Joseph Smith Papyri

John S. Thompson

Egyptologist · Hebrew Bible Scholar · Ancient Scripture Researcher

John S. Thompson is an Egyptologist and scholar of the Hebrew Bible whose research focuses on ancient scripture, the Book of Abraham, Egyptian religion and culture, and the ancient Near Eastern world. He currently researches and writes for Scripture Central.

Thompson earned a BA in ancient Near Eastern studies from Brigham Young University and an MA in ancient Near Eastern studies, with an emphasis in the Hebrew Bible, from the University of California, Berkeley. He later earned a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Pennsylvania.

For more than twenty-five years, Thompson worked with Seminaries and Institutes of Religion. His assignments included serving as coordinator and institute director in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his work brought together academic study of the ancient world with the teaching of Latter-day Saint scripture and doctrine.

Thompson has written extensively on the Book of Abraham, its Egyptian context, the Joseph Smith Papyri, the Book of Abraham facsimiles, and concepts of translation. His broader scholarship includes the Hebrew Bible, ancient Near Eastern religion and culture, the Abrahamic covenant, creation, and ancient understandings of scripture.

His work contributes to ongoing Latter-day Saint scholarship examining the Book of Abraham in its historical, textual, and ancient contexts and exploring how Egyptology and ancient Near Eastern studies can inform the study of Restoration scripture.

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Some Puzzles from the Joseph Smith Papyri

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Question

What do we know about the Joseph Smith Papyri and their relationship to the Book of Abraham?

Short Answer

John Gee argues that the surviving Joseph Smith Papyri are only part of the collection Joseph Smith possessed and that substantial portions of at least some scrolls are missing. Because those portions no longer survive, he concludes that Egyptology cannot determine whether the missing papyri contained the Book of Abraham.

Key Takeaways

The surviving Joseph Smith Papyri came from a larger collection acquired by Joseph Smith in 1835.
Nineteenth-century eyewitnesses described rolls and papyrus material that do not correspond completely with the surviving fragments.
Gee uses scroll winding measurements to argue that substantial portions of some papyri are missing.
He examines Horus, the ancient owner of one scroll, and Horus’s connections with Egyptian priesthood and temple traditions.
Egyptian lion-couch imagery and accompanying texts can include sacrifice, punishment, and the destruction of enemies.
Gee distinguishes between what surviving evidence can establish and what remains unknowable because portions of the papyri are lost.

Summary

John Gee examines historical and Egyptological puzzles surrounding the Joseph Smith Papyri, including their provenance, surviving fragments, original length, ancient owners, and relationship to the Book of Abraham. He argues that significant portions of the papyri are missing and explores what surviving evidence can—and cannot—establish about their original contents.

TL;DR

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)

The surviving Joseph Smith Papyri represent only part of the collection Joseph Smith possessed, and John Gee argues that historical eyewitness accounts and scroll measurements indicate substantial material is missing. He also examines the ancient owner Horus, Egyptian temple practices, and Facsimile 1, while emphasizing that scholarship cannot determine what the missing portions contained.

Introduction of John Gee

So with that, I’m very pleased to introduce our next speaker.

John Gee received an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Yale University. He is the William “Bill” Gay Associate Research Professor of Egyptology at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.

I forgot to tell you, John, I was in Bill Gay’s ward for a while, so he’s a very nice man. He’s very good.

He’s the author of more than 80 publications dealing with Mormon subjects, Egyptology, and the ancient Near East. His writings have been published by publishers such as American University in Cairo Press, [East?] Foundation—and I can’t read it because it’s in French, I think, or I’m not sure—[unintelligible], anyway, [unintelligible], the Carsten Niebuhr Institute for Near Eastern Studies, another one I can’t read, [unintelligible], and I’m skipping down these other ones I can’t read, a number of other publishers.

His work has appeared in journals and series like the Bulletin [unintelligible]. I should have gone on a French-speaking mission, I can tell. So here’s one I can read, the [unintelligible]. I went German-speaking mission. That’s good. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt and the Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, Oriens Antiquus, another one I can’t read, and a few more.

Of course, he has been in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, the FARMS Review. His work has been vetted by numerous Egyptologists, including James Allen, Jan Assmann, Burkhard Backes, Laurent Bavay, Jean Bingen, Michel Broze, Christine Cardin, Michel Chauveau, Eugene [unintelligible], and a whole bunch more. Forgive me, John, because there’s a long list of Egyptologists and other people who vetted his work.

He is on the Board of Trustees for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities. He’s given Egyptological presentations at conferences at Atlanta, Brown University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Jersey City, Johns Hopkins University, San Antonio, Tucson, University of California, Berkeley, University of Kansas, Washington, D.C., Yale University, Budapest, Cairo, [unintelligible], the [unintelligible], the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, University of Copenhagen, and the University of Toronto.

With that, with a partial introduction, I will introduce John.

[Applause]

[Music]

The Book of Abraham and the Pre-Existence

It is an honor to follow the ever-eloquent Terryl Givens. Terryl has discussed the Western views of the pre-existence.

Although the concept of the pre-existence is alluded to in various places in Latter-day Saint scriptures, the clearest discussion comes from the Book of Abraham, and it is almost the only reason that Latter-day Saints use the Book of Abraham.

Of the 378 quotations of the Book of Abraham in general conference since 1942, 238, or 63 percent, come from the section on the pre-existence in Abraham 3:18–28. The next most commonly cited passage is the section on the Abrahamic covenant in Abraham 2:6–11, which is cited 42 times, for 11 percent of the citations.

The Book of Abraham in Church Curriculum

The situation is mirrored in the Church’s Sunday curriculum materials, where the Book of Abraham is cited 206 times. Again, the section on the pre-existence is the most commonly cited, and the Abrahamic covenant is second.

Whatever else the Book of Abraham says is of comparative minor importance to Latter-day Saints. My topic, therefore, is irrelevant to the doctrine of Christ. It is a mere mote in our eyes, but a beam in the eyes of the critics.

