The ''Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache'' (''Dictionary of the Egyptian Language''), abbreviated ''Wb'' in bibliographic references, is a large

German-language German ( ) is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a c ...

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...

of the

Egyptian language The Egyptian language or Ancient Egyptian ( ) is a dead language, dead Afroasiatic languages, Afro-Asiatic language that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large Text corpus, corpus of surviving texts which were made acces ...

published between 1926 and 1961 by

Adolf Erman Johann Peter Adolf Erman (; 31 October 185426 June 1937) was a renowned German Egyptologist and lexicographer. Life Born in Berlin, he was the son of Georg Adolf Erman and grandson of Paul Erman and Friedrich Bessel. Educated at Leipzig and Ber ...

and

Hermann Grapow Hermann Grapow (1 September 1885 in Rostock – 24 August 1967 in Berlin) was a German Egyptologist. Works *Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache The ''Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache'' (''Dictionary of the Egyptian Language''), abbrevia ...

. It is a comprehensive work encompassing 3000 years of linguistic history, including

Old Old or OLD may refer to: Places *Old, Baranya, Hungary *Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, Mai ...

, Middle, and

Late Late may refer to: * LATE, an acronym which could stand for: ** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia ** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law ** Local average treatment effect, ...

Egyptian as well as

hieroglyphic Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

inscriptions of the Classical Greco-Roman period. The dictionary contains approximately 16,000

headword In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (plural ''lemmas'' or ''lemmata'') is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of word forms. In English, for example, ''break'', ''breaks'', ''broke'', ''broken'' and ''breaking'' ...

s in five main volumes, two secondary volumes, and five volumes of

primary source In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under ...

references. It is therefore the largest and most complete printed dictionary of Ancient Egyptian in existence. Begun in 1897 as a research project at the

Prussian Academy of Sciences The Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (german: Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften) was an academy established in Berlin, Germany on 11 July 1700, four years after the Prussian Academy of Arts, or "Arts Academy," to which "Berlin ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

, the dictionary is also known as the "Berlin Dictionary". Interrupted by both

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the first volumes were published in 1926 and the final volume released in 1961. Today the dictionary forms the basis of the new ''

Altägyptisches Wörterbuch The ''Altägyptisches Wörterbuch'' (English: ''Ancient Egyptian Dictionary'') is a dictionary of the Egyptian language developed by the Research Centre for Primary Sources of the Ancient World at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Hum ...

'' (''Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian''), a comprehensive update of the original and an online digitization project being conducted under the auspices of the

Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (german: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the States of Germany, German ...

since 1993.''The Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian''
at the BBAW

History

The project was launched in 1897 by

during the reign of

Wilhelm II Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 18594 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (german: Kaiser) and King of Prussia, reigning from 15 June 1888 until his abdication on 9 November 1918. Despite strengthening the German Empir ...

and supported with 120,000

Reichsmark The (; sign: ℛℳ; abbreviation: RM) was the currency of Germany from 1924 until 20 June 1948 in West Germany, where it was replaced with the , and until 23 June 1948 in East Germany, where it was replaced by the East German mark. The Reich ...

. The project was undertaken at scientific Academies in Berlin, Göttingen, Leipzig and Munich elected by a Commission. Although cooperative international work was interrupted by

, the number of archived source texts had grown to 1,374,806 by 1918. Erman and Grapow published an intermediate result of the work as the "Egyptian Concise Dictionary" in 1921. In 1926 the five main volumes, financed by John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. and autographed by the Danish Egyptologist Wolja Erichsen, were published.

References

Literature

* Adolf Erman, Hermann Grapow (ed.): ''Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache''. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1926–1961. * Adolf Erman, Hermann Grapow: ''Das Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache. Zur Geschichte eines großen wissenschaftlichen Unternehmens der Akademie''. Berlin 1953. * Wolfgang Kosack: ''Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache.'' Herausgegeben von Adolf Erman und Hermann Grapow. Erweitert, korrigiert und ergänzt von Wolfgang Kosack. 5 Bände, 5644 Seiten. Christoph Brunner, Nunningen 2018, .

External links

Volumes I–VI
(in German and Russian)
Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae
(in German)

from the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften {{DEFAULTSORT:Worterbuch Der Agyptischen Sprache Ancient Egyptian language Translation dictionaries German dictionaries