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

Myth: Gustav Seyffarth and the "beginning of the book"

 Myth: We can deduce that Gustav Seyffarth saw the words "beginning of the book" after the Facsimile 3 vignette on the Hor papyrus. 

Fact: Gustav Seyffarth described the Facsimile 3 vignette on the Hor papyrus. 

If another document followed the Hor Book of Breathings on the roll, and it contained the words "beginning of the book," that would be a blow to the missing roll theory, which proposes the Book of Abraham text was on the roll, because the Book of Abraham does not contain the words "beginning of the book." The Book of Abraham does say "book," of course, but it's actually the word "beginning" that Seyffarth was known to have rendered as "book," which was in reference to a different Book of Breathings than the one for Hor. Moreover, the word for "book" in "Book of Abraham" would most likely not have been the same word as is translated as "book" in the Book of Breathings, because the translation of the word as "book" in "Book of Breathings" is an unusual case. So if Seyffarth saw "beginning of the book," that book would not likely have been the Book of Abraham. 

Anyway, Seyffarth never claimed to have seen the words "beginning of the book" on the Hor roll, so the missing roll theory is safe from that scare. If, however, Seyffarth had claimed to see the words, "Book of Hymns," then there would have been a chance he actually saw the words which appear in the Book of Breathings as "beginning of the book," because Seyffarth had translated those words in other Book of Breathing documents as "Book of Hymns." However, Seyffarth never claimed to have seen the words "Book of Hymns" on the Hor roll, either. 

If you are confused, and asking why we are talking about things Seyffarth didn't say about the Hor roll rather than what he actually did say about it, here's the reason. Some people claim that Seyffarth's description of what he saw on the Hor papyrus includes something which doesn't match anything he could have actually seen on either the Facsimile 3 vignette (which is the only part of the Hor papyrus we know for sure he saw) or on anything else that could have plausibly been part of the portion of the Hor roll which he saw. So they say we need to reconstruct what he saw. 

And the reconstruction they propose goes like this: 

1) Seyffarth was said to have described the papyrus roll as "an invocation to the Deity Osirus, in which occurs the name of the person, (Horus,) and a picture of the attendant spirits, introducing the dead to the Judge, Osirus."  

2) Even though Facsimile 3 contains an invocation to gods (which includes Osiris), and even though it mentions the name of the person, Horus, and even though it includes a picture of the attendant spirits introducing the dead to Osiris, thus matching Seyffarth's description on every point, it must be counted as not matching Seyffarth's description (for no stated reason).  

3) Using the premise that the Facsimile 3 vignette is not sufficient, a need is created for something else to be the invocation, i.e. another text on the roll.  

4) A hymn can be a type of invocation.

5) Seyffarth once translated something as a "book of hymns."

6) What Seyffarth translated as "book of hymns" actually said "beginning of the book."

7) Therefore, Seyffarth saw a second document on the roll, saw the words "beginning of the book," translated the words as "book of hymns" and then later described it as an invocation to Osiris. 

Okay the first major problem with this attempted reconstruction is that the Facsimile 3 vignette already matches Seyffarth's description, so there's no actual logic to the  deductive reasoning involved in claiming a second document is needed.

The second major problem with this attempted reconstruction is that even if Seyffarth thought it was a book of hymns (yet chose not to call it that), he said it is "to" Osiris, etc. The words "book of hymns" say nothing about Osiris or Horus or a picture of attendant spirits. Of course, one could posit that Seyffarth thought the Facsimile 3 vignette was part of the book of hymns, but then one would be relying on Facsimile 3 to match all the parts of Seyffarth's description.. when the ONLY reason for proposing the additional document on the roll in the first place is the perceived need for a document that can serve the function of BETTER matching Seyffarth's description. One would apparently need to posit that neither the Facsimile 3 vignette nor the words "book of hymns" on their own is able to match Seyffarth's description, but that only together do they have power to match Seyffarth's description. But where does Facsimile 3 fall short and need the words "book of hymns" to make up the difference? Let's see if we can find any holes.

An invocation to the Deity Osiris? It's there. Facsimile 3 says: "O gods of the necropolis, gods of the caverns, gods of the south, west, north and east, grant salvation to the Osiris Hor..." If one wants to claim that this invocation isn't explicit enough about being to Osiris, then how would adding the words "book of hymns" change it from not being to Osiris to suddenly being to Osiris? 

The name Horus? It's there.

A picture of the attendant spirits, introducing the dead to the Judge, Osiris? It's there. 

It's all there. Without the words "book of hymns." And, therefore, without the words "beginning of the book."

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.

-----

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.  

The Restoration Theory

Where I left off in my last post on the subject, the reader may have felt a little overwhelmed by all the ideas and info. 

The Restoration Theory is an alternative to the Missing Roll and Catalyst theories. 

