The three facsimiles: Joseph's explanations vs. Egyptology

The one place Joseph's translation can be checked against the original: the figures he named are Anubis, Osiris, Isis, Maat and the dead priest Hor.

What the Church claims

The canonized 'Explanations' correctly identify the figures in three Egyptian illustrations as scenes from Abraham's life and Abrahamic astronomy.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Untenable. Where hieroglyphic labels exist and Joseph appeals to them, his readings are wrong by the agreed judgment of Baer, Ritner and LDS Egyptologists; restorations and borrowed text show 19th-century handling.

The record

  • Facsimile 1 is the opening vignette of the Hor Book of Breathings and is the only facsimile whose original survives.
  • Baer reads Fac. 1 as the resurrection of Osiris (the deceased) on a lion couch attended by jackal-headed Anubis, with the ba-bird above, four canopic jars of the Sons of Horus below, a crocodile in water, an offering stand, and a palace-facade border; 'He is, of course, not holding a knife.' Joseph's explanation makes these an angel, Abraham on an altar, an idolatrous priest, and the idols of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Korash and Pharaoh.
  • The head of Anubis, the head of the ba-bird and the hand area were already missing when the papyrus was mounted in 1835; someone sketched the missing parts in pencil on the backing paper, and the printed facsimile supplies a human head and knife. Baer argues neither sketch nor woodcut copies what was lost, and that the papyri were in roughly their present state when Joseph worked on them.
  • Ritner calls the scene 'grotesquely misrepresented as a human sacrifice' and notes the woodcut wrongly restores the human-headed ba as a bird-headed 'Angel of the Lord'.
  • Facsimile 3 was the closing vignette of the same Hor roll (original lost). Ritner reads the hieroglyphic labels as Osiris (fig. 1), 'Isis the great, the god's mother' (fig. 2), 'Maat, mistress of the gods' (fig. 4), 'The Osiris Hor, justified forever' (fig. 5) and Anubis (fig. 6). Joseph said fig. 2 was 'King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head' and fig. 4 a 'Prince of Pharaoh ... as written above the hand'.
  • Facsimile 2 is a hypocephalus made for a man named Sheshonk/Sheshonq. LDS Egyptologist Michael Rhodes identifies fig. 1 as Khnum(-Re), fig. 2 Amun-Re, fig. 3 Re in the solar bark, fig. 4 Sokar, fig. 5 the Hathor cow, fig. 6 the four Sons of Horus and fig. 7 'clearly a form of Min', a seated ithyphallic god; Joseph called fig. 7 'God sitting upon his throne' revealing the 'grand Key-words of the Priesthood'.
  • Rhodes found that the characters in the right-hand rim and in figs. 12-15 are hieratic, upside-down, and copied from lines 2-4 of JSP XI (the Hor Book of Breathings), including the word snsn; he concludes damaged areas were filled in so the facsimile 'would look complete', and notes an early ink drawing with those areas blank.
  • Joseph declined to translate figs. 8-21 of Fac. 2 (temple-only, or 'in the own due time of the Lord'); Rhodes translates them as an ordinary prayer that the soul of 'the Osiris Sheshonk' may live and that his tomb never be desecrated.
  • In 2022 four LDS scholars (Smoot, Gee, Muhlestein, Thompson) wrote in BYU Studies that, taken as a whole, an Egyptological interpretation of the facsimiles does not match Joseph's explanations, while maintaining that some explanations capture Egyptian concepts.

The moving target

  • 1842: Published explanations of each numbered figure; they remain canonized in the Pearl of Great Price.
  • 2014-07-08: Cites the crocodile/heavenly ocean and Fac. 2 fig. 6 ('four quarters') as consistent with Egyptology; says scholars are not unanimous about the vignettes; is silent on Facsimile 3 and on the restorations.

The exchange

Kevin L. Barney, 'The Facsimiles and Semitic Adaptation of Existing Sources' (FARMS, 2005); echoed by Muhlestein

Semitic adaptation: the vignettes were adopted by a Jewish redactor ('J-red') in the Greco-Roman period to illustrate an Abraham text, just as the Testament of Abraham recast an Egyptian judgment scene and a Jewish tale put Abraham where Osiris stood. Joseph's explanations give the adapted, Jewish meaning, so mismatch with native Egyptian meaning is expected.