Now, some of you here are so intimately acquainted with the discussions about the Book of Abraham and the Joseph Smith Papyri that you are inseparably wedded to them. Some of you are somewhat acquainted with the arguments, but perhaps not yet on a first-name basis. Others of you are vaguely aware that some discussion exists, but have not yet been introduced to it.

I hope I will have something for all of you.

The “Mess” of the Joseph Smith Papyri

For those of you who are new, allow me to introduce you to what I have affectionately referred to as the mess of the Joseph Smith Papyri.

The fullest discussion of the origins of the Joseph Smith Papyri in the Church’s Sunday curriculum is in the Gospel Doctrine manual for the Old Testament. It says, quote, “The book of Abraham is a translation that the Prophet Joseph Smith made from some Egyptian papyri.”

That is it.

The Church’s Official Position

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has no official position on how the Book of Abraham was translated or from what papyrus.

Now, just because the Church has no official position does not mean that individual members do not have some opinions on the subject.

Church members tend to divide into four opinions about the translation of the Book of Abraham.

Four Views of the Book of Abraham Translation

The smallest group, comprising about one-half of one percent of Mormons, according to my informal, admittedly unscientific surveys, think that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from the existing fragments that were in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The next largest group think that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from papyrus fragments that are no longer in existence.

About one-third of Mormons think that there is, or was, no connection between the Book of Abraham and any papyrus fragments.

The largest group, more than half of Mormons, do not care where the Book of Abraham came from.

Critics routinely assert that the Mormon position is the one that is actually the least popular of all Mormon positions. They want it to be the Mormon position because it is the most convenient straw man.

Warren Parrish on the Translation Process

The only eyewitness to the translation process to describe it was Joseph Smith’s scribe Warren Parrish, who, after he left the Church, claimed, quote, “I have set by his side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian hieroglyphics as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration of Heaven.”

The majority of Church members are probably comfortable leaving the discussion of the translation of the Book of Abraham at that, and on this occasion I will leave it at that too, except to say that so far no theory about the translation of the papyri accounts for all the evidence.

The Saga of the Joseph Smith Papyri

Today, however, I would like to take a look at the papyri themselves and some of the puzzles surrounding them, namely: What papyri did Joseph Smith have, and what do we know about the ancient owners of the papyri?

And we may not be able to cover all of this here, and certainly can’t cover all of the possible topics on either the papyri or the Book of Abraham. I’m not even going to try.

Now, the saga of the Joseph Smith Papyri begins in the early part of the 19th century, during the pillaging of Egypt that at that time passed for archaeology.

One of those involved in the plunder and pillage of Egypt was Antonio Lebolo. He exhumed one of the most spectacular caches of mummies and papyri from Thebes that Egyptology has ever known. I used to think that the accounts of several hundred mummies were vastly exaggerated. I am no longer so sure.

Lebolo was acting as an agent procuring antiquities for Drovetti, but kept a few for himself. These were sent via Albano Oblasser to America, paraded around the country, and sold off piecemeal until the remainder were sold by Michael Chandler to the Church in July of 1835.

The Church got four mummies and at least five papyri.

From Joseph Smith to the Metropolitan Museum

After Joseph Smith’s mother’s death in 1856, the papyri were sold to Abel Combs, who sold part of the collection to a museum in St. Louis, which eventually moved to Chicago and burned to the ground in the Chicago Fire of 1871. And he kept part of the collection for himself.

Combs’s collection passed through various hands until it was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1947.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art knew that they had acquired, quote, “Papyrus fragments of hieratic Books of the Dead, once the property of the Mormon leader Joseph Smith.”

The Metropolitan Museum was fully aware of what the papyri were when they first saw them in 1918, and they knew what they were doing when they acquired them.

Rediscovery of the Papyri

Klaus Baer recalled, “I saw photographs of them for the first time in 1963, I believe, and was asked at that time, on my honor, not to tell anyone where they were and to keep the whole thing confidential.”

The guard had changed at the museum, and the new curators were not as keen to have the papyri as the previous curators had been.

Henry Fischer, curator of the Department of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the late 1960s, explained how the museum decided to deal with their religious hot potato:

“We knew, since Atiya worked in Salt Lake City and was acquainted with leaders of the Mormon Church, that he might very tactfully find out how they felt about it. So we simply informed him about this in confidence, and I think he handled the matter very nicely.”

The newspapers garbled the story by wrongly making Atiya the discoverer of the documents, which disturbed Fischer. He wrote to Atiya as follows:

“Although I was already aware that your version of the discovery of these documents had caused considerable confusion, it was startling to read that you had informed me of their existence. While I have taken pains to avoid any outright contradictions of what you said, I do not see why either I or the other members of my department, past and present, should be put in the position of being ignorant about facts we could not fail to have known.”

What Survives Today

The Metropolitan Museum of Art gave the papyri back to the Church in 1967, 40 years ago this November.

The papyri have now remained in one set of hands for the longest time since their excavation.

The papyri we currently have are 11 groups of fragments from three different papyri, containing two partial copies of what is usually misnamed the Book of the Dead, and part of a copy of what is usually misnamed the Document of Breathings Made by Isis.

The extant fragments do not contain any text from the Book of Abraham.

We know what we currently have, but how much papyri did Joseph Smith have?

How Much Papyri Did Joseph Smith Have?

Critics want to minimize the amount of papyri originally owned by Joseph Smith, preferably to an amount not much more than what we currently have, because they do not want a Book of Abraham to have ever existed.

As Richard Bushman has noted, people who have broken away from Mormonism have to justify their decision to leave. They cannot countenance evidence of divine inspiration in Joseph Smith’s teaching without catching themselves in a disastrous error.

So critics who have left the Church cannot allow Joseph Smith to have gotten anything right, even by a guess or by accident. They will go to extreme lengths and propound convoluted theories to have something else, anything else, to believe in.

