. “I showed him one of the most important monuments in the entire collection, so ridiculously labeled that it was evident those who had installed it knew nothing about it. Budge himself now showed that he was ignorant of it. With the temerity of youth, I followed it up with one similar instance after another. It was embarrassing to watch the gentleman’s manner change under this barrage. He exuded attention and solicitude, pled the onerous duties of his oice—the labels were old, put on before his time, etc. etc.” 4 Many museum curators would sympathise with Budge’s reactions here. he soggy-faced gentleman had made a suitable marriage in 1883 to Dora Emerson, a clergyman’s daughter, and the two remained together, content so far as is known, until Lady Budge died in 1926; she had helped with jobs like indexing his books, and it would be interesting to read her private letters if any still exist. It is notable that, in a society nominally run by Englishmen educated at private single-sex 445 schools, Budge seems to have been more comfortable in mixed company than was perhaps normal. Edith Nesbit was among the intellectuals who approved of him. here is a very mildly lirtatious tone even in some of his oicial correspondence: in 1904 he once addresses Lady Meux, whom he had known since 1892, as “Dear Miladi”,5 clearly alluding to some shared joke. Morrell remarks that, when Budge and Lady Meux quarreled in 1905-6, “if one did not know, or suspect otherwise, the two letters read in part almost like what might be expected had two lovers fallen out.” 6 Lady Meux’s earlier letters to Budge, in which she often asks for his help or advice but includes messages to his wife such as “with love to both”, 7 do not suggest impropriety. he same is true of the correspondence with Lady Stanhope, studied by Ismail who remarks on Budge’s predilection for the company of titled ladies. Morrell collected several examples of Budge’s female friendships when he was a widower. All this merely conirms that he had personal charm. So it is not surprising that the well-behaved respectful industrious youth, with his unusual linguistic interests and regular church attendance, deeply impressed several distinguished men whom he had managed to meet by the age of twenty. Mindful of George Smith, the lowly printer who had become an Assyriologist and in 1872 discovered an Assyrian version of the Flood story on a clay tablet inscribed in the cuneiform script, they hoped that Budge too might turn out to be a towering genius, himself rescued from obscurity by their public-spirited patronage. When he failed to gain a post for which he had applied at the British Museum in 1878, they subscribed to send him to Cambridge, but his performance was good rather than outstanding, and they were disappointed. He was still a remarkable young man, however, and their support gained him a Museum post in 1883. here Budge met and apparently impressed Edward Bond, Principal Librarian and Director, the most powerful person in the Museum apart from the Trustees who formed its governing body without involvement in day-to-day administration. He also met Edward Maunde hompson, who was to succeed Bond in 1888. While hompson came of a very diferent background, from a family of Jamaican planters, he too had been obliged to struggle to establish his position in life, and will have sympathised with Budge’s eforts to better himself. he two became staunch allies; it was perhaps to avoid any misplaced claim of nepotism, if not merely to avoid enquiry, that about this time Budge ceased to use “hompson”, inherited from his grandmother, as a middle name. Other people who were close to Budge on his early visits to the Museum, or when he was irst employed there, held a range of views about his personality and abilities. Samuel Birch, who was Keeper of the Department until his death in December 1885, had helped the youthful Budge with access to publications, but concluded that he was not as brilliant as once hoped. In 1878 Birch had preferred heophilus Pinches, who was to develop into a ine Assyriologist. When Birch did agree to employ Budge in 1883, he did so without enthusiasm, for want of a better candidate: “All I can say about Mr Budge is that he appears to me he will do for the vacant Assistantship and that at present he is the only person with whom I am acquainted not a foreigner who is suitable for the appointment.” 8 Once Budge was appointed, however, his sheer 446 capacity for work must have told in his favour, as he was engaged in helping rearrange the galleries. When some diiculty arose between him and Pinches over work on Assyrian texts, Budge was instructed to concentrate on Egyptian material, which widened his knowledge and will also have been helpful to Birch. For about four months, between Birch’s death and the arrival in May 1886 of Peter Renouf who became the next Keeper, Pinches and Budge were the only academics left in the Department, which was oicially run by Keepers of other Departments. One of these was the inluential Wollaston Franks, of whom Budge wrote, long afterwards, that “in 1886 and later he proved himself a good friend to me.” 9. It seems likely that, since Pinches was primarily interested in cuneiform tablets, the interregnum gave Budge the chance to distinguish himself in Franks’ eyes, and that he showed himself active and enterprising. He established himself well enough in the good graces of the authorities to be sent abroad, in November 1886, to represent the Museum. For him this was a transformation: during four long and diicult expeditions to Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in 1886-91, Budge was no longer a junior oicial of low status but, virtually, an independent man of means and collector of antiquities, surrounded by respectful natives. He grasped the opportunity with both hands, just as the young Layard had when sent to excavate Nimrud. Highly successful and growing in conidence and esteem, Budge was promoted on Renouf ’s retirement, becoming Acting Keeper in 1892 and in 1894 Keeper of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. Once he was settled in this senior post, his upward trajectory through English society became unstoppable, he grew prosperous, and he acquired a wide circle of admirers and acquaintances. He also acquired correspondents. he Museum regularly received enquiries from all manner of men and women, and from 1893 on, soon after he took charge, there survive hundreds of tissue-paper carbon copies of Budge’s conscientious letters about Egyptian, Assyrian and other miscellaneous matters. hey are written until March 1899 and sometimes thereafter in his own distinctive upright hand; many answers received by him are from satisied customers. Two academic Assistants, however, who worked with Budge before he became Keeper, were impervious to his charm. he opinion held by Pinches may readily be deduced from the fact that Budge had him dismissed in 1900; the two were chalk and cheese. Basil Evetts, later a leading expert on Coptic Egypt, was in the Department during 1887-91; he has a walk-on part, unnamed, in one of Budge’s books, where he is said to have failed to complete some copies of diicult cuneiform tablets.10 When Budge’s promotion to the Keepership appeared imminent at the end of 1891, Evetts resigned “because the work has a bad efect upon my health!” 11 An earlier letter from Evetts had warned hompson and the Trustees to be careful about whom they should promote.12 It is understandable, given Civil Service conventions, that hompson dismissed the advice as unacceptable impudence, but it is remarkable that Evetts should have decided to give it. Something made the prospect of becoming Budge’s subordinate intolerable. Renouf, Keeper of the Department from May 1886 to the end of 1891, was forthright. In 1893, in court, when Budge was being sued for libel and slander by the 447 Museum’s former agent, Hormuzd Rassam, Renouf was to say that he himself had originally had great conidence in Budge; this referred to the vigorous and productive performance of his duties both inside the Museum since 1886 and in the course of his missions abroad. Now, however, Renouf regarded Budge’s statements “as the utterances of a cowardly, mendacious and dishonourable scoundrel”.13 Other terms, “plagiarist”, “charlatan”, and someone who “would never rise above mediocrity”, appear in Renouf ’s private correspondence:14 Budge, if appointed Keeper, “would make the Museum unapproachable to scholars whom he disliked. And he dislikes all.” It would be better to have a “gentleman.” Renouf ‘s language partly relects his annoyance that new regulations prevented him from keeping his post after the age