As catalogued slips for the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache had grown to considerable volume, Erman was facing the question of what form the planned dictionary should take. From 1904, various options were tried out using a number of draft manuscripts and printing proofs to explore the expenses involved in such an undertaking. According to Grapow [1], the development of the project can be staged as follows:

• In 1904, Erman submitted to the commission for the Egyptian Dictionary formed by the German Academies of Sciences a first draft manuscript covering the words of the alphabetic range from qA to qAD.
• Following discussion within this commission, a second draft was ordered, not least, to gain a clear picture of what finances would be required. In the spring of 1905, Erman prepared this second draft using the words of Hm/Hn
• Upon favourable evaluation of the two drafts, work on the manuscript of the dictionary started in 1906. Involved in this project were Erman, Junker, Gardiner, Roeder, and Sethe. By 1909, the manuscript had evolved to 1936 pages in length covering 789 lemmata. This was the so-called "Vormanuskript" (preliminary manuscript) of the dictionary. Work on this manuscript, however, proved to be too expensive and time-consuming for the entire project to be carried out in this fashion. So in 1909, work on this undertaking was halted.
• Alternatively, a suggestion by Sethe was taken up, who had proposed to do an initial fine sorting of the entire slip material. This revision, the so-called "Revision", was accomplished in the years of 1909 to 1927. In the course of this revision, the material was organized in such a way that cards separating the slips, so-called rider cards, were inserted in the slip archive. In addition, this organization was recorded in the form of consecutive notes, the so-called diaries ("Diarien").
• As work proceeded, potential designs and formats of the dictionary to be printed were being considered. Draft material was presented by Erman in 1912 in his "Beiträge zur Ägyptischen Wortforschung" II and III, using words of the wr-wD alphabetic range.
• In the course of events, a proof was printed in 1916 using the words of the rx - rx-nswt range. Printing on this basis, however, became illusory in the economic aftermath of World War One.
• And then, nothing short of a miracle happened. Funding of the printing costs was taken over by John D. Rockefeller, jr. following mediation by J. H. Breasted. Work on the manuscript for a printed book started in 1924. It was carried out in the known fashion to be eventually completed. The project was based on a draft manuscript by Grapow that, undergoing discussion and proofreading within the inner circle of the authors of the dictionary, was fair-copied by Erichsen. In 1926, the first shipment of the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache was released.

These stages in the dictionary's development can largely be tracked and reconstructed in the archives of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. [2] The archives make it possible for the practical design of the work, and especially the conceptual foundations und basic ideas, to be studied in detail.

“Dies Manuskript von 1906-1909 war an sich vorzüglich: es brachte jeden Beleg im Satzzusammenhang hieroglyphisch mit deutscher Übersetzung der Stelle, und es gab bei jedem Wort sehr ausführlich dessen Schreibungen in jeder Sprachperiode an, um nur diese Vorteile hervorzuheben. Aber allein die damals verarbeiteten 24 Wörter (...) des Stammes mAa, die im gedruckt vorliegenden Wörterbuch 13 Seiten einnehmen, ergaben 240 Seiten jenes Manuskripts, darunter für das Wort für “die Wahrheit, das Rechte” allein 84, die ihrerseits wieder einen eigenen Index von 5 Seiten notwendig machten! ... Das Verbum für 'festlich machen' (füllte) 21 Seiten des Manuskripts, dessen vollständige Ausarbeitung in dieser allerdings idealen Form Niemand der damaligen Mitarbeiter erlebt hätte: noch 60-70 Jahre hatte keiner mehr vor sich.”

This manuscript fragment is indeed of great interest. A detailed comparison (see Seidlmayer [2]) shows that the original draft manuscript, as Grapow seems to indicate, is not simply of a more detailed and practical design than the subsequent book printed to tight and pragmatic specifications. It is rather the quality setting it apart, with emphasis to be placed on at least two aspects:

• The statements contained in the Vormanuskript are made in an argumentative manner. Assertions are qualified, put into perspective, and also quantified.
• The Vormanuskript takes a much deeper look into the peculiarities of how the language was used (referring to both grammatical and semantic stereotypes), as demonstrated by the corpus of slip catalogues - a fact that Erman recognized as being of the essence. [4]

For this reason, the Vormanuskript is important not only in historical terms in that it substantially documents Erman's original and "ideal" concepts of what a dictionary of the Egyptian language should look like in design and content. The Vormanuskript reveals conceptual lines that, at the very least, have to be regarded as worth considering in current and future lexicographic work, but, in actual fact, must be seen as pointing the way to the future.

S. Seidlmayer