Myth: Figure 6 Of Facsimile 3 Had An Anubis Snout On The Printing Plate

Myth: Figure 6 Of Facsimile 3 Had A Snout On The Printing Plate

Fact: The snout cut into the plate is not an Anubis snout and there's a better explanation  

The reasoning behind this myth seems at first to make a lot of sense. If Figure 6 of Facsimile 3 is supposed to be Anubis, as experts have said, that would mean Figure 6 is supposed to have a snout. And when we look at the lead printing plate, we see a sharp cut in the shape of a snout, with marks left behind where little chunks of lead were evidently scooped out. 

So, one could imagine a scenario where Figure 6 originally had a snout on the printing plate, and then they removed the snout before the first printing. 

This scenario has problems, however. Although a snout shape is cut into the plate, it is not a snout shape Anubis would have had, but is just a generic snout shape. 

So, who would cut out a non-Anubis style, generic snout shape around Figure 6? 

Someone who:

A) Had heard that a snout was supposed to be there, and was contemplating the issue

But

B) Didn't know what an Anubis snout was supposed to look like

The corollary question is, who would not have had reason to cut out a non-Anubis, generic snout shape around Figure 6? The answer: Someone who, hypothetically, was trying to surgically remove an Anubis snout shape from the plate. 

The presence of teeth-shaped marks, and a mouth, also lends evidence to the above statements. And if one believes those marks are just a coincidence, they might as well also believe the snout shape itself is a coincidence, since the reasons for both identifications are very similar: someone intentionally created marks in the lead plate which are in essentially the right place and are the right type of generic shape. Artistic quality is not the issue. The snout is in the right place relative to the head, and the teeth are in the right place relative to the snout. 

And since intentionality is important for identifying the sharp cut as a snout, we can't just say a "real" Anubis snout was somewhere in there and in the process of removing it they created a much larger, differently shaped snout which extends to areas which would have nothing to do with removing the Anubis snout. What would be the purpose of scooping out little bits of lead in these other areas? At the same time, scooping out those bits of lead could have a lot to do with someone trying to block in features of a dog, like teeth and jowls, which both extend way too far down for an Anubis snout to have reached. 

In the case of the jowl shapes, someone could try to say they are a part of Anubis' headdress, but the figure has no headdress, which we know because we still have the original parts of the head and chest which would have been covered if a headdress had existed, and that's in addition to there being two of them hanging down, separated by a little space, like jowls and not like an Anubis headdress. 

Click images to enlarge them 

There's another obstacle, as well. 

The sharp cut for the snout interrupts some groove marks, which implies the groove marks had been occupying space where the alleged snout had supposedly been. Which would mean the snout had not actually been there (see this video).

To see the significance of this to my overall theory, see this post

Apologetic Logic

 “it is not valid to argue that something does not exist because it does not correspond to what we expect” - Dr. John Gee, Egyptologist

Click to enlarge images in this post.

The first possibility depicted in the above image is what some people expect and assume to be the case even though the character on the right does not match the character to the left of it. The second possibility is backed by actual evidence, which we see when the possibility is allowed to play out instead of being arbitrarily taken off the table. More on this later. 

The human mind is a funny thing. 

It can be quite narrow and stubborn, and can easily mistake its own assumptions and intuitions for reason and logic. 

We tend to discard possibilities based on how well they align with our expectations, and when we do so it can "feel" like we are being logical. But that's not logic. That's why I think it's important to steelman every possible apologetic and then attempt to logically deduce ruling it out, and if we can't logically deduce that the possibility can be ruled out, then it's important to leave it on the table and allow it to play out. That doesn't mean every possibility should be seen as true; it just means every possibility that can't be logically ruled out needs to be played out, as that's the only way we can see where it leads. 

Consider, for instance, the parable of Johnny.