of 70. He felt that Budge was not intellectually qualiied to be his successor. he consensus among modern scholars is that Budge was indeed mediocre in this respect, hence perhaps the appearance of the term “charlatan”. he term “plagiarist” could have referred back to Budge’s legitimate completion of someone else’s book on Esarhaddon, but it also suggests a habitual undue reliance on the work of others. his language is just within the limits of academic rancour, but Renouf ’s use of the term “gentleman” is not only a reminder of Budge’s social background but also a warning. he terms “cowardly” and “dishonourable scoundrel” imply some kind of surreptitious villainy, and it seems unlikely that the term “mendacious” was intended to refer only to the matter at issue in Rassam’s lawsuit. Renouf also claimed that accusations he made against Budge could have been conirmed by someone who was not in London at the time of the court case;15 he may have been thinking of Evetts. What Renouf failed to appreciate is that all candidates for any post are liable to have faults, and that his own personal opinion of Budge did not necessarily disqualify the latter from being, as Ismail has observed, an efective head of department with varied responsibilities in a large and complicated organisation. An oicial did not have to be friends with everyone, so long as he was trying to act in the best interests of the Museum. So Budge was a suitable candidate. He had, by whatever means, already demonstrated practical skills and the ability to negotiate. He was a shrewd bargainer with an eye for quality, and had obtained for the Museum many beautiful, fascinating, impressive or instructive pieces for display, and many unique historical records for research, mainly from Egypt and Ottoman Iraq. He had shown that he was familiar with the ancient and modern cultures and languages of both areas. He was contributing substantially to the Museum’s status as a world centre of art, education and scholarship. Once appointed Keeper, he would indeed continue to act, as the following examples indicate, in a highly efective if somewhat contradictory fashion. As Keeper, Budge became responsible himself for acquiring objects, or rather for recommending their acquisition to the Trustees. He continued the vigorous policy of acquisition by purchase, which he had already practised on his expeditions abroad. His involvement with the antiquities dealers from whom he bought is often criticised. Already by 1881 the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie was lamenting the “wanton and destructive native diggings” 16 that provided antiquities for sale, and was 448 describing his own more moderate hope of obtaining oicial permission from the Egyptian authorities to export, for presentation to the Museum, a series of potsherds, classiied by date and type, from stratiied archaeological deposits. Yet Budge’s views on purchase were no diferent from those of other museum representatives and rich individuals at the time, and his acquisitions constitute a remarkable legacy. How Budge displayed these and existing collections in the Museum galleries is another matter, but the average visitor will not have been aware of the kinds of mistake noticed by Breasted, who was disappointed because the Museum “had always been held before me as the standard of solid reliability, like the Bank of England,” 17 a simile now superannuated but still occasionally heard, as an assurance of reliability, at least as late as the 1950s. Even Breasted’s criticism of the labels in 1895 was tempered by the remark that they were typical of the common level of Egyptological scholarship at that time. Objects were acquired from oicial excavations too. Budge himself always supported excavations at Koyunjik in Iraq, probably in the hope of inding something else as memorable as Smith’s Flood tablet. Also, especially in his later years, he supported other important archaeological projects, but he only really wanted items of obvious value. his may be illustrated by two linked episodes from 1885-6, when he was the promising Assistant in the Department but before he became Keeper. hey concern the Egypt Exploration Fund, founded in 1882, which at the time was distributing material from Petrie’s excavations to the Museum and to other institutions. he Fund’s objects were sometimes temporarily housed at the Museum.18 In 1885, according to Amelia Edwards, outspoken Hon. Secretary of the Fund, “Dr Birch appropriated, and with singular haste registered [i.e. entered in the oicial Museum inventory], the large tablet of Buto, which we never intended to ofer, and never did ofer, to the National Collection, and which was intended for America.”19 he tablet in question seems to be the stela from Tanis now numbered 1054 (1885-11-1, 1). he 1885-11-1 element of this number implies formal acquisition on 1 November 1885, but a fortnight was to elapse before the meeting of 14 November at which the Trustees did formally accept the donation of this and many other items in the 1885-11-1 group,20 which should strictly therefore have been numbered 1885-11-14. While the Edwards letter blames Birch for this preemptive acquisition, in which the Fund reluctantly acquiesced, the original register entry is in Budge’s unmistakable hand.21 We cannot prove whether the decision to appropriate the stela was taken by Birch, who died aged 72 a few weeks later, or by the energetic ungentlemanly 28-year-old Budge, but Budge must be the likely instigator. He always saw the immediate apparent interests of the British Museum as paramount. hen there is an 1886 letter from Renouf, the Keeper, to Edwards. Two drafts of it survive in the Museum, both in Budge’s hand: “I have examined carefully the objects brought to the Museum by Mr Griith, which, I understand, are ofered for presentation to this Department. hey cannot in any way be considered to represent the selection made in my absence, by my Assistant [Budge], for the most important objects chosen by him are omitted, and a vast quantity of pottery and small objects which, from our point of view, are worthless, have been added. Last year, 449 in consequence solely of Dr Birch’s unwillingness to say or do anything unkind, no notice was taken of a similar occurrence. I cannot in any case take upon myself the responsibility of crowding the Museum with such a number of valueless objects, and unless the missing antiquities are sent here, I shall feel it my duty to recommend the Trustees to decline the acceptance of the proposed gift.” 22 Petrie rightly suspected that Budge had drafted this letter, and was insulted to see the hard-won scientiic results of his archaeological research described as “worthless”;23 from then on, relations between the two of them were cold. While there had been some misunderstanding about the “omitted” objects in 1886 and the matter was resolved, and while both episodes theoretically had Budge as accessory rather than protagonist, they herald the adoption of a policy which he consistently maintained when Keeper himself. Whereas Petrie was envisaging the Museum as a home for both spectacular and mundane objects, with research and educational facilities, Budge was insisting on its complementary or even competing function as a home for spectacular objects which also happened to conduct or facilitate research and education. He was determined that the Museum should only accommodate the less eye-catching kinds of reference material if it could get enough ine things to compensate. Once objects are in a Museum, they should be organised. Here Budge, on becoming Keeper, inherited a problem on the Assyrian side, because basic housekeeping had been neglected. Since the 1840s, the archaeological excavations of Henry Layard, Rassam and others in Assyria and Babylonia had illed the Department with sculptures and other treasures, but had also swamped it with masses of things which were broken or vulnerable, notably fragments of clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform, carved ivory furniture and bronze vessels.24 Such things deserved catalogues and conservation, at the very least they needed numbering and safe tidy storage, but there were never enough staf available to do the work, and there was always a huge backlog. he Trustees were aware of the problem, and they worried. Budge solved it, at least so far as many clay tablets were concerned, by declaring that they were worthless “waste fragments” which could be packed away in boxes:25 out of sight, out of mind, like Petrie’s potsherds, some of which resided for a long time in a large chest in a basement corridor. he tablet fragments, which were far from worthless, then re-emerged gradually, through the twentieth century, as did the ivories, bronzes, potsherds and other bits and pieces, when later curators found time to attend to them. A bound volume, containing paper copies of cuneiform inscriptions made by Layard in Iraq, ofers another small-scale demonstration of the kind of curatorship practised by Budge or on his instructions.26 What happened is that originally there had been at least four ield notebooks, provided by Layard but sadly dismembered long before Budge joined the Museum; the remnants (or at least the complete pages, since many are lost,) were then bound together in a single volume; but pages from the diferent notebooks are mixed together, some in irrational sequences, so that inscriptions are split and very troublesome to reconstruct. A note in Budge’s hand at the beginning of the volume ascribes the copies with surprising diidence to “Sir H. Layard(?)”