Dale Morgan on Joseph Smith

The critic Dale Morgan, in a moment of candor, wrote:

“With my point of view on God, I am incapable of accepting the claims of Joseph Smith and the Mormons, be they however so convincing. If God does not exist, how can Joseph Smith’s story have any possible validity? I will look everywhere for explanation except to the one explanation that is the position of the Church.”

So the critics cannot allow themselves to say, as Latter-day Saints can say, whether or not there was a Book of Abraham actually contained on the proportion of papyri that did not survive is something that cannot be determined by scholarly means.

Faith and Unanswered Questions

A Latter-day Saint who has faith—that is, trust in God—can examine such issues without being bothered or without having to know all the answers to all the questions we might have.

In fact, insisting on the answers to all our little questions is a sign of lack of faith or trust.

For example, if we insist that our spouse or employees must account for every moment out of our presence, it is a sign that we do not have faith or trust in them.

Faith, Study, and the Book of Abraham

Abraham, for example, was able to say, “Thy servant has sought thee earnestly. Now I have found thee. Thou didst send thine angel to deliver me from the gods of Elkenah, and I will do well to hearken unto thy voice.”

He trusted God on the basis of one past experience without having to know all the details about how the Lord was going to fulfill his promises.

Likewise, a Latter-day Saint who trusts God and his prophets—that is, spokesmen—does not need to see the actual Egyptian characters on the papyrus or know any of the details about the translation of the Book of Abraham in order to accept it and act with confidence that this life is a time of testing, when God will “prove us herewith, to see if we will do all things whatsoever the Lord our God shall command us.”

This is the reason why, for the vast majority of Latter-day Saints, the particulars of the translation of the Book of Mormon are not an issue.

Still, as all have not faith, and most of you are here either for a want of faith or a desire to help those who want faith, we are commanded to “seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”

Learning is a partial substitute for and an aid to faith.

What Papyri Did Joseph Smith Have?

So what do we know about the papyri Joseph Smith had?

Between the current fragments and some very bad copies of characters from the papyri, we know that Joseph Smith had papyri or portions of papyri from at least five individuals: Horos, the son of Osoroeris; and [unintelligible]; [unintelligible], the son of [unintelligible]; a woman with the unique name of Neferirnub; and a man named Sesonchis.

Comparing the copies of the papyri with the fragments indicates that in no case do we have a complete record of what Joseph Smith had from these two sources alone.

Eyewitnesses from the Nauvoo period describe a quantity of records written on papyrus and Egyptian hieroglyphs, including: one, some papyri preserved under glass, described as “a number of glazed slides, like picture frames, containing sheets of papyrus with Egyptian inscriptions and hieroglyphics”; two, a long roll of manuscript that contained the Book of Abraham; three, another roll; four, and two or three other small pieces of papyrus with astronomical calculations, epitaphs, etc.

Only the mounted fragments ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and were subsequently given back to The Church of Jesus Christ.

Eyewitness Descriptions of the Papyri

The eyewitnesses not only describe the papyri, but they describe specific vignettes, or pictures, on the papyri.

When eyewitnesses describe the vignettes as being on the papyri mounted under glass, they can be matched with fragments from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On the other hand, when the vignettes are described as being on the rolls, the descriptions do not match any of the currently surviving fragments.

Gustav Seyffarth’s 1856 catalog of the Wood Museum in St. Louis indicates that some of the Joseph Smith Papyri were there. Those papyri moved with the Wood Museum to Chicago and were burned in the Chicago Fire of 1871.

Whatever we conjecture their contents to be is only that: conjecture.

Both Mormon and non-Mormon eyewitnesses from the 19th century agree that it was a, quote, “long roll of papyrus” from which our Prophet translated the Book of Abraham, meaning the long roll of manuscript and not one of the mounted fragments that eventually ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

So the intellectual position that some members follow, and which the critics would have us adopt as the position of the Church, is not in accord with the historical evidence.

How Big Were the Rolls?

So how big were the rolls?

One way to answer that question is to take the standard size for a papyrus roll and just use that. In the Ptolemaic period, a roll was usually about 320 centimeters long and about 32 centimeters high.

I have used such estimates before, but those figures are not entirely satisfactory. As Mark Depauw has pointed out in a later study, the measurements of papyri vary throughout the Ptolemaic period, with different standards applying at different times.

Now, one can take a more scientific—that is, mathematical—approach, because the circumference of a scroll limits the amount of scroll that can be contained inside it.

Thus, we can determine by the size of the circumference and the tightness of the winding how much papyrus can be missing at the interior end of a papyrus roll.

Calculating the Missing Portion of a Scroll

Friedhelm Hoffmann has already developed such a formula in calculating the amount of material missing from the end of Papyrus Spiegelberg, from which he was able to determine that there were five columns missing from the text.

Now, I won’t bore you with the derivation of the formula. It’s up there. It’s been in print for over a decade.

But it boils down to this: if S is the average difference between the winding measurement, and E is the last length—the length of the last, that is, the interior winding—then the theoretical length of the missing portion is Z, so that Z is approximately E squared minus 6.25 over 2S minus E.

We can apply this to the Joseph Smith Papyri and can obtain some usable results.

The Scroll of Neferirnub

For the scroll of Neferirnub, the final winding length is 7.8 centimeters, and the difference is .33 centimeters. The formula says that there is 64 centimeters missing, which is just over two feet.

Thus, this vignette was at the very end of the roll it was on.

Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing how much is missing off the beginning of the scroll.

The Scroll of Sesonchis

For the Sesonchis scroll, the final winding length is 14 centimeters, and the difference is .25 centimeters.

Thus, there were 365.5 centimeters left on the scroll, and this is the equivalent of 143.5 inches, or nearly 12 feet.

The vignette on Joseph Smith Papyrus II, shown here, is the furthest vignette into the Sesonchis scroll and normally occurs about halfway through the Book of the Dead, which means that the total scroll would be about 20 to 24 feet long.

