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