Johnny was a clever boy, and pretty good at chess. His parents hired a chess master to give Johnny private lessons. One day, Johnny and his friend Alec thought of a fun prank to play on the chess coach. They set up a hidden camera so Alec could see the chess board from a different room and could input the position as he saw it on the board, to an advanced chess engine. Alec could then tell Johnny where to move, through a bluetooth earpiece. 

The boys thought the chess master would be very impressed by the moves. But it didn't go that way. 

"No, you don't want to move there, because I'll be able to take your bishop! Johnny, you need to look for potential threats before you make moves! Take that move back and try again." "No, no, don't do that. It will weaken your pawn structure!" "You missed an opportunity to develop your knight! Let's take that move back" etc. 

Johnny and Alec were both growing frustrated. But what they didn't realize is that the tutor was relying on pattern recognition, while the engine was playing out possibilities that humans would dismiss. 

And not only was the tutor relying on pattern recognition when it came to pieces on the board, but also when it came to Johnny himself, because the tutor did not expect Johnny to make moves that are beyond any human level. The tutor had limitations in his mind as to what moves Johnny was capable of making, so, for him, the possibility that Johnny's odd looking moves should be played out wasn't on the table. 

It's true we only have a certain amount of time and we can't personally play everything out. But rejecting something you have not played out, and campaigning for others to reject it too, is not logical (unless you literally use logic to rule it out through deduction, or identify and disclose premises which you personally believe are true and you demonstrate those premises are inherently in conflict with the possibility, and you openly state that this conflict is your reason for rejecting the possibility). 

What does playing it out mean? You get to play either side, but you have to leave it on the table so the other side can come back and respond. That's if you choose to play at all, which you don't have to. 

Let's illustrate. I hate to criticize the beloved onomasticon, but since individual Book of Mormon Onomasticon entries are relatively anonymous, and I want to keep this discussion about substance and not criticize individuals if I don't have to, I will use an onomasticon entry to demonstrate. 

Under cureloms, the onomasticon states, "Whatever fauna CURELOMS were..."

We can see here an assumption that cureloms were fauna rather than flora or something else. As well-meaning as that assumption might be, is it logical? No. It is not a logical deduction or assumption. The writer seems to be confusing their intuition with reason. This would be the case regardless of what credentials they have. 

The entry goes on to state, "three criteria affect their identification ... whatever etymology is proposed, it must meet these three criteria."

We can see the possibilities are further being pruned, without logical deduction being laid out to the reader. 

The three proposed criteria are as follows: "1) they were especially useful to the JAREDITES; 2) they were indigenous to JAREDITE America; and, 3) it must be assumed, Joseph Smith did not have an English translation for them or he would have rendered it in English."

So, it "must" be assumed Joseph Smith did not have an English translation? Are we to believe there are no other possible reasons why Joseph did not render it into English? The Lord's ways are higher than our ways. And we must also accept that they were without a doubt indigenous to Jaredite America? I mean, it seems likely, but does not appear to be a logical deduction. 

Admittedly, the first criteria does seem deducible from the text. So let's start there. 

And let's put flora on the table, allowing it to be played out. Different lines of possibility can be played out (like chess), but let's consider one with premises which don't seem extremely controversial. 

P1. An association between Jaredites and Olmec-related areas is plausible

P2. Premise 1 implies that the things which were especially useful to known Olmec area-related people would plausibly have been especially useful to the Jaredites

P3. We can identify some things which were especially useful to known Olmec area-related people

4.  Therefore, we can identify some things which plausibly were especially useful to the Jaredites 

Okay let's go down a secondary line within the main line and see where it leads. 

The word "Olmec" actually means something akin to "Rubber People." Rubber was something "especially useful" to Olmec-area-related people. 

As I understand it, people made rubber using latex from rubber trees. 

Therefore, rubber trees were especially useful, thus plausibly especially useful to the Jaredites. 

Another observation is that the verse which mentions cureloms repeats the wording "elephants and cureloms and cumoms," which may indicate that the three go together. Associating trees with elephants would make sense, since as they aged and no longer produced as much, they may have needed to be cleared. And elephants can be very useful for that.