To simplify, I’m proposing that the Hor vignettes/facsimiles did not originate with Hor, and, moreover, they were originally drawn by Egyptian-Jews, for a non-funerary purpose. You might recognize the Jewish influence idea from the Semitic Adaptation Theory, although the Jewish role is a little different in my theory. I'm proposing the figures in the vignettes, despite being outwardly recognizable Egyptian characters, were used by the Egyptian-Jews to represent different characters. I'm proposing that their original purpose was to accompany the Book of Abraham (this is in Ptolemaic times), probably on a wall in the temple of Onias, and Joseph Smith was thus able to use the vignettes, which were physically on the papyrus, as a window through which he accessed the original text. Because he was penetrating something that was physically on the papyrus, this falls under the umbrella of translating the papyrus, making statements to that effect true. 

And I’m saying there’s actual evidence to support this theory. Because, we would expect/predict different things about the vignettes, based on what purpose they originally were intended to serve, and we can assess how well they align with expectations. 

By analogy, suppose a certain restaurant serves only  Mexican food, but a friend claims he used to get Greek food from there all the time. Is your friend lying? You come up with a theory that the restaurant originally served Greek food. You discover the owners are Greek, and the basement has Greek recipes, and old pictures on the wall show people eating what appears to be Greek food. All of that is evidence in favor of your theory. 

Okay, so how did the illustrations end up in Hor's Book of Breathings? Well, for one thing, Hor's "Book of Breathings Made By Isis" is the oldest known and possibly the very first of the "made by Isis" genre. So, if Hor invented the genre, he would have had liberty as well as an apparent desire for novelty, so we shouldn't be surprised to see him look for and find something unique and then adapt it to his purposes. 

The Restoration Theory is of course inspired by the Semitic Adaptation theory, but instead of proposing that a Jewish scribe took Egyptian funerary scenes and assigned new meaning to them, the Restoration Theory proposes that the scenes originally had Jewish meaning and Hor took them and assigned new meaning to them. This means we would expect the illustrations to be distinguishable from vignettes originally made for funerary papyri, rather than adapted for funerary use, which I’m proposing Hor did. 

Under this theory, we don't need to account for any characters Hor had his scribes write on the vignette for Facsimile 3. Joseph Smith is likely giving us what was originally written on the original version of the illustration. And part of the reason why the characters on Facsimile 3 are so illegible may be because Joseph Smith partly restored what was originally written, purposefully leaving hybrid characters, sort of like scratching out Hor's changes. Of course, if the illustration was originally a larger scene on a temple wall, a lot more could have been written and we wouldn't expect Joseph to be able to carry it over to a small papyrus version of the scene. 

This also means we don't need to reconcile why a Jewish redactor would append a Book of Abraham onto an Egyptian funerary text, since the vignettes themselves were the window into the text. 

This also means we can look at the witness statements through a new lens. For instance, Joseph Smith III said that the papyrus from which his father was said to have translated the Book of Abraham was found “with other portions” in a roll, singular. This seems to either suggest that multiple different documents bundled together can be considered a roll, or that on one single piece of papyrus there was both the content from which Joseph translated the Book of Abraham, and also unrelated content (i.e. the text of the Book of Breathings?).

This may also help us understand the reference to Abraham's own hand. In light of apocryphal stories of Abraham which had circulated anciently, when Joseph restored Abraham's original version it would be fair to make that distinction by pointing out that the version he is giving us is the one written by Abraham's own hand. Or, alternatively, if the Ptolemaic version was faithful to Abraham's original, or claimed to be, it would be fair to point that out by saying it is purporting to be the version written by Abraham's own hand. At no point did Joseph claim that Abraham had touched the papyrus (assumptions of others notwithstanding).

Now, let's take a look at some of the evidence.

As others have pointed out, although this is rarely talked about enough, Joseph Smith received the only lion couch scene in the world where the figure on the couch is in the prayer position. Early critics tried to say the top hand is a bird wing, but that has proven not to be true, as the dots are not dapple marks but are the remnants of finger lines after   ink flaked off. 

Unexpected presence of the goddess Bastet on Facsimile 3. This leads us right to Bubastis, and the Jewish temple of Onias. Claims that the printing plate shows that an Abubis snout was originally on the facsimile are misguided. The sharp cut and the area where lead was dug out are not in the shape of an Anubis snout. And I’ve demonstrated that the cut was made after that area was already cut lower than the printable portions. 

Unexpected Abraham in Egypt - the name Abraham is literally spelled out on the vignette. This is not like seeing things in the clouds where an unlimited number of shapes are possible, but these are actual distinct shapes representing Upper Egypt and the spelling, in order, of the name Abraham. 

Unexpected elaborate falcon on standard  this is not expected to be there, nevertheless the evidence is strong. 