And this is longer than some scrolls, but shorter than others.

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The Scroll of Horus

For the scroll of Horus, the initial winding length is 9.7 centimeters, the last winding is 9.5 centimeters, and there are seven windings in total. This leaves us with an average value of .0333 for S. E is, as already stated, 9.5 centimeters.

Plugging this into the equation gives 1,250.5 centimeters of missing papyrus. This is the equivalent of 492 inches, or 41 feet of missing papyrus.

Would such a thing be unusual?

Papyrus Turin 1791 is 57 feet 3 inches long. That’s a 1,745-centimeter papyrus. Papyrus Nesmin is 1,280 centimeters long, and the ritual roll of Imuthes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is 1,088 centimeters long, or 35 feet 8 inches long, while his Book of the Dead is longer still.

So such a length is not out of the question.

Could the Scroll Have Contained Additional Text?

While we know that the scroll of Horus has a Document of Breathings Made by Isis, about one in four of those documents contain additional texts. So the presence of additional text would not be unusual.

Now, the size of Horus’s scroll at first seems excessive, even though it is not unheard of. When I first plugged in the numbers a few years ago and got the result, I checked the measurements and then checked them again. Then I checked the formula again. Then I rechecked the formula’s derivation. Then I rechecked the assumptions behind the formula. Then I simply dismissed them and went back to the standard scroll length.

I had always assumed that the Sesonchis scroll would be the longer one, since the Book of the Dead is a much longer composition than the Document of Breathings Made by Isis, and my initial estimates of the length of the Sesonchis scroll, based on the length of text preserved and the percentage of the Book of the Dead preserved, had been almost 20 feet.

It was only after plugging in the numbers from the other Joseph Smith Papyri into the formula that I realized that the formula does give reasonable results.

The Nineteenth-Century Eyewitnesses

I have since realized that having a long roll of Horus brings all the 19th-century eyewitnesses into agreement.

If we look at the 19th-century eyewitnesses and ask the question, Which of the five known rolls that Joseph Smith had do the eyewitnesses identify as the source of the Book of Abraham? we come up with some useful information.

Charlotte Haven and Jerusha Blanchard identify the long roll as being the source of the Book of Abraham. On the other hand, William Appleby identifies the Book of Abraham as being written by the poor scribe, which matches the Horus roll.

Only if the Horus roll is longer than the Sesonchis roll do the 19th-century eyewitnesses agree. And for that to be the case, the unmounted portion of the Horus roll has to be longer than the 12 feet left on the Sesonchis roll.

Now, one could take an average of S for only the last four windings on the Horus, in which you get .05 centimeters, and still come up with a value for Z of 830.5 centimeters, or 27 feet 3 inches, for Horus’s roll. And it would still be longer than Sesonchis and well within the range of comparable Ptolemaic rolls.

Gustav Seyffarth and Facsimile 3

Furthermore, a lengthy Horus roll accommodates the otherwise problematic testimony of Gustav Seyffarth.

Seyffarth describes Facsimile 3, which is on the roll of Horus, and claims that a portion of the text he saw was an invocation to Osiris.

If all there was on the Horus roll was the Document of Breathings Made by Isis, then the problem is that there is no invocation to Osiris in the portion of text that Seyffarth would have seen, or anywhere in the document, for that matter.

With a longer roll, Seyffarth’s testimony can be accounted for, as there would certainly be room for an invocation to Osiris on the roll, if Seyffarth is even accurate in his interpretation, and who knows what else would be on the roll.

Who Was Horus?

Now, although scholarship is unable to tell us whether or not there was a Book of Abraham on the roll of Horus, perhaps we can tell something about the individual who owned the papyrus and the likelihood that the Book of Abraham might have interested him.

To do so requires moving from the size of the Joseph Smith Papyri to their message.

The puzzle that is before us is to determine what we can know about Horus.

The beginning of the roll of Horus lists Horus’s names, titles, and parents. Horus bore three titles, as in the first line, which are high-ranking positions that he held at some time in his life, perhaps concurrently, perhaps sequentially.

These titles are Prophet of Amonrasonther, Prophet of Min Who Massacres His Enemies, and Prophet of Chespis.

The last two titles are rare, the second one being extremely rare. Only four men are known to have borne it.

Dating Horus and His Family

Horus’s names and titles allow him to be linked with a number of other documents, such as a statue of his father, now in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore.

These documents yield a family tree covering eight generations, from Horus’s grandfather to his great-great-great-grandsons.

Thanks to a graffito from the Small Temple of Medinet Habu, shown here, we can date the family.

Horus’s third great-grandson is alive in 37 B.C. under the reign of Cleopatra VII, and he mentions there his—Horus’s son died before 157 or 153 B.C., and two of his grandsons died between 146 and 124 B.C.

This would place Horus roughly contemporary with Ptolemy V, which means that this roll from the Joseph Smith Papyri was contemporary with the Rosetta Stone.

Horus probably lived through the revolt of Haronnophris and Chaonnophris, and the priests of Amonrasonther seem to have some special connection with the revolt.

Horus was also probably well acquainted with all three of the languages of the Rosetta Stone. Two of them, hieroglyphs and Demotic, he probably knew better than any Egyptologist alive.

Horus’s Connections to the Temples at Karnak

Horus’s titles link him directly with three of the temples at Karnak.

Prophet of Amonrasonther links him as prophet with the main temple at Karnak. This one—well, not that one. I’ll show it later. But that’s Karnak.

Prophet of Min Who Massacres His Enemies links him with the Min temple north of the main temple, and Prophet of Chespis links him with the small temple of Chespis southwest of the main temple.

Let’s look at these titles in order.

Prophet of Amonrasonther

The first title is the Prophet of Amonrasonther, which means that he’s employed in the Great Temple of Karnak. We know a considerable amount about this temple, the largest surviving one in Egypt.