. Budge was apparently involved both in the praiseworthy salvage and 450 binding of the copies, or at any rate of those that were tolerably well preserved, and in the irritating failure to arrange them sensibly. Budge may also have been responsible for introducing and did cheerfully promote a system of assigning Assyrian objects two inventory numbers rather than one, a system already used for Egyptian objects. It is diicult to understate the degree of academic and bureaucratic muddle caused over the years by this system of double numbers, which was liable to disguise provenance and historical associations. In 1922, just before he retired, Budge even introduced, in the inventory entries for a few of the objects coniscated from a German excavation (1922-8-12), a lazy variant of the double-number system that was even more confusing. In the short term, however, in the 1890s, the change may well have made storage and audit of the main collections much simpler, and in some ways it is still convenient. Such supericial but plausible reforms enabled Budge to start his Keepership with a clean sheet. He could report that the collections in his care were being brought into good order, and he could acquire plenty more material as if his staf had nothing else to record, though he always retained a low opinion of fragments. hroughout his time as Keeper, Budge was also producing books, both popular and specialized. He was not the irst Museum academic to address a wide public, and some books bear his name merely because he was Keeper, but he was exceptionally proliic. He covered a range of themes, including ancient Egyptian mummies, amulets and the Book of the Dead, which were already fashionable and which he made even more exciting. His relaxed and conident style has ensured that there is still a genuine demand for some of his books, which continue to be reprinted. For a more select readership he provided accessible translations and editions of rare manuscripts in obscure languages, Coptic, Syriac and Ethiopic; some of these also remain in use. However, although scholars speak with respect of The Egyptian Sudan which was a pioneering account of a little-known country, most of his books were by the standards of the time carelessly written and unreliable, “illed with egregious errors” according to Breasted.27 Not all Budge’s ideas and cross-cultural references are necessarily mistaken, but he is inclined to adduce evidence that cannot be checked: modern students are severely warned against citing him as an authority. A letter from Budge, apparently written to someone who had ofered to help revise his work, puts his case cogently. “I prepare my texts as well as I can, and I put the best work into them of which I am capable, and that is all that anyone can do. If the work is not done to the liking and satisfaction of other people, it is a very simple matter to remedy their trouble. Let them do the work over again. All pioneer work must be imperfect, and my aim, or rather the aim of the Trustees of this Museum, is to make the material available as soon as possible. If I took ive years per volume instead of one, I would produce a much more elaborate book, but that is not my instructions, and as I am a servant of the Trustees and not an irresponsible person or archaeological free lance, I have to do as I am told.” 28. He must have recognised that he lacked patience for the niceties of detailed argumentation, and seldom contributed to academic journals. He gave a 451 more diplomatic explanation for not writing reviews of books: “ if one expresses one’s opinion, it brings one into conlict with the author.” 29 Budge also promoted the printing of ancient texts in his Department through photolithography rather than typesetting; this technical development helped accelerate publication and improve quality. he usefulness of the work was diminished by his conviction that “the duty of the copyist is not to make a facsimile of the tablet which he is copying ..., but to supply the student with a copy of the text which he can read,” as if the modern copyist knew better than the ancient scribe how to shape and inscribe a tablet.30 his relects Budge’s characteristic, and sometimes but not always ill-judged, decisiveness and disregard for accuracy. he selfsame characteristic could have constructive results. In 1887 there was a debate over what should be done about the K Collection, the Department’s single most important group of cuneiform tablets, then thought to number some 8000 pieces but in fact over 20,000, which were being requested repeatedly by outside scholars. A report drafted in Budge’s hand and presumably expressing his opinion supported the idea that a catalogue should be published, with brief entries for each tablet, in order to facilitate the identiication and availability of whichever ones were wanted; Pinches, in contrast, thought that such a catalogue would be premature, because it was bound to include many mistakes which would soon be recognised because research was progressing rapidly, and which would then need rectiication.31 Budge’s argument, oddly enough, accords with that put forward by Petrie in 1886, in favour of the immediate publication of archaeological inds: “So long as enough study is given to the materials to present them in an intelligible and useful form, it is better to let them be at the disposal of all students, without waiting for a inal summing up at the close of the excavations.” 32 Budge’s opinion on the K Collection prevailed, the necessary work began and was continued after he became Keeper, and the resultant catalogue in several volumes by Carl Bezold and others has long been regarded despite some mistakes as an enormously valuable scholarly tool. It would have been more valuable more quickly if Budge had not been prejudiced against the smaller fragments; some of these had to wait until the appearance of the latest supplement of the catalogue, in 1992, before they were mentioned in print. Here, however, Budge and Pinches might for once have agreed: the 1992 volume, by Wilfred Lambert, an expert willing to consult other experts, incorporates many brilliant identiications of small pieces, and could not have been written to the same standard a century earlier. 33 Budge succeeded in gradually expanding the number of junior academics or Assistants in his Department. He chose carefully, beginning with Leonard King, his right-hand-man from 1893 onwards. Letters exchanged between Budge and his juniors, and among them, suggest for the most part strong mutual respect and afection. He keenly encouraged his young men to work as hard as he did, studying and publishing the collections, and familiarising themselves by travel with the realities of the East. At the same time, as predicted by Renouf, and although there were enormous amounts of work to be done, Budge often discouraged or jealously prevented independent and foreign scholars from working on Museum material, 452 however well qualiied they were. his above all is the factor that has been most destructive of Budge’s reputation in the world of international scholarship and has excited most contempt, because he might thereby be barring the inest specialists from the inest collection, efectively wasting their unique expertise and acting as jailer rather than guardian of knowledge. It was a perverse stance to adopt, at an institution founded on Enlightenment values and intended to promote the universal advancement of scientiic knowledge, where in Budge’s own words “the aim of the Trustees ... is to make the material available as soon as possible.” 