The Meaning Of Life, Scholars Like Robert Boylan, and My Best Friend Austin

 

That may look like a lot of books behind Robert Boylan, but he can eat all those before breakfast.

This post is going to read like a free-flow of thought, a bit of a ramble, but if you follow along and don't skim, you should be rewarded with some interesting thoughts. 

I'm not a huge fan of debates in general, but it does say something that the prominent LDS scholar Robert Boylan, whom I count as a friend, has a difficult time finding people who are willing to debate him. If you look through his blog, Scriptural Mormonism, you'll understand why prominent Protestant scholars (let alone your local Pastor) will find every excuse in "the book" to avoid talking about "The Good Book" with him. 

When it comes to apologetics, I'm more of an armchair guy than a scholar but I come up with ideas other people don't come up with, and I put those ideas "out there" in the hopes that people will consider them. Some aren't fans of my style because I leave ideas on the table which they don't know what to do with. But although I may be one of the "weak things" of the world, sometimes that's what God uses.

(As an aside, in an odd way I have the same problem as Robert, i.e. trying to get people to engage rather than dismissing from a distance). 

Engaging is not simply responding. It entails taking time to understand and steelman, then respond, THEN listen and wait for the counter-response, and start the process over, attempting to provide clarification and find mutual agreement on where the disagreements lie. 

And it's beautiful when we can actually see it work.

However, apologetics and criticisms are both limited by certain realities. 

For one thing, they are 90% about history, and history is deeply flawed. People tend not to realize how deeply flawed it is, because people from the past aren't here to correct us. 

Misunderstandings happen all the time in our own daily lives, but when people are dead they are no longer able to clarify. Misunderstandings get set in stone, and we don't account for the fact that much of what we read, be it in a journal scrap someone wrote when angry, or a passing reference in a newspaper from 200 years ago, penned by a busy journalist, do not reflect reality. Many misunderstandings got cleared up before making their way into the historical record, but many did not. And we don't know how many that is. 

Try this thought experiment. Imagine you die, and 100 years from now the only thing people know about you is what others wrote on social media when mentioning you. How accurate would that picture be of you? 

My Best Friend  

Yesterday I attended the Memorial Service of my best friend, Austin. A celebration of his life, by those who knew and loved him. And although only true things were said about him, there is no way anyone would have even close to an accurate understanding of him and his life if they were basing their understanding on the service rather than knowing him intimately and having hundreds of hours of deep conversation. And that's okay. 

But the same problem faces us with history. 

A good example is the Kinderhook Plates. I've tried to make this point for years, and I'm grateful that at least LDS Scholar/Philosopher Blake Ostler told me that he thinks my analysis is very good. That's pretty much the only feedback I've received from anyone, though. 

But the point here isn't about the Kinderhook Plates specifically, but how much we don't and can't know, generally. 

The work of grief is so hard. But the growth and learning that can come from it is incalculable. And I'm grateful I was able to know him as deeply as I could have in this life. And yet I'll still be surprised when I get to the other side and learn how many misconceptions I've had, even about him. 

We don't know what misconceptions we have. Compounding this further, many answers are intentionally put out of our reach by God. We aren't supposed to have them. 

The Meaning Of Life

After the Memorial Service, I went with some friends to a favorite spot, a particular restaurant where Austin and I had been to countless times. 

Right as we sat down, before we even ordered our food, in light of my best friend's death one of my friends said, "Ryan, what is the meaning of life?"

I thought for just a second, then I answered, "It's not what meets the eye. There's more going on than we know."

I used the analogy from the first Harry Potter film, where the bad guy was trying to get the Sorcerer's Stone, but he was stumped. He was standing in front of a mirror which contained the stone, but he couldn't figure out how to obtain the stone from the mirror. You see, the mirror had been enchanted so that one could only obtain the stone if they were not seeking it and didn't want it. 

What is it that we are seeking knowledge for? Is it to build a Tower of Babel to get us to heaven? Or is it because we want to know God? 

Knowledge comes forth "in the own due time of the Lord." Otherwise, we would not be able to exercise and strengthen our faith. What a wonderful time we live in, 200 years are marked from the time God the Father introduced His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to a 14-year-old named Joseph Smith, in a Sacred Grove.  As our living Prophet has declared, big things are coming, and we are so fortunate to be able to live through this marvelous time and help prepare the world for the Second Coming.

As that 14-year-old showed, even prophets are here to learn and are experiencing a mortal probation. God never pronounced that prophets (or parents!) are perfect, but that they have a place in His plan, pointing His flock to Him. God's plan is perfect, but is intended to be implemented by imperfect people, in a setting of powerful opposing forces. On one hand, perfection. On the other hand, purposeful imperfection.