Okay, it seems plausible that the word cureloms could therefore refer to a type of tree. Now, some have suggested Sumerian as a candidate Jaredite language. So, let's look at one possible Sumerian-based Jaredite construction for the word "curelom." I would propose the word "kirilam" as something the Jaredites may have crafted out of Sumerian words:

So, the assumption that cureloms were animals may "feel" logical, but in reality it mistakes biases and expectations for logic. 

Avoiding that mistake is something we can all work on.

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Okay, now I would like to address the image I placed at the top of this post. 

On one hand, the image shows a gradual change in the shape of the character, from the Hor papyrus to the W.W. Phelps Book of Abraham manuscript (although the image shows this happening in more or less reverse order). By tracing the character back to the Book of Breathings, we can identify the character and what it means. It is a determinative meaning "great," among a few other things that are really special about it. 

On the other hand, we see at the top of the image an alternate possible provenance for the character. Advocation of this alternate idea does not coincide with actual evidence, but does coincide with a timeline which is threatened by the evidence-based provenance. In other words, the order in which the Alphabet/GAEL/BOA documents were prepared is an issue, and the evidence of the evolution of the character from one document to the next conflicts with what some of our friends want to maintain was the order in which the documents were produced. 

Of course, both explanations should remain on the table and our friends can attempt to defend the alternate provenance, but, unfortunately, some of our friends try to shut down other explanations rather than allowing those explanations to play out. 

For instance, I shared a particular apologetic argument about 4 years ago, and it relies on the evolution provenance of the character shown in the image, as I was just talking about. Because my argument relies on that provenance, certain folks have simply taken the argument off the table as though it doesn't exist, because the argument threatens the timeline they maintain for Joseph Smith and his scribes creating the various documents. 

I am going to present that argument, in part, further below. 

Now, although our friends may reject the evidence-based explanation, the question remains of what type of reasoning would lead anyone to propose that Papyrus Louvre 3284 set of characters in the first place. And you might wonder what my response would be to their reasoning. That's perfectly fair. 

Basically, the oldest extant Book of Abraham manuscripts have characters drawn in the left margins, with the English text on the right. Those characters come primarily from a particular section of the Hor Book of Breathings. So, some have argued that Joseph Smith and/or his scribes believed those characters were the Egyptian text of the Book of Abraham and that was the reason those characters are lined up with the English text. If true, that would mean they got it wrong. 

In any event, the Phelps manuscript was produced separately from the others. And I don't believe the placement of characters in the left column on the Phelps manuscript was part of the same project in which unknown person(s) drew characters on other manuscripts. Even though the manuscripts all have characters in the margins. I believe Phelps added the characters to his margins, but someone else years later added characters to the other manuscript margins. Thus, the adding of characters to margins would be two separate projects. There are different ways this could have happened. For instance, William Smith may have done this when he was aligning himself with James Strang, or when he was travelling around trying to sell the mummies and papyri, drawing the characters as evidence attempting to make the papers and artifacts more appealing as the "source of the Book of Abraham." Also, a lot of these same characters from that section of the Book of Breathings were used to fill lacunae in Facsimile 2, which is significant because this likely means they were copied on a piece of paper for the printer to use and perhaps labeled something like "these are the characters for the Book of Abraham," which the printer would have understood (from in-person conversation) as telling him those were the characters to use to fill in the lacunae, but which someone years later may have misunderstood as meaning that those characters were the source of the Book of Abraham. And someone like William Smith, with access to these documents, may have added a few additional characters as well, in case anyone wondered what had once filled the torn areas of the papyrus. 