34 Budge could have responded that he would not be the last museum curator to behave like this; similar practices are common in many museums today. He might have added that foreigners at least should appreciate that money to pay for the British Museum and its acquisitions mostly came from the British government.35 A pleasant young lady like Mary Montgomery, the U.S. Assyriologist, could charm her way past the obstacles,36 but more typical is Budge’s letter to Archibald Paterson on 11 December 1906, with regard to some excavation drawings made over 50 years earlier, “I may as well say at once that you cannot reproduce any of them”.37 here was a “Black Book” of important items that outsiders were not to see. On one occasion the Egyptologist Alan Gardiner visited the Department in Budge’s absence, and was allowed to study a papyrus manuscript that had already been published. By the time he returned the next day, however, the curator in charge had discovered that the manuscript was listed in the Black Book, and he declined to issue it again. In apologising to Budge for the oversight, the curator noted that Gardiner could not have got much out of his single day’s access, as he had only looked at the irst one or two sheets. On another occasion, Gardiner wrote: “As to the Pap. Harris 500, I venture to place a few considerations before you. Not only has this text been published by Prof. Maspero, but a few years ago Prof. Max Müller was permitted to study it and to publish photographs of the verso. I gather in your letter that it is not to be included in the volume now under preparation by the Trustees. May I inquire why the same facilities as were given to Prof. Max Müller are not extended to me? My wish was to publish a new transcript of the text, without a facsimile. he conditional permission which your letter gives is therefore useless to me. Cannot the Trustees see their way to remove their condition?” 38 Receiving no answer, Gardiner sent another copy of his letter by registered post eight days later. here are notes on the back of one of Gardiner’s letters in Budge’s hand, apparently conirming the restrictions on access. Meanwhile Gardiner was informed that “Dr Budge is at present away on vacation, but will be returning in about three weeks time.” 39 Budge’s own eventual response, if he ever put it on paper, does not seem to be preserved in the Departmental archives. It seems that hompson and Budge had agreed on the principle that Departmental staf should generally have a jus primae noctis, and that, on the whole, outsiders were only to inspect and collate items that had already been published or at least catalogued. As in Gardiner’s case, Budge usually insisted that he himself had to authorise or refuse whatever it was that outsiders applied to do. Letters written to him on holiday, from whosoever was temporarily in charge, suggest that there was seldom much urgency in complying with applications, and that staf members, who anyway tended 453 to regard foreigners as somewhat comical, enjoyed the power of procrastination. he Royal Mail moved fast then, with several deliveries of post a day in some places, but the procedure must have seemed frivolous if not spiteful or malign not only to the young Alan Gardiner but also to someone like Mark Lidzbarski, eminent author of the 500-page-long Handbuch der Nordsemitischen Epigraphik (Weimar, 1898), who “came today and asked to be allowed to have out and copy all the Mandaic bowls for publication. I told him that you were the only person to give permission. He wanted one or two to go on with but I said he must wait until I heard from you. hey are all published, are they not? ... he Rev. Arthur Deimel, S.J., ... wanted to collate some texts published in Cun. Txts, so I told him he must apply to the Director for a ticket, enclosing a recommendation.” 40 Outsiders were sometimes seen peering through the glass into boxes or cases of objects, trying to check what was inside them.41 his kind of dog-in-the-manger attitude, while quietly defying the Trustees’ oicial policy of open access, hampering serious research, and infuriating outsiders with limited time and money, ensured that Budge and his staf retained control over the collections and could enjoy obsequious letters and public respect from those who hoped to study them. It will have helped bolster Departmental team-spirit, solidarity and morale, especially since the Assistants had arrived almost straight from university, and had at irst no academic standing of their own. Above all, intangibly but very importantly, Budge’s lair for public relations, manifested through his acquisitions, his books and his range of acquaintance, must have helped maintain a widespread feeling, in London society and in oicial circles, that the Museum was an institution that deserved gifts, bequests and inancial support. Pinches, the painstaking scholar who had joined the Museum before Budge and had at one stage hoped to be Keeper, could never have made this impression. here are both positive and negative aspects to Budge’s performance as Keeper, but was it undermined by mendacity? Apparently not. When bamboozling local oicials abroad, as triumphantly described in his own books,42 Budge could well have justiied himself in the words of Sir Henry Wotton: “an ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.” But Budge was duplicitous at home with equal impunity. I myself encountered this phenomenon when checking records in what had been his Department of the Museum. I arrived with an open mind, but gradually, imperceptibly, and without keeping any systematic note of the process, I came to mistrust Budge and to suspect that, if a signiicant or even a minor record were written in his hand, or appeared in one of his books, I should seek corroboration before believing it. It seemed that most of the things he wrote were correct, but that some were wrong; that most of the errors were merely mistakes, resulting from careless haste and imprecision, but that some were deliberate; most of these last were clever distortions with a basis in truth, usually malicious even if several of them were essentially jokes. Yet Budge was skilful at covering his tracks within the Museum, just as happened with the details of his early personal life: hence the exaggerations, revealed by Morrell,43 over the extent to which Budge as a young man enjoyed the patronage of 454 the Prime Minister, William Gladstone. When there are uncertainties over events in which Budge was or may have been involved, the original documentation tends to be more opaque and less abundant than might have been expected. Sometimes it seems, though it may be impossible to prove, that the relevant papers were never bound in the proper place in the archival volume, or that they have mysteriously disappeared. So the evidence for mendacity tends to be circumstantial and cumulative, rather than clearcut. A minor but typical example of one of his techniques is found in an oicial report to the Trustees about a shipment of antiquities from the German excavations at Ashur in northern Iraq, which ended in 1914. he boxes had been on their way to Berlin, but were still in Iraq when war broke out; they were eventually captured by the British, sent to the Museum, and opened for inspection. Budge stated as follows: “Reports reached me during the war that the Germans were digging at Koyunjik, Nabi Yunis and Sharif-Khan [sites in and near Nineveh which the Museum regarded as its own preserve]. ... he contents of the boxes prove the truth of these reports, for in them are antiquities of Ashurbanipal.” A more detailed classiication follows: “Group 3” is described as “Objects from Koyunjik (Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal)”, speciically “gate-socket of Esarhaddon” and “limestone slab with inscription of Ashur-ban-apli, from Koyunjik”.44 Although it is not true that antiquities of Ashurbanipal have only been found at the three sites named, the shipment did indeed contain one with an inscription showing that it came from Koyunjik. Now numbered 115698 (1922-8-12, 75), it is a paving stone of a common type; the Museum already possessed duplicates. Unless it was taken to Ashur in antiquity and the Germans excavated it there, which is not impossible, they had probably bought it in Mosul. he gate-socket of Esarhaddon, now numbered 115703 (1922-8-12, 173), was inscribed for a palace at Tarbisu, which was the ancient name of Sharif-Khan. It was excavated at Ashur and has an Ashur excavation number (Ass 5286),45 and had presumably been taken there from Sharif-Khan in antiquity because it is made of a hard-wearing basalt, suitable for use as a gate-socket. Budge was not to know this, and could have supposed that it too had been bought in Mosul. he presence of these two objects, in a shipment of hundreds of items clearly or presumably from Ashur and its vicinity, does