By understanding that there is a purpose to imperfection, we can accept a "precept upon precept" approach, expecting some answers will come now, others later. This, the Gospel predicts. If we understand the fall of man and the Atonement, along with the role of faith and repentance, it only makes sense that we would struggle with challenges.

If one accepts D&C 76:1-10, it shapes the possibilities one is willing to pursue. This approach does not preclude scholarship, although the scholarly research operates within parameters. Those who think unkindly of this approach might not be aware of ways in which their dismissal of such evidence affects their own scholarship. When dismissing claims which point to Joseph Smith being a true Seer, one must be aware and upfront about whether or not they are imposing their own prejudices and thereby restricting the scope of their own scholarship. We may tend to think our own biases are just obvious facts. And that can lead to premises which we have not taken time to formally consider. We may also tend to think this is only a problem other people have which we don't have. We think our own opinions, of course, are always the best. That's why we hold them.

Differences in ways of viewing information may be unavoidable, because some assumptions may be required prior to the application of logic. Each individual's intuition plays a role in determining which assumptions they will make. It is important to remember that intuitions lead to assumptions which lead to premises which only then do we apply logic to. It is helpful to be aware of our intuitions and how they cause us to favor our chosen assumptions over alternate assumptions.

The existence of intellectual challenges is expected in LDS doctrine. These, along with other challenges, are even central to the Gospel; the Atonement of Jesus Christ being the greatest challenge and the centerpiece of the Gospel. We might not realize it but our challenge, our yoke, is mitigated through the Atonement, so that our challenge is limited to only what is necessary for our growth and our exercise of agency.

In an LDS view, we intentionally left a Heavenly home and intentionally had our knowledge of reality temporarily erased from our memory. We are meant to search. This is the intended context of our earth experience. Knowing this is the intended context helps us understand why God does not usually make Himself known through our external senses, but speaks instead to our hearts. Even when we are mentally and physically in a state of tumult, the veil allows us to choose for ourselves whether and how we will search out and follow that voice.

This unique LDS concept, of us choosing to come to earth with a "veil" over our minds, offers a theological explanation for the question our atheist friends pose: "if there is a God, why doesn't God just prove it is so?" From the LDS point of view, with the veil being part of the plan, the question can be answered with a question: "what would be the purpose of a veil that blocks our knowledge, if God were to simply turn around and reveal all that knowledge?" Instead, this world is intended to house varying degrees of understanding. Precious spirits are born into a variety of circumstances. Half of the world's population worships the God of Abraham, and over half of that group worship Jesus Christ as their Savior - and, among those Christians, a variety of interpretations and understandings exist. The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ is itself far from completely revealed. Much more is to come.

We may at times wonder why sacrifice is necessary, and why God does not just give us the end result without the struggle. I suspect it might not be logically possible to know what suffering feels like without feeling it. The intellectual side we might be able to comprehend through reason, but the human side we might only be able to comprehend through experience. I believe this underlies the struggle in the war in heaven.

In accordance with God not generally revealing Himself directly to the world's physical senses, the purpose of life is not to figure out God with our intellect, again like the Tower of Babel, trying to reach Heaven with human reasoning instead of God. What sense would it make for God to test our intellect? That is not the purpose for our coming here. Christ never required from us the wisdom of man. He chose a 14-year-old boy. He chose fishermen. He never said anyone must be "scholarly enough" to get into heaven. He's not impressed with our intellects. He said one must become as a little child. The idea behind coming to this earth is to give us opportunities to choose and to experience. As we are surrounded by a fog, God's voice speaks to our heart, a voice our spirit recognizes even though it doesn't remember why.

Even if we don't intellectually know that the voice is God, we hear it in our souls. The test of this life is to use our agency to determine how important that voice is to us. When we hear His voice and want to be closer to Him, even though we can't see Him, that is faith.

I believe that when we pass through the veil, and greet those who have gone before, we will see that Joseph Smith is sweet and kind and gentle, just as so many who knew him in life attested.
For now, there is a great deal of disagreement on what to believe. Why does God not just tell us in objective, scientific terms? Because the reason for believing matters. 

God does not just want people to believe, but to believe for the right reason. As Jesus said in Matthew 11:25, "I thank thee O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." See also Matthew 13:10-13.

So, then, what do we make of challenges like the arguments against the things God tells us and we know to be true? Childlike faith, based on staying close to Heavenly Father, is paramount in dealing with issues we don't understand. 

But it is also understandable for people to want answers along the way, in the same way that knowing how some magic tricks are performed can give us a lens through which to interpret illusions we don't yet know the answers to. If you look at the best magic tricks in the world, not knowing how they are performed, they might seem to have no plausible explanation. But once you learn how a trick is done, it may no longer even be interesting. It may even seem like it should have been obvious and you may even be astounded by the fact that you were previously unable to see it. Such, I believe, will be the experience of each of us when we stand before God and see what was really going on and how many misconceptions we all had when we were on earth. And why it was necessary for it to be that way and why we chose before coming to earth for it to be that way.