As prophet, he would have been initiated in the Festival Hall shown here, and he would have had—we have two of the Karnak Temple’s daily rituals preserved. In the first of them, shown here, at least the beginning shown here, the prophet lights a lamp and an incense burner and chants his way into the Holy of Holies through the hypostyle hall.

Holy of Holies, which is now largely destroyed back here. There he sees God and worships him face to face.

The other daily ritual is the execration ritual, where a wax figure of an enemy, on which the enemy’s name is written in fresh ink, was spat upon, trampled under the left foot, smitten with a spear, bound, and placed on the fire.

Any priest or prophet at Karnak would have been intimately acquainted with both of these rituals.

The Temple Library

The temple also had a library, which would have had king lists, annals, prophecies and chronicles, compendia of each nome, medical texts, wisdom and ethical teachings, books of lucky days, dream interpretation manuals, astrological and astronomical texts, lexical texts, geographies, festival books, ritual books, glorification texts, hymns, cult prescriptions, construction manuals, manuals of painting and relief, manuals of purification, offering manuals, calendars of feasts, manuals of cultic receipts, inventories, property lists, instructions, oracle texts, priestly correspondence, temple daybooks, and accounts.

It is from the library in Thebes that the earlier Greek writer Hecataeus wrote an account of Abraham.

Min Who Massacres His Enemies

Horus was also Prophet of Min Who Massacres His Enemies.

The term for “massacre,” “slay,” is also the verb used of slaughtering and sacrificing animals and can be used as a term for the sacrificial offering.

The texts specify that this is done by the knife held in the right hand and the foe in the left, or with a harpoon. The sacrifice is dismembered, and portions of him are put into the brazier as offerings.

The term for enemy, kheru, can also mean sacrificial victim.

The only place where representations of the rituals associated with Min Who Massacres His Enemies appear is on the interior portions of the Bab el-Abd, the gate of the enclosure wall of the Min temple north of the Great Temple of Amon at Karnak.

The gate was built by Ptolemy III Euergetes, the contemporary of Horus’s grandfather, Harsiesis, who was the first prophet of this deity, and the decoration was finished by Ptolemy’s son, Ptolemy IV Philopator.

Subduing Sinners and Burning Enemies

Unlike most of the deities featured on the gateway, Min Who Massacres His Enemies did not have his own temple in the Min complex because his rituals were performed in the courtyard of the Min temple.

Two rituals are associated with him. One of them is labeled “Subduing Sinners,” and the other is “The Burning of Enemies.” Both scenes come from the execration ritual, such as I described from Karnak.

The first scene identifies Min Who Massacres His Enemies with Reshep, a foreign deity imported into Egypt much earlier, and like many non-Egyptian deities imported into Egypt, he is given a different Egyptian name.

The second scene says that he, quote, “smites his enemies in the temple of burning,” and then burns them on the altar of burnt offerings. The gods also “overthrow your enemies in the slaughterhouse,” and they “sacrifice the enemy on your altar.”

The Altar of Burnt Offerings

The term for this altar, which is shown here on the bottom of the slide, of burnt offerings, akh, is described in a number of contemporary texts.

Papyrus Ankhsheshonq tells the story of a rebellion against Pharaoh led by Harsiesis, Pharaoh’s chief physician. The plot is unsuccessful, and the conspirators are rounded up.

Pharaoh “caused an altar of earth to be built at the gate of Pharaoh’s palace. He caused Harsiesis, son of Ramose, to be placed on the altar akh of copper with all the men whom he had and all the men who were in the plot against Pharaoh.”

Papyrus Vandier tells a story of a group of priests who are jealous of Merire and have him put to death so that the Pharaoh can live longer and Pharaoh can marry Merire’s wife.

But Merire appears to Pharaoh in a vision and reproves him. As a consequence, Pharaoh, quote, “caused all the priests to be brought outside the prison. Pharaoh went with them to Heliopolis. He caused them to be killed. He caused them to be placed on the altar before Mut, who carries her brother in Heliopolis.”

Accounts of Enemies Placed on an Altar

In Papyrus Rylands 9, the cry goes forth against one set of enemies, quote, “Let our lord bring these young men who have abandoned our ways, and let them be placed on an altar, akh.”

Papyrus P. Saqqara 2, published just last year, begins with the following fragmentary text, quote, “Necho caused to be set up an altar [broken] you yourself, they would have placed on the altar,” and then unfortunately breaks off again.

Thus, stories about slaughtering and then burning people on an altar were common in the time of the Joseph Smith Papyri, and Horus, the owner of Papyrus Joseph Smith I, had a professional interest in such things.

The Temple of Chespisichis

The Temple of Chespisichis is first mentioned by Lepsius, where it is listed as Temple V. Lepsius is a very early Egyptologist, 1840s.

By 1885, when Wiedemann visited the site, he found it, quote, “almost entirely in ruins.” The temple walls had been disassembled and used to fence a garden, and the inscriptions, quote, “almost entirely destroyed.”

But he found some probably reused blocks of the 18th Dynasty king Thutmose III, as well as fragments of 29th Dynasty king Nepherites I, as well as Ptolemaic materials, and some fragments he thought belonged to the 26th Dynasty king Psammetichus.

Later work indicates that the cult of Chespisichis seems only to have existed since the 19th Dynasty, about the time of Moses, where he is particularly known as a healer.

He is said to be one who, quote, “publishes the book of death and life.”

He is a savior god who rescues from all manner of sickness, death, and catastrophe.

Chespisichis at Tod and Karnak

Two other places depict him: the Temple of Tod, located a few miles south of Thebes, and on the Ptolemaic gateway of the main Khonsu Temple at Karnak.

There he is at Tod, and there’s his images at the Khonsu Temple in Karnak.

At the Tod Temple, the inscription refers to “subduing the weaklings,” a betu, a derogatory term for foreigners, and depicts, under the name of Chespisichis, a jackal-headed figure wielding knives.

