"George Eliot would have felt at home reading this fascinating tour de force...Ismail’s book should one day be a classic."

Geoffrey Clarfield, Academic Questions

Wallis Budge Reviewed!

Geoffrey Clarfield, “From Bastard to Knight of the Realm: The Spectacular Success Story of Sir Ernest Wallis Budge,” Academic Questions (Summer, 2022).

Praise for Wallis Budge: Magic and Mummies in London and Cairo

“Well-researched and packed with learned information, this is a book which walks a tightrope between academia and the world of the layman. As such, it strikes me . . . as an account of which Budge himself would have thoroughly approved. I recommend this book in the most glowing terms and encourage one and all to feast upon it.”

Tahir Shah, author of The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca

This is the next best thing to a memoir because original letters to and from Budge take us back to the late 19th and early 20th century events of a commoner who rose to success in Assyriology and Egyptology through sheer talent and drive...Experiences in Egypt, the Middle East, as well as London during the Great War all the way up to Budge's death overlay a context on this complex man who told stories of a haunted mummy, a spirit experience and a prophetic dream. Not your typical Doctor of Literature. Prepare to be enlightened."

Worldcat Review

“What this book is not: this isn't a watered down bio with every esoteric word defined like in The Millionaire and the Mummies, another recent biography of an early Egyptologist. Magic and Mummies... is a compelling immersion into EA Wallis Budge's genealogy, Middle Eastern expeditions, personal relationships and his controversial professional accomplishments. I knew he attracted readers of the occult with his titles on gods and magic but who knew he was a devout Christian? I had noticed that the title pages in his books list a master's and three doctor degrees, but how could anyone accomplish all that, let alone an underprivileged child? I confess curiosity because of my Egyptophile leanings and a slew of his books, some which transcribe hieroglyphs otherwise unavailable to compare against more modern interpretations; yes, I am mindful that some contemporary scholars deride Budge's work. What is their grudge against him, I wondered.

Reading Magic and Mummies answered many questions via a romp through arcane British archives that unmasked museum politics directly from original letters. Matthew's cultural and historical sketches gave me a sense of Victorian and Edwardian England and Egyptologists' and Assyriologists' views. I was surprised that Budge's voracious ambition encompassed academia, the British Museum and knighthood and yet he honored the love of his life even after both their deaths. These dimensions only begin to detail his larger than life scope--this read delivers right to the end, actually even afterwards as an afterword by a professor tries to revive some old feuds. Anyone who has an opinion about EATW Budge is in for some surprises from an insider's view.”

Amazon Review

About Sir E. A. Wallis Budge

Sir E.A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934) is today mostly known as the author of such books as The Egyptian Book of the Dead (1895), The Gods of Egypt (1904), and An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary (1920). Born an impoverished and illegitimate child in rural Bodmin, Cornwall, Budge bit and clawed his way through the barriers of Victorian and Edwardian class prejudice to a knighthood in 1920. As Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum from 1894 to 1924, Budge's career was entwined with the great issues of his day: the rise of the European Empires in the Middle East and the decline of the Ottoman Empire; the French and British imperialist struggle to control Egypt and its antiquities; the conflicts between Ottoman and European antiquarian interests in the Ottoman province of Iraq; and the British invasion and colonization of the Sudan. Budge was both a proponent of a liberalized Christianity and a believer in the reality of the occult world, and his books were viewed by many as a primary source for alternative religious inspiration. More than an account of the professional conflicts and the controversial smuggling of antiquities for which Budge is now remembered in academic circles, this is an intriguing story of antiquities and empire - and of how one man's life was saturated with both.