not begin to constitute evidence for unoicial German excavations at Nineveh and SharifKhan. It looks as if Budge got his story not from “reports” that somehow reached him during the war but from the inscriptions on the stones. Christopher Walker, who had easy access to all the known records, studied Budge’s reliability on another issue. He tried to ascertain the origin of some of the large numbers of cuneiform tablets acquired during Budge’s visits to Iraq in 1888-91. So he compared Budge’s original reports and other documentation with his much later published accounts. Budge had been dispatched to Iraq to discover why tablets were reaching the market from sites, excavated by Rassam for the Museum, which the Museum was still paying to guard. In 1888, on arrival, Budge purchased tablets which were reportedly from one of these sites, but they were mostly 1000 years earlier than the Rassam material. herefore, as Walker remarks, “it is curious that Budge should 455 claim ...: ‘I saw for myself and was irmly convinced that more than nine-tenths of the tablets came from sites which the Trustees had spent some thousands of pounds excavating. Moreover, I saw that they belonged to the same sets as the tablets in the British Museum.’” Walker’s conclusions were clear, e.g.: “It will be readily apparent that the igures given by these three sources are fully reconcilable neither with each other nor with the Museum’s actual collection... here are obvious discrepancies... his is the complete account of the 1891 mission given in The Rise and Progress of Assyriology; it could hardly be more inconsistent with the account given in By Nile and Tigris”.46 Budge’s two books were being written some 30 years or more after his work in Iraq, which would explain lapses of memory, as people without any intention to deceive are liable to merge and amend distant recollections. Even so Budge, had he been bothered to do so, could have checked his original reports. he diferences between the accounts in the two books suggest that his priority here was not to tell the truth but to tell good stories. Walker adds an apposite quotation from the archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley. “here was a Keeper of the Egyptian Department in the British Museum years ago who always maintained that he would far sooner buy an object than get it from an excavation, ‘Because,’ he said, ‘if it comes from an excavation, the excavator gives me all sorts of information about it, information about its level and its date and its history and so on, which isn’t very interesting. Whereas if I buy it from a dealer I can use my own imagination and say what it really is. So, I’d far sooner buy.’ ” 47 Woolley was undoubtedly referring to Budge, and the words which he ascribed to him, combined with the results of Walker’s study and other observations, raise the question whether, at any rate by the 1920s, Budge was even aware of a distinction between true and false. here is a relevant passage near the start of The Rise and Progress of Assyriology. he purpose of the book, according to Budge, was partly to correct statements made by authors “some of whom have allowed the bias of nationality to inluence their judgement”, and to demonstrate instead that “the science of Assyriology was founded by Englishmen, and developed entirely by the Trustees of the British Museum and their staf. he English built the main ediice of Assyriology, and other nations constructed the outlying buildings.” 48 hese irreconcilable passages face each other on opposite pages, too close for comfort. It is as if Budge, after all, is not so much lying as cultivating alternative opinions in diferent compartments of his brain at one and the same time, and exposing them in print without any attempt at discrimination. Here, among a myriad examples from this strange book, is his mischievous description of what happened to a raftload of Assyrian stone sculptures, belonging to the French, which were being loated down the Tigris in 1855. he raft “got out of control ..., and striking a stony projection on the left bank, heeled over. he French oicials in charge of the antiquities had no knowledge of the way in which rafts made of poles supported on inlated skins of goats should be handled in such cases, and insisted on trying to right the raft in their own way. he result was that the raft broke in pieces under the weight of the bas-reliefs, which had been moved to the river side of it; and everything on it fell into the river, and settled down in the mud, where the 456 sculptures now are.” 49 While it is true that sculptures on rafts were lost at this time, the circumstances described by Budge, with incompetent Frenchmen panicking in accordance with the classic English stereotype of how the French behave in a crisis, are fantasy. Whether Budge got this story from his own imagination or from the conversation of English sailors stationed on the Tigris, for whom the incident must have been a perennial talking-point, he should have consulted the sober account of the same event published in French a few years earlier.50 He is sterner on the Germans. “Experience shows that it is only when the English or French scholar has copied and printed a text, and added a translation of it and pointed out, if not explained, the philological diiculties in it, that the German Assyriologists consider it to be in a it state for them to work at. ... German Assyriologists were never good copyists.” 51 He may have been embarrassed by the element of truth in the statement he ascribes to one foreign Assyriologist “You have no one here who can read them [the tablets]; for George Smith is dead.” 52 Budge also records that the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch “stated that he had heard in Russell Square a supernatural voice which assured him that he was to be George Smith’s successor.” 53 hat is plain nonsense, but one can easily imagine the genesis of a legend like this, such as Delitzsch telling Budge in the Museum how that very morning, in crossing Russell Square on his way from his hotel, he had been struck by some idea about one of the texts edited by Smith. Yet Budge’s fabrications in this volume are interwoven with credible testimonies; his account of a scholar damaging tablets by attempting to clean them with his penknife must refer to Felix Peiser’s visit in 1894, although according to the original reports Peiser was only using his pen or a nib.54 So it is often diicult to know what to think. If Budge’s attitude to truth was ambivalent, his behaviour towards people who crossed him, or whom he feared, was liable to become unambiguous and vindictive, but he remained a master at covering his tracks. Four of his many quarrels were those that pitted him against Rassam, Pinches, Alfred Jarvis and Lady Meux. While the perspective of time ensures that most of the questions at issue now seem trivial, they were signiicant to the individuals involved, and to their families and friends. Budge’s quarrel with Rassam lasted years and had many ramiications. It became public knowledge after Budge reported to the Museum that Rassam, in excavating some sites in Iraq on behalf of the Museum, had appointed his own relatives as foremen, and that these men had been selling some of the best cuneiform tablets from the excavations. In reality the men were acquaintances rather than relatives, and the tablets for sale had not necessarily been excavated during Rassam’s time in the ield. Budge had jumped too quickly to the wrong conclusion. Budge repeated his accusation to Layard, who regarded Rassam as “one of the honestest and most straightforward fellows I ever knew, and one whose great services have never been acknowledged—because he is a “nigger”...”;55 there is a hint here that someone had condemned Rassam for his oriental ancestry, but such an idea might have come more naturally from hompson, with his Jamaican background, than from Budge, who established friendly relations with a nephew, Nimroud Rassam. Hormuzd Rassam was outraged at the suggesion that he or his family had been proiting at Museum 457 expense and that he had only sent inferior fragments to London. He then sued for libel and slander, but the matter was not straightforward since Budge’s reports could have been regarded as conidential. While the jury found in Rassam’s favour, it only awarded him £50 damages rather than the £1000 claimed. he money was recovered for Budge through a public subscription; many contributors were Museum staf, either because they supported Budge or because they thought it prudent to do so. Budge then instituted what Richard Barnett was to call a “damnatio memoriae of both Layard and