The only inscription that really remains of the Temple of Chespisichis is a single stela now in the Louvre, more commonly known as the Bentresh Stela.

The Bentresh Stela

Stylistically, the Bentresh Stela most closely matches the Ptolemaic style of Ptolemy IV, although Ptolemy III has also been argued.

Lanny Bell reported the discovery of another copy of this text back in 1979, but he never published it.

The Bentresh Stela tells the story of an otherwise unattested king named Ramesses, whose names are a mixture of those of Ramesses II, IV, and one of the Thutmoses, who made his annual trip to Mesopotamia to collect tribute.

He marries a princess of Bakhtan, perhaps a corruption of the Egyptian word for Hittite, rather than a reference to Bactria, modern Afghanistan.

When the princess’s sister, Bentresh, gets sick, first a priest is sent, then the god Chespisichis to heal her of her illness. She had been possessed by an angel.

Finally, after many years, Chespisichis appears to the ruler of Bakhtan in a dream and requests that he be sent back to Egypt, and much tribute comes with him.

As Prophet of Chespisichis, we can be fairly confident that Horus would have read this text at some point in his life.

The god appearing in visions and dreams, Egyptian presence in Syria and Mesopotamia, angels interfering in human affairs, sicknesses caused by spiritual beings, and a savior—all of these are elements shared between the world of Horus and the Book of Abraham.

Facsimile 1

Next on the roll of Horus is a vignette which we know as Facsimile 1.

The facsimiles from the Book of Abraham interest people as three illustrations floating like islands in the sea of thousands of pages of words in our scripture.

Despite the interest in the facsimiles, there is no emphasis put on them in the Church or the current curriculum material.

Facsimile 1 is mentioned only once, in an optional enrichment activity in a lesson for 8- through 11-year-olds. Facsimile 2 has been mentioned only once in general conference in the last 65 years.

I cannot help but wonder if the critics attack the facsimiles because they are relatively insignificant in the Church.

Challenges in Interpreting Egyptian Vignettes

The facsimiles, like all vignettes, present a number of challenges, and it is worth remembering a few things about the placement of vignettes, the drawing of vignettes, and the identifications of figures on vignettes.

With regard to the placement of vignettes, I will read a number of quotes from Egyptologists about Late Period documents in general and Ptolemaic texts in particular.

The list is lengthy because it is a common thing, but everyone seems to want to treat the Joseph Smith Papyri as a special exception to a general rule, and I do not think we should do so.

From Malcolm Mosher, who specializes in Late Period religious texts, quote:

“In documents from the 21st Dynasty on, misalignment of the text and vignette of a spell can occur, with the text preceding the vignette or vice versa. While this type of problem can be observed sporadically from the late New Kingdom on, it is more common in the Late Period.

“The problem is particularly acute when more spells are textually represented for such a group than there are vignettes. It can be difficult to determine which spells have a vignette and which do not.

“A similar problem of misalignment frequently encountered in late documents is where the vignette for a particular spell is [with] the wrong text, and the correct text is not found in the document.”

Difficulties in Vignette Research

From Henk Milde, probably the foremost authority on papyrus vignettes, quote:

“Unfortunately, the connection between text and pictures is not always clear-cut. One has to take into account at least the following difficulties in vignette research that are here placed in eight categories:

“One, spatial discrepancy between text and vignette.” That means that the vignettes and the texts are far apart.

“Two, incorrect combination of text and vignette in the original.

“Three, incorrect combination of text and vignette in studies and editions of the Book of the Dead.

“Four, unclear relation between the text and vignette.

“Five, transfer or omission of pictorial elements.

“Six, inundation of the picture.

“Seven, combination and contamination of pictorial elements of different vignettes.

“And eight, conglomeration of texts under a vignette.”

Text and Vignette Do Not Always Correspond

From Marc Étienne of the Louvre, the vignettes, quote, “often do not have but a very distant connection with the discussion written beneath.”

From Jean-Claude Goyon, who has published so many Late Period papyri, quote, “The vignettes do not always correspond to the chapters which the text prescribes.”

This is particularly the case in Documents of Breathings Made by Isis, as discussed by Mark Coenen, probably the foremost expert on these texts, quote:

“The relation between the text and the vignettes in the text is not straightforward. The vignettes are not meant to illustrate the contents of the composition.”

In other words, the vignettes in the Document of Breathings Made by Isis usually do not match the text and may not even belong to it.

This would explain why, quote, “the vignette of Papyrus Joseph Smith I represents new themes and contains a variety of unique features.”

The Unique Vignette of Papyrus Joseph Smith I

The vignette in Papyrus Joseph Smith I is, in fact, unique.

After looking at vignettes in thousands of documents from the Saite Period on, I have not found any exact match or anything really very close.

Furthermore, in vignettes from the Ptolemaic Period, quote, “the genders of the various figures are often incorrect. The genders of priests and deities are occasionally confused.”

And we have a nice example on this papyrus, where, as you can see, successive vignettes depict the owner as both male in the top and female in the bottom.

The Perils of Identifying Iconography

Finally, I wish to mention something about the perils of identifying iconography in the vignettes.

The bulk of iconographic study in Egyptology is based on New Kingdom material, and there is a danger in applying such iconographic experience to Ptolemaic materials from a millennium later.

For instance, in the New Kingdom, a jackal-headed figure might be Anubis, but in the Ptolemaic period, jackal-headed figures might be Osiris or Chespisichis or Isdes or Duamutef, while Anubis might have a human or a lion head.

The Dendera Temple Roof Chapels

Egyptologists and many others point to parallels on the roof chapels of the Dendera Temple as parallels for Facsimile 1.

There are over 40 lion couch scenes in these chapels. Eleven are depicted in this wall just right here.

What the critics do not do, however, is read the inscriptions in the Dendera texts.