Bastet, The Book Of Abraham, And The Restoration Theory

Intuitively, you might feel like the Egyptian goddess Bastet (Bast) shouldn't have anything significant to do with the Book of Abraham. 

But, like a game of chess, you can't declare an outcome based on prior assumptions. Computer chess engines are showing us the importance of this principle. You have to wait until there's a mate demonstrable. Otherwise, you have to allow room for possibilities to play out. 

So, let's play this out. 

First, Figure 6 in Facsimile 3 more closely resembles the goddess Bastet than it resembles any other deity. 

I'm not saying it perfectly matches any particular image of Bastet, but if we consider how different the various depictions of Bastet are from each other, we see a range which is big enough to house Figure 6. But we see no such range with Anubis. If we simply look at the figure 6 image, without bringing any assumptions to the table, this figure should be identified as Bastet. Consider the front of the face. Consider the length of the ear sticking up. Consider the round, rather than flat head. And, again, consider the range that simply doesn't exist for Anubis. Anubis is very standardized. But Bastet has essential features, which Figure 6 is able to match. Although, admittedly, the body of Figure 6 is a bit androgynous.

Now, you might be thinking Figure 6 originally had a snout, like Anubis. I address that in an earlier blog post, here. 

Click Image To Enlarge

Okay, so what relevance could Bastet have to Abraham?

Well, contemporary with the time-range of the verifiable Joseph Smith Papyri, the Jewish temple of Onias was built. And it was put right in the worship center of Bastet. In fact, it was built on an old temple of Bastet. 

Yes, the Jewish temple was built right on top of a temple of Bastet which was no longer in active use. 

Within the city of Bubastis, where Bastet reigned supreme, we are talking about an actual temple to Bastet. That's where the Jewish temple was built. For the Jewish population which moved to the city because of the temple, Bastet was part of daily life. Images of Bastet abounded everywhere, and people had cats and mummified them. 

As Onias said to King Ptolemy: "Wherefore I beg you to permit me to cleanse this temple, which belongs to no one and is in ruins, and to build a temple to God the Most High in the likeness of that at Jerusalem."

He was talking about a temple of Bastet, which he transformed into a Jewish temple. 

The reply from Ptolemy and Cleopatra II: "We have read your petition asking that it be permitted you to cleanse the ruined temple in Leontopolis in the Nome of Heliopolis, called Bubastis-of-the-Fields. We wonder, therefore, whether it will be pleasing to God that a temple be built in a place so wild and full of sacred animals. But since you say that the prophet Isaiah foretold this long ago, we grant your request if this is to be in accordance with the Law, so that we may not seem to have sinned against God in any way."

Most of the Cleopatras were associated with (and even identified as) Isis, even taking on her epithets like "mother of the god." For example, see here. This may be a clue for interpreting Facsimile 3. Ptolemy VI came to the throne as a small child, and his mother, Cleopatra I, reigned in his behalf until her deathbed. The two of them could therefore be candidates for the King and Prince in Facsimile 3, then. Cleopatra I even had the epithet found in the first column of text in Facsimile 3, i.e. "mother of the god." The question of why Joseph Smith would refer to the figure as a male is also answerable if the figure is Cleopatra I, because she was ruling as King on her son's behalf  which means she represented him and he was male. 

This may also help explain the seemingly redundant "King Pharaoh," in Joseph Smith's explanation, because in Egypt a Pharaoh could be either male or female. As for why they would be relevant to Onias, he may have been paying homage to them, through adapting the figures. Also worth noting is that Lenaeus, a Syrian slave, was appointed as a special regent to Ptolemy VI. This slave might be a candidate for Figure 6, adapted through use of the image of Bastet (also a potential play on words, Lenaeus and Leontopolis). 

If you are not familiar with adaptation of images like this, Robert Ritner here discusses an example of the image of Isis being used to represent the Virgin Mary. Also of great interest is this piece from Blake Ostler and this piece from Kevin Barney. 

But, you may also ask, "doesn't the Facsimile have the name of Anubis written on it?" Actually, no. To quote Quinten Barney from his master's thesis: "Thus, the arms, the presence of determinatives, and absence of the glyph suggest that this column does not read 'Anubis' so easily." But even if it is intended to read as Anubis, it does not identify the figure as Anubis and could easily just be Hor's preference for what he wanted the text to say. See this follow-up post. 

A quote from the late Egyptologist Robert Ritner may also tie things together. Dr. Ritner came to believe that the extant vignette from the Hor Book of Breathings was quite special and was copied from a scene on a temple wall. 