The answer: It is the most sophisticated option, but it has no documentary support: no Jewish Abraham text illustrated with these scenes exists, and these particular vignettes sit on a roll whose hieroglyphic labels name Hor, Osiris, Isis, Maat and Anubis. Joseph did not offer a free re-reading; he appealed to the writing ('whose name is given in the characters above his head'), and the writing says Isis. The theory also concedes the central critical point: the Egyptian meaning is not what Joseph said.

What they get right: Barney is right that Jews in Egypt did re-use Egyptian motifs (Testament of Abraham), so re-use as such is not absurd.

Rhodes 1977; Gospel Topics essay; Pearl of Great Price Central

Several explanations are genuine hits: the four Sons of Horus do represent the four quarters of the earth (Fac. 2 fig. 6); a crocodile can be a god of Pharaoh (Sobek/Horus); the hypocephalus is about cosmic/solar themes; Min is a creator-procreator, a fit image of God enthroned.

The answer: A few thematic overlaps out of some thirty explanations is what chance plus the visual cues (four figures, a throne, a boat, stars) would predict; Joseph called the same four Sons of Horus 'idolatrous gods' of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah and Korash on Fac. 1. No proper name is right in any case where the hieroglyphs supply one, and the hits require loosening Joseph's statement while the misses are read strictly. Rhodes himself admits no 'nexus' for fig. 5.

What they get right: Fac. 2 fig. 6 is a fair point: 'this earth in its four quarters' is close to the Sons of Horus as gods of the cardinal points.

Smoot, Gee, Muhlestein, Thompson, BYU Studies 61:4 (2022)

Facsimile 1 can legitimately be read as a sacrifice scene: Dendera chapels pair embalming scenes with ritual slaughter of enemies, Anubis and the Sons of Horus hold knives there, and 'lion couch' (nmit) puns on 'slaughterhouse' (nmt).

The answer: The authors concede the standard reading (Anubis preparing Osiris-Hor) and that embalming never aimed to kill the person on the couch. In this vignette Anubis's head and any knife are 19th-century restorations, not evidence; Baer and Ritner, who handled the papyrus, find no knife. Temple-wall symbolism about enemies of Osiris does not turn the owner Hor into Abraham.

John Gee; Pearl of Great Price Central

'Shulem' is an authentic Semitic name and 'principal waiter' matches an Egyptian court title.

The answer: The label above fig. 5 reads 'The Osiris Hor, justified forever': the owner of the papyrus. Showing that a name Joseph supplied is Semitic-sounding does not answer the fact that the text he pointed to says something else.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

Here Joseph's translation can be checked against the original, and he repeatedly tells the reader where the information is written. For Facsimile 3 he says the king's name 'is given in the characters above his head' and the prince's identity is 'written above the hand'. Those characters are legible. Ritner reads them as 'Isis the great, the god's mother' and 'Maat, mistress of the gods'; the 'waiter Shulem' is labeled 'the Osiris Hor', the dead man for whom the roll was made; the 'slave' is Anubis; 'Abraham' on the throne is Osiris. Baer independently gave the same identifications in 1968. Facsimile 1 survives. It shows Anubis tending the mummy of Hor on a lion couch with canopic jars beneath; the parts that make it look like a sacrifice (a human-headed priest, a knife) fall exactly in the holes in the papyrus and were drawn in. On Facsimile 2 the gaps were patched with upside-down hieratic lifted from the Book of Breathings, and the figure Joseph called God revealing the key-words of the priesthood is the ithyphallic fertility god Min, as the LDS Egyptologist Rhodes states. The texts Joseph said could not be revealed are a routine prayer for a man named Sheshonq. LDS scholars now grant that an Egyptological reading does not, overall, match the explanations. The remaining defenses relocate the meaning to an unattested Jewish redactor or to private revelation.

The apologetic case

Egyptian images were polyvalent and were re-read by Egyptians, Greeks and Jews in the Ptolemaic period, exactly when these papyri were made. If a Jewish community in Egypt attached these stock vignettes to an Abraham text, the 'meaning' Joseph restored would be theirs, not the funerary priests'. Several explanations (four quarters, celestial/solar symbolism, creator-god on a throne) do track real Egyptian ideas that Joseph had no way of knowing in 1842, when Champollion's work was beyond his reach.

What would change this

An ancient Jewish or Egyptian document that uses these vignettes with Abrahamic identifications, or a demonstration that the hieroglyphic labels on Fac. 3 can be read as Joseph read them.

Closely related

Sources

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