The word for the lion couch, nmỉt, is either homophonous or identical with the word nmt, abattoir, slaughterhouse, as well as a term for offerings. This is picked up in the inscriptions.

Let’s take the center one here. In the central scene of the innermost eastern chapel, we read, quote:

“He will not exist, nor will his name exist, since you will destroy his town, cast down the walls of his house, and everyone who is in it will be set on fire. You will demolish his district. You will stab his confederates, his flesh being ashes, the evil conspirator consigned to the lion couch so that he will no longer exist.”

In this one, Bastet, who is not pictured, quote, “is your protection every day. She has commanded her messengers to slaughter your enemies.”

Symmetrical with this scene, we have another scene with a broken inscription that mentions ashes and continues, quote, “to burn his flesh with fire.”

So here we have both a scene and descriptions that parallel the Book of Abraham.

Anubis and the Four Sons of Horus

Furthermore, in the same chapels we have depictions of Anubis and the four sons of Horus, who are presumably the figures under the lion couch in Facsimile 1.

They’re all holding knives.

Anubis here is identified as the one, quote, “who smites the adversaries with his might, since the knife is in his hand to expel the one who treads in transgression. I am the violent one who came forth from God after having cut off the heads of the confederates of him whose name is evil.”

The human-headed son of Horus is identified above his head as, quote, “the one who repulses enemies and who comes tearing out the enemies, who butchers the sinners.”

The baboon-headed son of Horus says, “I have slaughtered those who create injuries in the house of God in his presence. I have taken away the breath from his nostrils.”

The jackal-headed son of Horus says, quote, “I caused the hostile foreigners to retreat.”

And finally, the falcon-headed son of Horus says, “I have removed rebellion.”

Sacrifice and Lion Couch Scenes

So the inscriptions from Dendera associate the lion couch scene with the sacrificial slaughter of enemies.

Nor are they the only depictions of lion couch scenes to do so.

This one, for example, contains instructions that it is, quote, “to stab or cut your disobedient ones, to sacrifice your apostates, to overthrow your enemies every day. May your flames shoot out against your enemies each and every day, so that you remain while your adversaries are overthrown.”

This frequently occurring lion couch scene contains the description, “The lords of truth cause the sacrifice of the evildoers.”

This is interpreted as being either Shesmu, a knife-wielding jackal-headed deity, or Sobek, who is in his water, crocodile deity.

Imsety, Duamutef, and Qebehsenuef, the sons of Horus, are described as forming, quote, “the council behind Osiris, who cause the sacrifice of the evildoers by placing knives into the evildoers and incinerating the souls of the evildoers.”

They are said to be put in place by Anubis.

Excluding a sacrificial dimension to lion couch scenes is un-Egyptian, even if we cannot come up with one definitive reading at this time.

The Document of Breathings Made by Isis

Now, the next thing that we know for certain was on the roll of Horus is the misnamed Document of Breathings Made by Isis.

As I’m down to four minutes, um, and we’ll just have to skip over the Document of Breathings and Facsimile 3.

What Can Scholarship Prove?

Now, um, have we proven anything here?

No.

You cannot prove that the Joseph Smith Papyri contained the Book of Abraham, and you cannot prove that they do not.

And since, for the most part, Latter-day Saints and Egyptologists agree that the preserved portions of the Joseph Smith Papyri do not contain the Book of Abraham, there is the possibility of détente between the two.

As scholarship cannot tell what was or what was not on the missing papyri, Egyptologists could stick to what is knowable from the remains, and Latter-day Saints could trust God about the origins of the Book of Abraham.

Faith and Things Unseen

Our trust, or faith, in God becomes, for those fortunate enough to possess it, the basis of what we hope for, the evidence of things unseen.

Those who have it require no other proof.

Those who have chosen not to trust God will not be persuaded though one rose from the dead.

If we had the papyrus from which the Book of Abraham was translated—and I testify that we do not—the critics would not believe it, and most of them could not read it anyway.

The Irony of the Joseph Smith Papyri

One of the ironies of the Joseph Smith Papyri is that the Egyptologists who are quick to point out what the papyri are not are otherwise uninterested in what they contain.

They could be a laundry list, a get-well card, or the greatest piece of literature ever written. It does not matter, so long as they were not the Book of Abraham, so long as they are not scripture, so long as they do not contain the words of God, so long as they are not conveyed by a prophet of God.

Here, though, is another great irony.

The Rosetta Stone ends with a passage that directs that it be written, quote, “on a stone stela in the writings of words of gods”—that is, hieroglyphs—“the writing of letters”—that is, Demotic—“and the script of the foreigners”—that is, Greek.

For the Egyptians, hieroglyphs are literally the words of God.

The Words of God

The Joseph Smith Papyri contain the words of God conveyed by a prophet of God, just as, for the Latter-day Saints, the Book of Abraham contains the words of God conveyed by a prophet of God.

Watching the efforts to criticize the Book of Abraham, one is impressed with both the secularist and the sectarian search for a savior.

Secularists are not interested in being saved, for example, from their 32 percent illegitimacy rate, their higher-than-average failure rate in school, their double-average smoking—both tobacco and marijuana—and alcoholic drinking rates, their double national average of pornography.

Sectarians are not interested in being saved, for example, from their 50 percent higher-than-average divorce rates, their 88 percent promiscuity rates, their rapid increase in cohabitation, their involvement in pornography, or their double-average racism.

No, both these groups are looking for a savior to save them from the Mormons.

Some of the proposed saviors loudly proclaim, “Here am I, send me, and surely I will do it. Wherefore, give me thine honor.”

Knowing something of these proposed saviors, I cannot say that I have much faith in them.

The truth is, we all need a Savior, if for no other reason than to save us from ourselves. But that Savior is Jesus Christ.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Questions and Answers

Let’s see.

Do Any Non-Mormon Egyptologists Give Credence to the Book of Abraham as Ancient History?

Okay. Do you know of many non-Mormon Egyptologists who give credence to the Book of Abraham as ancient history?

