A huge thank you to the philosopher and scholar, Blake Ostler, for informing me of this remarkable evidence. He told me about this after I shared a post regarding the alleged signature of Abraham on Joseph Smith’s papyri. This is by far the best candidate for anything Joseph Smith might have pointed to (if such occurred).
An Egyptologist named Bricarello, who was working at the famous Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy, told Blake Ostler that the name of Abraham is spelled out on the offering table, alongside the lotus (in the lion couch scene on Joseph Smith’s papyri).
I haven’t seen Brother Bricarello’s analysis (he had joined the Church), but I took a closer look at the figure, and the spelling becomes quite clear once we take some time to compare characters.
For many years, we have known the lotus depicted on the offering table represents Upper Egypt (Joseph Smith would have had no personal way of knowing this, of course). But now the evidence becomes exponentially more remarkable as we realize the name Abraham is literally in the symbol of Egypt, making it Abraham IN Egypt, just as Joseph Smith told us.
The explanation “Abraham in Egypt” always seemed odd. I mean, even if Joseph Smith had been a fraud (which he wasn’t), there would be no apparent reason for coming up with that description. And yet it fits.
As we gain more knowledge, all of the other things that don’t “make sense” to our fragile mortal minds will start to be illuminated. It will be like learning how every magic trick in the world is performed, and the only thing we will be left to wonder is how we were ever fooled.
The first sound in Abraham is pronounced differently in Hebrew than it is in Arabic, neither of which pronounces it as an “A” like we do in English. Fittingly, the scribe here gives us a flowering reed hieroglyph (reed “leaf”) with a light “i” sound.
Next, the scribe gives us a “b” - which is the foot hieroglyph.
This is followed in correct order, with the “r” - as the mouth hieroglyph.
Lastly, we have a special hieratic form of “m.” Different scribes draw it differently, so I provide an example of how the scribe drew it in the text of this same papyrus.
So we have “ab-ra-am,” Abraham.
click to enlarge image
Nonsense. Book of Abraham facsimile 1:10, and facsimile 3:3 are merely ordinary offering tables with items topped by a stylized lotus flower. There is no hieratic or hieroglyphic writing on those offering tables. There are many examples of this standard scene.
ReplyDeleteHi Bob,
DeleteI didn’t say “facsimile,” I said “papyrus.” So, why are you referencing the facsimiles?
How much of my post did you read before responding?
CFR on your claim that what I showed is ordinary: please provide a picture (or link to a picture) of an offering table which matches the relevant features which I identified as resembling specific Egyptian characters.
(Did you enlarge the picture I provided in the post? Do you deny that these resemble the characters in question?)
Thanks!
Well Robert you have to deal with the evidence. You are not an Egyptologist. Bricarello was. Moreover, the mere fact that there are stylistic scenes in Egyptian iconography hardly entails that they are all the same or that they were not personalized for the recipient of the papyri. Your mere assertion that there is no hieroglyphic or hieratic that may have been hidden in the leaves of the lotus flower is of course a mere assertion without any basis. You seem to think that merely stating an opinion as and pontificating somehow establishes anything. It doesn't. Do you have anything showing that the analysis is somehow wrong?
ReplyDeleteHi Blake and Ryan: See my reply at https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/74427-abraham-in-egypt/#comment-1210086819 , where I provide examples of what I am saying. Many more could be provided.
ReplyDeleteBut your examples only highlight the point. None of the samples that you provided has lotus leaves remotely like those in Fac. #1. In fact, what stands out are the glaring differences. None of the leaves on your samples could remotely be taken as either hieroglyphs or hieratic -- but not so with Fac. #1. Your other examples are interesting but only because they highlight the drastic differences!
DeleteExactly, Blake. Thank you.
DeleteThis reminds me of my big fat greek wedding. "Give me a word, any word, and I will show you how the root of that word is Greek!"
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to make light, but you could find just about any word you wanted to in the Papyri. Humans are wired to find patterns like this. Look at this image of deformed Egyptian for example:
https://preview.redd.it/dklnbdqiwvd51.jpg?width=282&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cb3776bd2fb422c0e836620da03f6a484a3be2e9
You see how easy it is to find things where there aren't any? Just like it is a stretch to call reformed Egyptian latin script, it is quite the stretch to find Abraham's name cryptically put in a lotus flower.
Hey, thank you for commenting. I’m just noticing this now.
DeleteSo, I think your comment paints with a broad brush, effectively lumping almost all written language into a category of “things people can see which aren’t actually there,” rather than looking for objective ways to determine.
I mean, if you have a random pile of sand on a beach, just by looking at it you could probably see all kinds of patterns, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use the sand on the beach to build a castle which others can identify as being a castle. Especially if someone told you that they had just made the sandcastle. Would you argue that everything slightly resembles a castle and therefore the sandcastle they made is only a pile of dirt?
Fortunately, we have more objective standards. We can use controls. If Joseph had said “Isaac” or “Jacob” or “Joseph,” instead of Abraham, your argument would suggest that I could just as easily find their names. But that’s not the case. The lotus has clearly defined shapes which appear in a certain order like a captcha. If you were presented the figure as it appears on the papyrus, and told that hieroglyphs are placed in it and you are asked to find and identify them, would you feel completely powerless to do so, or would you have some sort of methodology, like identifying the presence of distinct shapes? Just like a captcha, other designs and shapes might overlap with the distinct shapes, but we can see where distinct brushstrokes exist, and we can see and eliminate noise, because that noise itself has a pattern (such as the stems of the lotus protruding to the left). So, are you willing to show me the names of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph?