Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (1857-1934) was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East. He made numerous trips to Egypt and the Sudan on behalf of the British Museum to buy antiquities, and helped it build its collection of cuneiform tablets, manuscripts, and papyri. He published many books on Egyptology, helping to bring the findings to larger audiences. In 1920, he was knighted for his service to Egyptology and the British Museum. Budge was knighted in the 1920 New Year Honours for his distinguished contributions to Colonial Egyptology and the British Museum. In the same year he published his sprawling autobiography, By Nile and Tigris.