However, once again, some have assumed the Phelps margin characters were part of the same project as the other margin characters. That's the first assumption which leads some of our friends to turn to Papyrus Louvre 3284. There's a big lacunae in the Hor Book of Breathings which contains these characters, and Papyrus Louvre 3284 is a parallel text to the text of the Hor Book of Breathings, so it can tell us with some certainty which characters belong in the torn areas. If one believes Phelps was just copying from that section of the papyrus, and if one believes he copied a character which is now torn off and has thus become part of the lacunae, one could then surmise that the character he copied was actually the same as the next set of characters on Papyrus Louvre 3284. Even though the two bear no resemblance. 

That may have been hard to follow, but the jist of it is that they assume that what Phelps did with his characters in the margin was part of the same project as characters drawn in other manuscripts (which need not be the case, because the Phelps manuscript came first and is much more formal about the characters, which is consistent with someone else doing a copycat attempt at a future date), and they assume Phelps got his third character (out of three) from a spot which is now completely torn off from the papyrus, and they turn to a parallel text to determine what the next character would have been and they assume that was the character Phelps copied even though it bears no resemblance and they have no evidence that it was the character Phelps copied. The reality is that even if the characters were visible for Phelps on the Hor papyrus, there is no evidence that Phelps derived his character from those characters. 

What makes their claim even more curious is that our friends who advocate for the Papyrus Louvre 3284 possibility simultaneously propose that the characters in the margins were NOT copied strictly in order from the papyrus but that whoever drew them was jumping around and using characters out of sequence. So why would anyone insist that Phelps used this one character in sequence when it doesn't even match? Again, their reason is apparently an attempt to preserve the timeline of document production which is threatened by the evidence-based scenario, which is why they exclude the evidence-based scenario. 

.......................

Okay, now let's move on to my argument.   

Here is the Phelps manuscript: 

You will notice it has three characters in the margin, which I highlight in red below.

The first two characters are pinned to letters in the English text, which I highlight in blue:

To simplify things, let's focus on the characters and the letters in the English text which are pinned to characters:

Now, to simplify even further, let's transliterate the Egyptian characters so everything will be English:

Now, consider the fact that the first and second character are both used in transliterating the third character:

And the other letter which is needed is tagged:

If you are skimming or not paying attention, start to follow the significance of each detail here. 

There are a number of convergences which add up and support each other, which are about to be pointed out. 

iaw actually means "oldest official," which is a dominant theme in the Phelps manuscript, in reference to patriarchy:

And as I pointed out, the first two characters, plus the "a" which the Phelps manuscript associates with them, transliterate the third character. But it doesn't stop there. That third character also transliterates as wr, which means great, and is lined up right across from the word great!

Now, you might wonder, "what about the s?" I haven't forgotten that. If we put the s instead of the a between the iw, we get isw, which takes us to the same hieroglyph we would get if we put the a after the w rather than before it, i.e. "iwa" which means "inherit." 

Think about that. isw is the same hieroglyph as iwa. Both take us directly to the same hieroglyph. And that hieroglyph means "inherit," which is exactly what Abraham is talking about in his scripture.  

Now, what to make of the system of tagged numbers/letters? The "i" is tagged with a 1, which is consistent with it only occupying one position, as it does in all three transliterations. The "w" and "a" and tagged with a 2, consistent with them occupying two positions (they invert positions for iwa and iaw), and the "s" is tagged with a 1, consistent with the s only occupying one position, with no inverting. The Egyptian "i" is tagged to the English "i," perhaps to involve a more generic "i" than the reed leaf. Understanding it this way gives us iwa, iaw and isw. 

Study out the following image to understand how involved and amazing these convergences are.

And to top everything off, the iaw/wr character was taken from the name Osorwer, meaning “Osiris is great.” It’s the “great” part. Anyway, Osorwer was a High Priest and the father of Hor, and the one whom Hor inherited his Priesthood through in the Egyptian religion. So, a clear parallel with Abraham’s words in the Phelps manuscript, inheriting high priesthood down through fathers. This may have been what caught Joseph’s attention in the first place with the character. 

As you can see, the Phelps manuscript has very strong evidence of authentic Egyptian transliteration.