Dr. Ritner discusses his theory here

Let's assume Dr. Ritner was correct. 

That would mean, in his words, "what we've got here is like a Kodak moment that's been taken of a now lost temple, and I think that makes this papyrus extremely valuable..." Ritner said he intended to announce this discovery at a future meeting with his colleagues, which evidently never happened due to his failing health.

Suppose, then, that these vignettes on the Hor roll came from the Jewish temple, as reliefs adapted for Jewish purposes. Then suppose that Hor had some of the writing changed to accommodate his own purposes. By the time Hor's roll came into Joseph Smith's hands, the vignette was likely spotted with small lacunae, so Joseph Smith appears to have had the extant writing collapsed/redacted together on the facsimile, in order to make it appear tidy in the facsimile columns. 

The portion of the writing which appeared on the temple wall, rather than being added by Hor, might be expected to have been more elaborate, hence the intricate details of the extant Falcon of the Standard glyph in place of the missing spelling of Isis. Joseph Smith may have been referring to the original in his explanation. The name Isis or Cleopatra, for instance, may have originally appeared but been lost like the other half of the Falcon on the Standard glyph. And, correspondingly, smooshed together in the facsimile. 

Now, how would these scenes have made their way to Hor in the first place? Well, Marc Coenen speculated, in Robert Ritner's book on the Joseph Smith Papyri, that Hor's family may have collected a variety of papyri and stored them in a family vault. To quote Coenen (p. 65, HC), "Given the impressive number of papyri preserved for this priestly family, one wonders if they might have a common provenance and originate from a family vault, which at some time during the early nineteenth century was discovered only to have its contents plundered and scattered all over the world." 

Some might wonder why Hor would want anything to do with Facsimile 1, which appears to call the Egyptian religion idolatrous? See my post on human sacrifice, to see how I deal with that issue. To that I would add that in Abraham's early life, Egypt may have been in the First Intermediate period, where different people claimed to be Pharaoh. The "idolatrous" pharaoh may play into that. Abraham does distinguish Onitah as being of a true lineage. But read the post and it will make more sense. I identify who I think historically Abraham may have been referring to. Read carefully. 

Now, I'm undoubtedly leaving some loose ends and unanswered questions, which can be dealt with as they arise. But for now, all of this leads me to a theory.

The Restoration Theory

1) Abraham wrote a history, on papyrus

2) Joseph of Egypt redacted that history, focusing on Abraham's experiences with Egypt

3) Joseph of Egypt gave the redacted history to Pharaoh, who kept it in his court, until it eventually went into storage

4) When Onias became friends with Ptolemy, and Ptolemy helped him build his temple and celebrated it, Ptolemy gave him, among other things, the roll which Joseph of Egypt had written which contained the teachings of Abraham

5) The beginning of Joseph's record contained a vignette depicting Abraham being sacrificed on an altar. However, since it was on the very outside of the roll, it had deteriorated over the centuries and was by then in tatters

6) Using the description of it in Abraham 1:12-14, which Joseph of Egypt had written in reference to his original vignette, Onias restored it, by adapting contemporary Egyptian symbols to represent the elements which Joseph of Egypt described on the roll, and Onias put it as a relief on the temple wall, as well as being an adapted relief honoring Ptolemy and showing appreciation for his help with the temple and the roll of Abraham (Facsimile 3). The figure of Abraham in Facsimile 3 may very well be symbolic of the teachings of Abraham which Pharaoh had allowed to stay in his court for a time.  

7) Copies of the vignettes made their way to Hor's family vault, possibly alongside a copy of the text of Abraham's record (or, since Hor's family was one of the most powerful and well-connected in Egypt, he may have even obtained the original). 

8) Hor, when deciding what to be buried with, liked the vignettes and adapted them to his purposes. Hor wanted his Book of Breathings to be special, because it was probably the first ever "Book of Breathings made by Isis" and the depiction of Cleopatra as Isis would have been very special and honorific for a Book of Breathings made by Isis. 

9) It's not necessary to say that Hor was buried with the text of the Book of Abraham (although number 10, below, addresses that possibility), because the vignettes would have been derived from the Onias Temple where they would have been originally on a relief alongside the text of the Book of Abraham, which means that Joseph Smith, by penetrating through the vignettes on the Hor roll, would have been led to the text of the Book of Abraham (although of course it would have been difficult for him to explain this to anyone, but is similar to how he translated texts like the Book of Moses by penetrating what was in front of him and being led to a text which was not in front of him). Remember, Abraham 1:14 says clearly that the fashion of the figures (i.e. vignettes) signifies hieroglyphics. While keeping the word "hieroglyphics" in mind in reference to the vignettes, consider the words of Warren Parrish: "I have set by his side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration from Heaven." Hieroglyphics being a reference both to the vignettes and a reference to what it was Joseph was translating from, certainly lends plausibility to the idea that Joseph was penetrating the vignettes and being taken through them to the text of the Book of Abraham, without the text needing to be on the papyrus he owned. 

