In the Mythological Hall of the Neues Museum, the Egyptian Dictionary Project and the Egyptian Museum will present an exhibition from June onwards celebrating the 100th anniversary of a tool that remains indispensable to Egyptology to this day—the Egyptian Dictionary.

The year 2026 marks the centenary of the publication of the first volume of the Egyptian Dictionary. In 1897, Adolf Erman and his team began their work in the Neues Museum. Known Egyptian texts were copied section by section onto index cards, which were then duplicated. In a remarkably short time, this resulted in a “database” of more than one million cards. This card archive forms the foundation of the dictionary. Arranged alphabetically, it records individual words in the context of the texts in which they appear.

Because of the First World War and the ensuing period of rampant inflation, the publication of a multi-volume dictionary seemed impossible. However, in 1924, connections between American students and Adolf Erman led to a financial donation from John D. Rockefeller Jr., which ultimately made the printing of the dictionary possible. Erman, together with his students Kurt Sethe and Hermann Grapow, prepared the manuscript for publication, while the final copy was written by Wolja Erichsen.

The exhibition illustrates the journey from ancient Egyptian texts to the completed dictionary through objects drawn from the Dictionary Archive.

Guided tours on the theme “100 Years of the Egyptian Dictionary” will be offered monthly on Wednesdays at 5:00 p.m.