Rassam,” 56 denigrating their work. Barnett was in a position to know because, besides being the son of Lionel Barnett, Keeper of another Museum Department at the same time as Budge, he was himself interested in Layard and Rassam, investigated the archives concerning them, and worked from 1932 in what had been Budge’s Department, inally becoming Keeper there himself. By deinition, however, the more successful a damnatio memoriae is, the less evidence there will be for its existence, and the evidence in these circumstances will tend to be disguised or evanescent, in the form of casual persistent disparagement or denial of proper acknowledgement. Cyril Gadd, who joined the Museum in 1920, was surely referring to this when he mentions “the detraction which it has become an unworthy commonplace to bestow upon that remarkable pioneer” i.e. upon Layard.57 From Budge himself we have “Layard never professed to have any knowledge of even the simplest forms of the cuneiform characters”,58 and “Dr Birch told me that Layard thought” until 1849 that inscribed clay fragments “were bits of pottery decorated in an unusual manner.”59 In fact Layard’s table of variant forms of the Nimrud “Standard Inscription” contributed to the very decipherment of cuneiform,60 and he knew what he was doing when in 1847 he sent the Museum the irst inscribed clay tablets from his excavations.61 An act of retaliation against Rassam, both crude and subtle, related to his discovery of the famous bronzes known as the Balawat Gates. Descriptions of how Rassam excavated these, in 1878 at a mound near Balawat, survive in his original reports from the ield to the Museum, in two published academic papers, and in a book about his archaeological career for which he found a U.S. publisher. he Gates also feature in two or three papers by Pinches. All these publications appeared before 1900,62 and modern excavations at the site have conirmed their accuracy. Rassam died in 1910. A new publication of the Gates was then prepared, on behalf of the Museum, by King. his book appeared in 1915, and Budge wrote a preface for it, in which he claimed that Rassam had merely relied on “the statements of the natives” for the provenance of the Gates.63 Budge asserted that he and King had both visited Balawat and independently concluded that for various reasons the mound could not possibly have produced such material. In other words, Budge crudely denies the reliability of Rassam’s reports about Balawat, and subtly by implication impugns the reliability of all his other reports too. he attack certainly had some success. It could easily be exposed by anyone with access to the early publications or to the site itself, but there were few such people, and the word of the celebrated Keeper of a British Museum Department was not to be taken lightly. Since Budge’s preface does not cite the early publications, it could be argued that he was unaware of them and was simply making another mistake. Later, in The Rise 458 and Progress of Assyriology, Budge does cite the account in Rassam’s book, juxtaposing it with his own version, as if both were equally valid.64 Pinches was the Assyriologist who in 1878 had obtained the Museum post coveted by Budge. In the 1880s Budge, appointed to the Museum primarily to help Pinches with Assyrian texts, was soon shifted sideways to work on Egyptian; the two had diiculty working together. Pinches was later accused of ofences such as hiding cuneiform tablets in his room, to prevent other scholars from looking at them, and of destroying inventory numbers. Since part of his job was to bring order into the tablet collections, which were very confused at the time,65 it would be not unnatural if like many scholars he had been unsure exactly what was in his oice at any one moment, but he denied the speciic accusations. here seems no reason to doubt his integrity, which leaves the matter open, but his reputation sufered. It is not surprising that Budge was promoted over his head in 1892. Over the next nine years, including 1893 when Pinches was a witness in Rassam’s lawsuit against Budge, the latter bullied him persistently. he process is described in unpublished letters and diaries, where Budge has the nickname “khanzir”, the Arabic for pig.66 A petty example, ofering a taste of their relationship, is that Pinches was required to apply to Budge in writing for permission to remove an object from its case in order to answer a public enquiry about it.67 All other considerations apart, it is plain that the Department could not comfortably hold both Budge and Pinches, with one subordinate to the other. Pinches was a perfectionist, constantly checking and rechecking, the very antithesis of Budge who “sufered all his life from a desire to get things done: he was in too great a hurry to inish.”68 Budge calculated that copies of cuneiform tablets made by Pinches were six times as expensive as those of a part-time worker, George Bertin, and efectively not worth what the Museum was paying for them. In 1900 the Trustees dismissed Pinches, theoretically because of Budge’s criticisms but evidently, in fact, because they recognised that he and Budge were incompatible. Somewhat to the bewilderment of the Treasury, which was responsible for payments, the Trustees airmed that “Mr Pinches’ ineiciency is not the result of causes within his own control,”69 and he kept his entitlement to the appropriate government pension. He was allowed to visit the Museum as an outside scholar, copying cuneiform tablets on his own account, and soon afterwards became a university lecturer. Some 25 years later, Budge acknowledged that his criticisms of the cuneiform copies had been groundless: by then he was arguing that English scholars were better than German ones, and so he lavished praise on Pinches, listing many of his publications and placing special emphasis on the excellence of his copies of diicult texts.70 In the 1980s the Museum began to publish Pinches’ copies, which are now highly regarded. Jarvis was less fortunate.71 In 1900 he was probably the longest-serving member of the Departmental staf, an “Attendant” with practical and clerical duties. He had watched everything that happened there since about 1870, and will have been a reminder of the past. Budge decided that he should be retired when he reached the age of 60 in 1901, instead of 65 as was then common. Jarvis, not wishing to retire, appealed to Lord Avebury, a Trustee, who was inclined to back him. Budge, however, 459 wrote a letter to Avebury claiming that Jarvis, besides showing his age (“his work has lost vigour”), was implicated in criticisms of hompson and the management of the Museum then appearing in a journal called the Court Circular, whose latest issue mentioned Jarvis and included information “which he alone could have supplied.” 72 Jarvis later saw the Museum copy of Budge’s letter, and wrote privately to Budge, averring that the accusations were “a tissue of falsehoods, and I have asked” (plainly in another letter to Avebury) “for a full and independent enquiry into the matter.” 73 hereupon the question at issue somehow became, not whether Budge was lying, but whether Jarvis had been at fault in looking at the ile that contained the copy of Budge’s letter, and in “copying and making use” of it.74 Jarvis maintained that he did have speciic permission to see the ile, for another purpose, but King testiied that Jarvis had been acting suspiciously in looking at oicial documents while Budge was away. Jarvis was duly retired, with his modest pension docked by 10% as a punishment for “grave misconduct.”75 Seven years later Pinches sent condolences to the Jarvis family on Alfred’s death, and his son replied that his father’s “sympathy with you in the dark hour of trouble was none the less real that circumstances compelled it to be unspoken, though at the time he, we, little thought that he, too, would go through the same hard mill.” 76 he decision to reduce Jarvis’ pension had not, of course, been taken by Budge. He was somewhere in the background with clean hands. he last of these quarrels is an odd one, in which Budge may have met his match. Lady Meux was a vivacious and eccentric woman who had risen in society by her own wits, marrying money. For over ten years she subsidised Budge for various purposes, and paid for his publication both of her ine Egyptian collection, which he had helped her select and display, 77 and of some superb Ethiopian manuscripts that had been part of the loot taken from Magdala in 1868. In 1905-6 Budge and Lady Meux quarreled, for reasons unknown. His letters demanding payment for his work will have ensured that she regretted her previous muniicence. On her