Who will do so publicly? No.

Who will do so privately? It depends on who asks them.

Are You Bothered by the Contempt of Church Antagonists?

Are you bothered or puzzled by the strident contempt towards you by many Church antagonists?

Well, if they call the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call his servants?

It goes with the territory.

The “Abraham Upon” Inscription

Can you address the source of the inscription “Abraham upon”? Where did this papyrus come from, date, etc.?

Well, yeah, it’s a broken inscription. We only have half the line of the papyrus.

It’s Papyrus Leiden I 384. It comes from Thebes. It’s paleographically dated to the third or fourth century. I’m not sure I trust paleographic dates from that time.

But, I mean, it’s been published several times. I’ve even published a couple of notes on it myself and discussed the provenance.

It comes from the same town as the Joseph Smith Papyri. It comes from a priestly milieu like the Joseph Smith Papyri.

And there are all kinds of other interesting things we could say about it, but I guess we’ll get to some of the other—

Oh, this is the same question in more detail.

Why Were the Facsimiles Included?

Why were the facsimiles included in the current text of the Book of Abraham?

I don’t know. I’m not a very good mind reader.

What connection do they have to the text?

Well, Facsimile 2 and Facsimile 3 have no connection to the text.

Facsimile 1 has a very interesting connection to the text, and it’s worth reading it carefully and reading Abraham chapter 1.

The interesting thing is, only in Facsimile 1 do we have a clue of what’s going on in the facsimiles.

But even the facsimile itself and the explanations don’t tell you important things that are contained in the text.

For instance, if you just read the text, you wouldn’t know that the angel kills the Egyptian priest. Nothing in the picture depicts that.

And the facsimiles also contain other elements that don’t show up in the text.

And exactly what significance those have, we can debate till the cows come home, because we have no evidence.

How Well Do We Understand the Facsimiles?

So, for the most part, the facsimiles don’t connect with the text. And if they did, we might have a better chance of knowing what’s going on with them.

You take Facsimile 2, for example. Ask around all your Mormon friends and see if anyone has any clue what’s going on in that facsimile, and no one does.

And if you go read through the Egyptological literature, you’ll find that no one knows what’s going on from an ancient Egyptian point of view.

So we want to compare what Joseph Smith said about this facsimile, which we don’t understand, and what the ancient Egyptians said about the facsimile, which we also don’t understand.

And we want to say, are they the same?

Well, how would we know, since we don’t understand either one?

How Accurate Are Joseph Smith’s Explanations?

So it says—this follows straight on that one—Joseph Smith gives explanations for many of the characters in the facsimile. How accurate are his descriptions?

Well, do we know what the ancient Egyptians thought they meant?

It turns out that earlier this week, the latest edition of the FARMS Review came out, and I have a little article in there that addresses this particular issue.

But the main question is, if you want to compare what the ancient Egyptians say and what did Joseph Smith say, you have to figure out what is Joseph Smith saying.

And, for example, Facsimile 2, we don’t know. And for Facsimile 3, we don’t really know.

And then you want to compare what the ancient Egyptians said about them, and we actually don’t know as much as we think we do about that.

And in the meantime, somebody—they—so you want to know, say, is X equal Y, and in the meantime someone introduces Z.

So it’s a bait and switch.

Rather than getting what the ancient Egyptians said about the facsimiles, we get what the modern Egyptologists say about the facsimiles.

I actually have an article in the Egyptological literature that shows that, for the most part, when you look at what the modern Egyptologists say about the facsimiles and what the ancient Egyptians say about them, they don’t match.

So, for the most part, there’s no connection there at all.

So you’re really given bait and switch.

And so, no, the modern Egyptologist descriptions don’t match Joseph Smith’s, but then they don’t match the ancient Egyptians either.

What Would Hugh Nibley Say?

So now this is a really—this is a two-part question. One part is mind reading.

And it says, did you know Hugh Nibley?

Yes, I did.

About as well as anybody who is outside of his family and younger than his youngest child could be expected to know him, which is probably not all that well.

And then he says, and what would he say about this topic?

He’d probably say all kinds of things.

He would probably say them much better than I can, or I did.

He is actually quite eloquent, very insightful, somewhat out of date.

You know, somebody once told me that the true measure of a classic is if your work is still read more than a hundred years after you published it.

In that sense, the Book of Mormon is a classic.

It’s too early to tell if Nibley is a classic, and I probably won’t be one.

I have no delusions about—nobody ever has the last word on this topic. That’s an important thing to remember.

And those of you who are on the message boards get this ad nauseam, even if the last word isn’t worth saying.

So I’m not really going to try to guess what Nibley would say about this topic. He’s published quite a bit about it. You can look at it there, and from his perspective now, he probably knows a whole lot more about it than I do and probably would like to rewrite, revise everything he wrote.

Oops.

All right.

Robert Ritner’s Translation

Okay, so this is one that I missed. It was tucked away on the side.

Oh, I’ve already addressed that one.

It says, I received some anti- material that says that Dr. Robert Ritner trained you, and his translation of the Book of Abraham papyrus contradicts yours. Is this true, and how do you explain this?

Well, actually, it’s hard to say that it contradicts mine because I haven’t published mine yet.

So how would we know?

And let’s see, how do I explain this?

Well, I can explain it because I haven’t published one yet.

So I can see now I’m in the position where I can make a deliberate choice to either follow the line that he has set or deliberately shun it.

Actually, I’ve addressed some of this in an article that’s in press.

There are some places where I don’t know Professor Ritner is relevant. Ought to just leave him alone.

You pity the poor guy. He doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into.

But, you know, at this point anybody who says that is acting problematically because I haven’t published a translation.

Usually the argument is made that if you look at Klaus Baer and Robert Ritner’s and Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes’s translations, they don’t differ that much.

So this is a little bit puzzling.

But be that as it may, thank you all for your attendance.

Have a good lunch.