10) If the text of the Book of Abraham was buried with Hor and in the possession of Joseph Smith (which again is not necessary, as explained in number 9), here's a way it may have happened: Because they were related and derived from the same source, Hor had bound together Abraham's record with the Book of Breathings, in the same linen (creating a "roll" - remember, Joseph Smith's eyewitness contemporaries wouldn't have known what constituted a "roll" and, like a newspaper "roll," they may have thought it was okay for a papyrus roll to have different parts, thinking what made it a roll was that the parts came wrapped together. Just as they would not have known what the word "long" means in "long roll," they also wouldn't have known what the second word, "roll," means in "long roll") Eventually, the roll came to Joseph Smith. Sometimes people would refer to it as one roll, other times as two rolls. But it was the record of Joseph and the teachings of Abraham. Joseph Smith penetrated through any changes Hor may have made, and Joseph Smith put into his own words the interpretations of Onias (who may have had himself, rather than Hor, featured as Figure 5, and Joseph's mother may have confused the name Onias with King Onitah/Onitas as well as complications arising from Osiris being king and the Hor papyrus declaring that Hor is Osiris and thus king) 

The key connecting it all is that we have a depiction of Bastet on Facsimile 3, which can't be easily explained through conventional means, and remnants of an elaborate Falcon on the Standard which isn't "supposed" to be there. 

UPDATE: I've written a follow-up to this post, and you can read it here. 

Did Figure 6 Of Facsimile 3 Have A Snout? Why I Don't Believe So.

An independent scholar on the Book of Abraham, Paul Osborne, proposed in recent years that the printing plate for Facsimile 3 of the Book of Abraham was altered in such a way as to indicate that the figure originally had an Anubis-like snout. 

Looking at the lead printing plate, we can see that something of a snout-like shape is indeed present. I think Osborne's argument may indeed indicate that something has happened. 

His argument does face a couple hurdles, however. 

To my understanding, Facsimile 3 was printed only once during Joseph Smith's lifetime. Since that printing, the plate has seen a number of alterations and has gone through a number of different hands.

The original 1842 Facsimile 3 in The Times And Seasons looks different than it looks in today's scriptures, and looks different than the printing plate. Some of these alterations may have been intended to smooth over the appearance, but may have had the effect of chopping off important details. I noticed this when exploring evidence of an extant Falcon on the Standard glyph at the top of the first column (a glyph which would be very unexpected, especially in such an intricate form, but which fits with a larger theory I've been working on).  

So, the printing plate does not provide us with a snapshot of how Joseph Smith prepared it for publication. Instead, it provides us with an unknown number of layers of tampering, potentially over a period of decades.

At some point, someone may have toyed with the idea of what a snout would look like on Figure 6, perhaps having heard that the figure is "supposed" to have one. 

In such case, they may have cut into the metal in order to see what it would look like. In support of this theory, we see what looks like an attempt to draw fangs and a mouth, which should not be dismissed, for the same reason the snout itself should not be dismissed. The relevance is not just that it's a snout shape, but that the shape is directly next to the head of the figure. If this shape were located somewhere random on the printing plate, it would be kind of an odd shape but it wouldn't be identified as a snout. Likewise, the mouth and teeth marks are located where someone might expect a mouth to be on a dog's snout. 

Fangs would almost certainly have not been on an actual Anubis vignette, but they are consistent with what someone might draw if they didn't know better but had heard the claim that a dog snout was supposed to be there, and decided to experiment. This is similar to my argument that the glyphs in the margins of the Book of Abraham manuscripts were drawn by someone at a later date (except for the Phelps manuscript, which I have shown is a legitimate exercise in Egyptian). What I suspect happened in the case of the margin characters is that Joseph Smith had copied for Hedlock some characters to draw from in making Facsimile 2 and he labeled the sheet of paper something like "For Book of Abraham," which Hedlock would understand the context of but which a different person coming across the sheet of paper years later amongst the other materials would mistake easily as meaning the characters from which the Book of Abraham was translated. The evidence that the snout on the printing plate was altered by a later curious person lends support to my idea of a person tampering with the manuscripts. The ideas support each other. 

So, the snout is not likely the work of anyone copying what was on an actual papyrus, but, instead, the work of someone who had been told that a dog snout belonged there. 

Moreover, the image does not look like Anubis. Anubis has a flat head rather than a round head and when he has a human body he always wears a headdress. 

The shape of the head would be inconsistent with every ancient depiction of Anubis, including the proposed Anubis on this very same papyrus roll, in the lion couch vignette. If the standing figure in the lion couch vignette is Anubis, then a snout of that shape would still be visible on the extant portion, below the lacunae. The snout of Anubis is supposed to protrude out flat from his face, and doesn't point downward unless he is bending over.  