death in December 1910 she bequeathed her Egyptian collection to the Museum, but only on condition that it was kept together, like the great Waddesdon Bequest of 1898. Budge then had a frustrating choice: he certainly wanted some of the objects, but if he recommended acceptance, he would have to ind special space for all of them and would be constantly reminded of Lady Meux. he bequest was declined, for the sound reason that conditional bequests can be awkward.78 So she found a successful means of posthumously annoying Budge, but he frustrated her wish to have her name on permanent display. Budge prepared a commercial valuation for both the collection and the manuscripts,79 but it appears that, when the collection was auctioned of in May, the Museum did not bid for anything, and that catalogues of the sale, sent to the Department, were not retained there.80 It is almost as if Budge was instituting another damnatio memoriae, this one for Lady Meux, but the Department may simply have been convulsed because of the sudden death from appendicitis in mid-February 1911 of its young Egyptologist, Philip Scott-Moncrief. Lady Meux’s wishes were also frustrated on a more important issue. In her will she states “I give and bequeath to the Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia or his successor all my Abyssinian manuscripts known as ‘Lady Meux’s Manuscripts’ ”, but actually the 460 manuscripts were sold, 81 passing to William Hearst, the U.S. newspaper magnate. Another clause in the will states that any beneiciary who “shall refuse to conirm this my will if required to do so by my executors” will forfeit any inheritance. One possibility is that the executors were advised that the description of the manuscripts was unclear; however, even if the manuscripts were not widely known as “Lady Meux’s Manuscripts”, this would surely be an immaterial misdescription, as “all my Abyssinian manuscripts” does seem clear enough. Perhaps the executors required the Emperor to “conirm” the will, and failed to receive a reply within a reasonable time. Such a failure would not be surprising, since by 1911 Menelik was incapacitated and his empire was being governed by a regency council, while it seems unlikely that there was then any rapid and satisfactory means of communication between London and Addis Ababa. Yet it is doubtful whether someone who is incapacitated can be regarded in law as refusing to provide conirmation. here may have been a legal ruling on these and related issues in private, but the entire matter, and the identity of those involved in the decisions, merits further clariication.82 One might have expected Budge to be consulted, but I know of no evidence that he was. In contrast, Budge could appear loyal and generous. Someone he met while visiting the Museum as a young man was William Boscawen, who was employed there, but who then fell into bad company, became unreliable in his attendance, and lost his job in 1877. Budge will have watched Boscawen’s downfall with interest, as it created the vacancy in the Department that he himself hoped to ill, though in the event Pinches was preferred. It was Boscawen who began the book on Esarhaddon which Budge improved and inished as his own irst signiicant publication. Boscawen continued to drift downhill over the years, while Budge and others found him minor jobs, and helped him with cash. here was self-interest here, as Boscawen could write favourable reviews of books, but Budge’s account of his talents and decline is sympathetic and touching.83 Budge also extols his own assistant King, who died at home after a long illness in 1919; he had never recovered from inoculations, reportedly forced on him by Budge, against typhoid and other eastern diseases. Budge compensates as best he can. “Want of space makes any adequate discussion of his services to science impossible here; but it is an obvious truth that he published more Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian texts than all the other Assyriologists in the world. And the quality of his work was as good as its quantity was great. He was easily the best and most accurate copyist of his generation; and when foreign scholars appealed to him for his opinion about the reading of a sign, his decision was accepted as that of the inal authority.” 84 his encomium was quoted by a recent historian of the Museum,85 which goes to show how far Budge’s inluence can still reach. It is not one that any modern Assyriologist is likely to give, since King’s reputation is sound but hardly exceptional. Budge’s statement, however, like so many other things he said or wrote, is a misleading exaggeration rather than a lie. It is diicult to refute, and was probably what he chose to believe at the time of writing. A Times obituary of King (25 August 1919), clearly written by Campbell hompson, actually goes out of its way to combine praise of the deceased with implicit criticism of Budge, alluding to some of the reasons 461 for hompson’s own resignation in 1905: “those who worked with him [King] can testify to one of the noble points of his character, always to be found in the unselish masters of craft, that he never forgot his juniors, was ever ready to help them, and was scrupulously careful that they should have the credit for all the work they did.” Budge’s vindictiveness, his mendacity, his obstruction of scholars outside his chosen circle, and his exasperating success in presenting himself as the great scholar he manifestly was not, explain why he is sometimes regarded, particularly in the small world of specialist academics, as “probably the most completely unpleasant person in the history of the ield.” 86 Some might add his cavalier manner of acquiring antiquities, and his singular chauvinism, but in these respects he was a child of his time. His slipshod standards of scholarship have been shared with many more amiable people. On the other side of the coin, and much more public and conspicuous, are his phenomenal industry and skill as a writer, which encouraged widespread interest in ancient history and various branches of anthropology, and his multifarious achievements in winning friends for himself and for the Museum and in promoting its interests. here is a disconcerting parallel to the lifework of his opponent, Petrie, whose biographer wrote: “Nobody in England has excited so much public interest in ancient Egypt, through lectures, exhibitions, popular writings and countless articles in newspapers and encyclopaedias; nobody has trained so many workers for the ield.” 87 Petrie’s scientiic standards and aspirations, however, gained him greater respect among academics, both then and now, and warranted his election in 1902 as a Fellow of the Royal Society in preference to Budge.88 Why did Budge become the man he was? Industrious, determined, brave, charming, impatient, churlish, brutal and indiferent to truth, he is larger than life, with alternative personalities, Jekyll and Hyde. A possible reason why he worked and fought so hard is that his very insecure childhood drove him to strive relentlessly for approval and security. Alex Barakan has pointed out to me that this kind of background can also lead people to extremely egoistic power-hungry amoral behaviour: they may be charismatic but manipulative, unable to feel love or empathy for others, and may trample over anyone they view as in any way a competitor. In his later years, however, when he had won his battles and could aford to be magnanimous, Budge was to be described in an obituary as “one of the kindest, most sympathetic, and most lovable of men.” 89 hese words were written by Campbell hompson, who had been the victim of Budge’s anger in 1905 when his resignation was seen as a betrayal, and who had then been denied access to the very tablets on which he had previously been working. here is an evolution here. Ismail has suggested, not unreasonably, that Budge’s early mentors, and subsequently Maunde hompson, became to some extent substitutes for his missing father. His marriage was childless, but instead he had the Museum. He furnished the Museum with additional antiquities, while jealously protecting it from strangers. He took pride in younger academics who joined the Department under his aegis. hey were his family, his boys; the reprobate Campbell hompson, as one of them, could be forgiven. Budge was unlucky that three of them died before he did. He ultimately chose another as his executor, Sidney Smith, who had by then inherited the Keepership. 