The dictionary and grammar took the form of several hundred pages of extensive additions by Birch to Volume V of the (1867) English translation Egypt's place in Universal History of Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte (1845-) by C. C. J. Baron Bunsen. Birch and Bunson collaborated ten years earlier on additions to the English edition of Volume I (translated by Charles Cotterel; Longmans, 1848) notably concerning the writing system (including Appendix II - a hieroglyphic sign list).
About the typesetting process, Birch writes in his preface to Volume V:
The hieroglyphic used in this volume has been cast by Mr. Branston from designs drawn by Mr. Joseph Bonomi. It is the sole hieroglyphical fount in this country, and its importance can only be sufficiently appreciated from the consideration that Messrs. Longman have fulfilled, at a heavy cost, a task only undertaken abroad by foreign governments.
The advantage of this type to the present volume cannot be too highly appreciated, as it has rendered it practicable to print the Egyptian Dictionary, the Grammar, and the Chrestomathy in a form which renders the study of the hieroglyphs accessible both to the student and general enquirer. The Dictionary is the only one hitherto printed in this country, nor has any hieroglyphical dictionary appeared elsewhere, except that of Champollion, published in 1841, which contained only a few of the principal words. Its phonetic arrangement will, it is hoped, render it particularly easy of consultation. It has been a great labour to compile and print it, and the execution of it has been a task of many years.
A feature of the Bonomi typeface is the use of mostly solid filled in hieroglyphs. There is no attempt to detail most signs as is popular practice for the majority of hieroglyphic fonts later and nowadays.
Hieroglyphic typesetting was new technology in the mid-Nineteenth century and many later publications followed, using a variety of fonts, The Lepsius/Theinhardt font is probably the best known from that era.
Modern digital hieroglyphic, both the first generation MdC approach and the new Unicode/Opentype based systems, have characteristics that can be traced back though the early works by Birch and Lepsius. The corpus of 150 years of hieroglyphic content in type has proved very useful in devising new techniques and designing new fonts.
Some developments don't happen overnight. The goal to make hieroglyphic available to the student and general enquirer expressed by Birch has advanced gradually over 150 years with many modern publications available fairly inexpensively in print. Yet in terms of the potential of modern technology, there is much more to be done.
Sadly, the Birch publication never made it to the best seller lists of the day.
E. A. Budge dedicated his Dictionary of Hieroglyphs (1920) to the memory of Samuel Birch (whose Ancient Egyptian courses he attended and later worked with for a couple of years at the British Museum). In the introduction to his dictionary, Budge writes:
... it is quite impossible to hide the fact that the inclusion of Birch's Egyptian Dictionary in the fifth volume of the English translation was a great misfortune for the Dictionary itself and for the beginner in Egyptology for whom the work was primarily intended. There was an interval of seven years between the publication of the fourth and fifth volumes of the English translation of Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, arid there seems to be no doubt that public interest in Bunsen's scheme of chronology drooped when its author died in 1860, the year which saw the appearance of the fourth volume, and was practically dead when the fifth volume was published in 1867. According to Birch, the volume fell " flat," and its editor and publishers were greatly disappointed. Whether the edition was a small one or not I have no evidence to show, but it was certainly the fact that for some reason or other copies of the volume were difficult to get in the early "seventies." It was said at the time that the publishers, being dissatisfied with the sales, had "disposed" of the sheets of a large number of copies The natural result was that when people found out that the volume contained Birch's Dictionary and Grammar and Chrestomathy the copies that found their way into the market fetched relatively very high prices, or at all events prices which effectively placed the book beyond the reach of the ordinary student. When I attended Birch's Egyptian classes in 1875-76 and needed the book urgently, I was obliged to trace each page of it on a separate sheet of tracing paper, omitting the references, and when these sheets were bound I used them for some years with great benefit. Moreover, the volume of the English translation of Bunsen's work formed a veritable tomb for Birch's Dictionary. The title-page of it sets forth quite clearly that the "Historical Investigation" was by Bunsen, and that it was translated from the German by Charles H. Cottrell, Esq., M.A., and that it contains "Additions by Samuel Birch, LL.D." But who could possibly imagine from this last remark that Birch's contribution was 594 pages, i.e., nearly three-quarters of the whole volume, or that his contribution included an Egyptian Dictionary, the first ever published arranged on phonetic principles (!), and containing about 4,500 entries of Egyptian words, and names of gods and places, with references and translations, and an Egyptian Grammar and Chrestomathy? Or, again, take the case of the student who wants to consult these works and who, hearing that copies of them are to be seen in the British Museum Library, goes to the Reading Room to see them. He turns up the entry Birch, Samuel, LL.D., of the British Museum, in the Great Catalogue, but fails to find any mention of the Dictionary of Hieroglyphics or Grammar and Chrestomathy, because they are not mentioned in any one of the columns of names of the other books and papers which Birch wrote. All that he will find connecting Birch with an Egyptian Dictionary is the entry, " Sketch of a Hieroglyphical Dictionary, London, 1838," and unless he receives further instruction he will conclude that the " Sketch" published in 1838 is useless to him, and that Birch's Egyptian Dictionary never appeared.
An account from which several lessons can be learned.
Bob Richmond
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