More Than 1 Facsimile 1?

More than one? It might seem out of the question, black and white. It might seem like an open and shut case. But the fact is, the issue has never been explored. How can it be open and shut when it was never actually opened in the first place? 

In 1967, the Book of Breathings of a Priest named Hor, among other papyri, was returned to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And only then could we see there was a big hole (lacunae) in the Hor papyrus, ripping out the section of the extant vignette which corresponds to where the knife is drawn in Facsimile 1 and where the head is drawn on the standing figure. Those had been the most controversial parts of the facsimile, so it looked too convenient for the head and knife to be showing up in Facsimile 1.

Due to the obvious similarity between the facsimile and the recovered vignette on the Hor roll, everyone assumed the source had been found. And scholars were so busy trying to make sense of the flood of questions which the 1967 find brought in, that I don't think anyone had the time or inclination to even think about whether it was one and the same vignette. 

Still, some things were hard to explain. Like the fact that eyewitnesses said they saw a man holding a knife, depicted on the papyrus. How could they have seen that when the man’s hands are torn out by the lacunae on the extant vignette?

Many lion couch scenes were drawn anciently. Each one was unique. So, could there have been more than one rendering of the scene depicted in Facsimile 1? I would suggest that this question actually does merit investigation and thoughtful analysis. 

Consider the implications. If it were the case that a very similar vignette was on the non-extant papyrus containing the Book of Abraham, that could account for Abraham 1:12-14, and also account for the evident confusion which led people to draw characters from the Hor papyrus in the margins of the Parrish and Williams manuscripts of the Book of Abraham (the Phelps manuscript, on the other hand, which is the only one which actually labels a column for characters, demonstrates legitimate Egyptology, as I explained here).

So that would kill two huge birds with one stone.

Enter Ritner

Let’s talk about how it could have happened. Hor was an interesting case. He had both a Book of Breathings and a Book of the Dead made and buried with him. You might ask, why would he want both? Well, he was sparing no expense. He was prominent and wealthy and was probably buried with a number of other things as well.

And this is where it gets really interesting. Dr. Robert Ritner came to believe that the extant vignette from the Hor Book of Breathings was quite special and was copied from a scene on a temple wall. 

 Dr. Ritner discusses his theory here

Let's assume Ritner was correct. 

That would mean, in his words, "what we've got here is like a Kodak moment that's been taken of a now lost temple, and I think that makes this papyrus extremely valuable..." Ritner said he intended to announce this discovery at a future meeting with his colleagues, which evidently never happened due to his failing health. 

And that means there was more than one Facsimile 1, in the sense that there was more than one rendering anciently of the specific scene we see in Facsimile 1. 

And the vignette in the Hor Book of Breathings is not the original. 

It also means the scene on the wall was special to Hor for some reason. He wanted a copy or copies of it. 

How many copies? Well, this is the man who had both a Book of Breathings and a Book of the Dead made for himself. So if he's going to commission a scribe to travel to a temple and sit in front of a wall and draw a special scene that's on the wall, why not send more than one scribe and have them each make a copy? Doesn't it make sense that if he was going to go to such unprecedented effort to get this particular scene, that there was something special about this situation?

And what would the result be? The scribes would be rendering an image carved on a wall into a form that's fit for papyrus. Each scribe may have their own style, deciding what to leave out, what to embellish, what to change. 

So we would expect each copy to look similar but to be distinctly different. It's like if you and a friend each draw a picture of the same tree, we would expect your pictures to look similar but different when compared to each other. 

Different Drawings

The issue is not just that there are differences. 

The issue is that nothing at all is copied the same.  

It's hard to imagine Hedlock looking at the vignette while copying it and not getting a single line the same. Yet, he had to be looking at whatever he was copying, in order to copy it. 

It's like two different artists with different styles. Below are a few close-up comparisons, to show what I mean.

The next step in investigating this would be to break down the stylistic differences in Facsimile 1 and determine if they are real Egyptological variations, because Hedlock, the engraver, would have had no way of knowing how to correctly alter the image (and it seems doubtful he would have felt at liberty to turn it into his own drawing by making up details rather than attempting to copy the ancient document).

Abraham In Egypt

Offering table, depicting Abraham in Egypt 

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

Any mistakes I may have potentially made in this post are my own, and do not reflect on Brother Bricarello’s Egyptological analysis.

For more on the reed leaf, see here

For more on the foot, see here

For more on the mouth, see here

For the identification of the hieratic “m” as drawn by the scribe, note that Robert Ritner and others translate the shape, when it appears in the text,  as “m” in their translations of the Hor Book of Breathings.