462 Budge’s need for approval and security is apparent also in his attitude to animals. Some of his afection sounds conventional: “I sympathise most heartily with you in the matter of poor little Spitz, for though my dog Spot was only a common fox-terrier, I mourn to this day for her, and she loved her master as Spitz loves you.” 90 Yet the redoubtable Keeper also fed both the cats and the pigeons at the Museum. Barnett, who was taken as a boy to visit Budge, remembered not only that he presented him with a sweet from a bag hidden somewhere inside his desk, but that he did so cajolingly, as if wanting his good opinion. Budge continued to write books for the public after his wife died. Letters stretching into a lonely dotage show him anxiously seeking the approval of female friends. here is also an appeal to the Museum authorities not to turn him out of the security of his home on the corner of Bloomsbury Street when the lease expired: “I have given my life to the Museum and have appreciated beyond words the joy of living under its shadow.’ 91 On this occasion he seems to be telling the truth. It is an index of Budge’s versatility that, all these years after his death, he is still a controversial igure, both admired and despised. He was a realist, and the diferences of opinion would probably have amused him. So would the fact that, while his old oice in the Museum is still familiarly known as “Budge’s room”, the term has developed an alternative personality just as he did himself, and is sometimes mistakenly applied to another oice nearby: I occupied it once. Since at one stage Budge was involved with the occult, he would also have been pleased, unless he already knows, that now and then around the Museum there are said to be sightings of Budge’s Ghost. We should watch our step. 463 1357 1358 1359 1360 1361 1362 1363 1364 1365 1366 1367 Budge to Crawshay, BLMCP, Add. MSS 58211: 37. Budge to Crawshay, BLMCP, Add. MSS 58211: 39. Morrell, Budgie, 67-68. Morrell, Budgie, 68. Copy of the will provided by the Christ’s College Library, Cambridge University. Harry Smith, “Sir Wallis Budge and His Fellows,” Christ’s College Magazine 1986: 20. Smith, “Sir Wallis Budge and His Fellows,” 21. Undated newspaper clipping, BLMCP, Add. MSS 58211: 56. "Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, Assyrian and Egyptian Studies," The Times Digital Archive, November 24, 1934, http://0-infotrac.galegroup.com.lib.aucegypt.edu/itw/ infomark/776/695/56713639w16/ purl= rc6_TTDA&dyn =3!cita?sw_aep=aucairo. Neil Asher Silberman, “Petrie’s Head: Eugenics and Near Eastern Archaeology.” hompson, “Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, 1857-1934,” 68. Afterword: Reade: Wallis Budge—for or against 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. I am indebted to Julie Anderson, John Curtis and Irving Finkel for constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also indebted to John Curtis both for descriptions of Budge, going back to Sidney Smith, which he himself heard from Richard Barnett, and for permission to inspect and cite the extensive archives currently housed in the Middle East Department of the British Museum. “Middle East” is the current name of this Department (2010), but it changes from time to time. So does the system for referring to Museum objects by number; the numbers cited below will probably remain comprehensible. Morrell 2002: 6 Campbell hompson 1935: 69. Breasted 2009: 84-5. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Letterbook: Budge to Meux, 30 May 1904. Morrell 2002: 49. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Correspondence: Meux to Budge, 1 May 1905. Cited from Morrell 2002: 26. Budge 1920: I, 73. Budge 1925: 167. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Correspondence: Evetts to Renouf, 18 December 1891. Pinches Archive, courtesy I. L. Finkel. Cited from Morrell 2002: 41. Cited from Usick 2006: 15. Morrell 2002: 41. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Correspondence: Petrie to Birch, 27 January, 11 March 1881. Breasted 2009: 85. Drower 1985: 101. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Correspondence: Edwards to Renouf, 9 May 1886. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Trustees’ Minutes: 14 November 1885. British Museum, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Register: Vol. 3, p. 42. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Correspondence: Renouf to Edwards, 2 November 1886, on pp. 60, 79. A pencil note on p. 60 refers to the Letterbook (containing letters from rather to the Museum) in which the inal copy of Renouf ’s letter to Edwards was recorded. his book, however, and any other Letterbooks dating from the period preceding Budge’s Keepership (as distinct from volumes of Correspondence received and internal Reports), are for some reason absent from the Departmental archives. 497 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. Drower 1985: 105. Reade 2008: 17-20. Cited from Reade 1986: xxvi. Reade 2002: 204. Breasted 2009: 85. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Letterbook: Budge to E. Amélineau, 26 August 1912. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Letterbook: Budge to J. Halévy, 26 August 1912. Budge 1925: 172. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Reports 1887-1889: pp. 48-51. Cited from Drower 1985: 434. Borger 1991: 44-5, for the history of the K Collection. Wilson 2002: 11-4. See Note 28. Budge 1925: 287-8. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Correspondence and Letterbooks, 18991901: s.n. Montgomery. Cited from Reade 1995: 303. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Correspondence: Gardiner to Budge, 9 and 17 September 1908. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Letterbook: King to Gardiner, 18 September 1908. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Correspondence: King to Budge, 10 September 1906. Budge 1925: 286; Morrell 2002: 51. Budge 1920: I, 144-49, 182-4, 236-41, 322, 329; II, 154. Morrell 2002: 17, 25. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Reports 1913-1922: Budge, 30 September 1921. Pedersen 1997: 6. Walker 1988: xiv-xxiv. Woolley 1962: 32-3. Budge 1925: viii-ix. Budge 1925: 86. Pillet 1918: 24-30. Budge 1925: 292. Budge 1925: 286. Budge 1925: 289. Budge 1925: 283-4. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Reports 1894-6: Budge to hompson, 18 September 1894. Cited from Waterield 1963: 478. Cited from Waterield 1963: 487. Gadd 1936: viii. Budge 1925: 90. Budge 1925: 83. Layard 1851: 2-11: he began work on this table in 1846. Layard 1849: II, 124. Listed by John Curtis, in Barnett et al. 2008: 10. In King 1915: 5-6. Budge 1925: 131-2. Reade 1986: xxvi. Pinches Archive, courtesy of I. L. Finkel.. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Correspondence: Pinches to Budge, 10 498 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. February 1896. Campbell hompson 1935: 69. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Trustees’ Minutes: 24 February 1900. Budge 1925: 125-9. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Correspondence, Letterbook, Trustees’ Minutes, 1900-1901: s.n. Avebury, Jarvis, King. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Letterbook, 1893-1895(!): Budge to Avebury, 22 October 1900, on p. 990. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Letterbook, 1899-1901:: Jarvis to Budge, 20 January 1901, copied on p. 890. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Trustees’ Minutes, 1899-1901: hompson to Budge, 24 January 1901, on p. 187. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Trustees’ Minutes: 13 April and 11 May 1901. Pinches Archive, courtesy of I. L. Finkel: A. W. Jarvis to Pinches, 5 October 1907. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Letterbook, 1895-6: Budge to Meux, 22 June 1896, 24 August 1896, and (undated), on p. 999. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Trustees’ Minutes: 11 February 1911. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Letterbook, 1906-13: Budge to Waring and Gillow, 7 February 1911. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Correspondence: Parsons to Budge, 5 May 1911. he sale of the Egyptian collection was conducted by Waring and Gillow at Lady Meux’s country residence, heobalds Park, on 26 May 1911. he Department of Egypt and Sudan has a marked copy of the auction catalogue, but this was acquired much later. Richard Pankhurst, in www.afromet.org/history. I am much indebted to Henry Harrod for checking Lady Meux’s will and for information on how it may have been interpreted and treated. Budge 1925: 120-5. Budge 1925: 178. Wilson 2002: 201. Larsen 1994: 263. Drower 1985: 434. Drower 1985: 341. Campbell hompson 1935: 69. British Museum, Department of the Middle East, Letterbook: Budge to Meux, 4 July 1896. Cited from Morrell 2002: 68. 499