100 Years of the Dictionary of the Egyptian Language

The year 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of the Egyptian Dictionary.

Adolf Erman and his team began their work in 1897 at the Neues Museum. In the process, known Egyptian texts were written down in sections on slips of paper, which were then duplicated. In a very short time, this resulted in a “database” of more than one million slips of paper. This “slip archive” forms the basis for the dictionary. It is arranged alphabetically and shows us the individual words in the context of their respective texts.

Due to World War I and rampant inflation, publishing a multi-volume dictionary was out of the question. However, in 1924, a connection between American students and A. Erman secured a financial grant from J. D. Rockefeller Jr., which ultimately paved the way for publication. A. Erman, together with his students Kurt Sethe and Hermann Grapow, then prepared the manuscript for the dictionary, which was typeset by Wolja Erichsen.

The journey from the Egyptian texts to the finished dictionary is illustrated in the small exhibition using objects from the dictionary’s archive.

• Guided tours on the theme of “100 Years of the Dictionary” are offered monthly on a Wednesday at 5:00 p.m.