The Book of Abraham

1
The Book of Abraham
2
The Book of Abraham is one of the books contained
in The Pearl of Great Price, and is therefore
recognized by Mormons as inspired
scripture. Reading from the introduction to the
book as published in The Pearl of Great Price
3
The Book of Abraham. A translation from some
Egyptian papyri that came into the hands of
Joseph Smith in 1835, containing writings of the
patriarch Abraham. The translation was published
serially in the Times and Seasons beginning March
1, 1842, at Nauvoo, Illinois.
4
On the 3rd of July 1835, Michael H. Chandler
came to Kirtland to exhibit some Egyptian
mummies. There were four human figures, together
with some two or more rolls of papyrus covered
with hieroglyphic figures and devices. As Mr.
Chandler had been told I could translate them, he
brought me some of the characters. -- History of
the Church, vol. 2, p. 235
5
Soon after this, some of the Saints at Kirtland
purchased the mummies and papyrus, a description
of which will appear hereafter, and with W.W.
Phelps and Oliver Cowdery as scribes, I commenced
the translation of some of the characters or
hieroglyphics, and much to our joy found that one
of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham,
another the writings of Joseph of Egypt, etc.,a
more full account of which will appear in its
place, as I proceed to examine or unfold
them. -- History of the Church, vol. 2, p. 236
6
From History of the Church, vol. 2, pp.
348-351 The records were obtained from one of
the catacombs in Egypt, near the place where once
stood the renowned city of Thebes, by the
celebrated French traveler, Antonio Sebolo, in
the year 1831. He procured license from Mehemet
Ali, then Viceroy of Egypt, under the protection
of Chevalier Drovetti, the French Consul, in the
year 1828, and employed four hundred and
thirty-three men, four months and two days (if I
understand correctly)Egyptian or Turkish
soldiers, at from four to six cents per diem,
each man. He entered the catacomb June 7, 1831,
and obtained eleven mummies. There were several
hundred mummies in the same catacomb about one
hundred embalmed after the first order, and
placed in niches, and two or three hundred after
the second and third orders, and laid upon the
floor or bottom of the grand cavity. The
7
two last orders of embalmed were so decayed,
that they could not be removed, and only eleven
of the first, found in the niches. On his way
from Alexandria to Paris, he put in at Trieste,
and, after ten days' illness, expired. This was
in the year 1832. Previous to his decease, he
made a will of the whole, to Mr. Michael H.
Chandler, (then in Philadelphia, Pa.,) his
nephew, whom he supposed to be in Ireland.
Accordingly, the whole were sent to Dublin, and
Mr. Chandler's friends ordered them to New York,
where they were received at the Custom House, in
the winter or spring of 1833. In April, of the
same year, Mr. Chandler paid the duties and took
possession of his mummies. Up to this time, they
had not been taken out of the coffins, nor the
coffins opened. On opening the coffins, he
discovered that in connection with two of the
bodies, was something rolled up with the same
kind of linen, saturated with the same bitumen,
8
which, when examined, proved to be two rolls of
papyrus, previously mentioned. Two or three other
small pieces of papyrus, with astronomical
calculations, epitaphs, c., were found with
others of the mummies. When Mr. Chandler
discovered that there was something with the
mummies, he supposed or hoped it might be some
diamonds or valuable metal, and was no little
chagrined when he saw his disappointment. "He was
immediately told, while yet in the custom house,
that there was no man in that city who could
translate his roll but was referred, by the same
gentleman, (a stranger,) to Mr. Joseph Smith,
Jun., who, continued he, possesses some kind of
power or gifts, by which he had previously
translated similar characters." I was then
unknown to Mr. Chandler, neither did he know that
such a book or work as the record of the
Nephites, had been brought before the public.
From New York, he
9
took his collection on to Philadelphia, where he
obtained the certificate of the learned, and from
thence came on to Kirtland, as before related, in
July. Thus I have given a brief history of the
manner in which the writings of the fathers,
Abraham and Joseph, have been preserved, and how
I came in possession of the samea correct
translation of which I shall give in its proper
place.
10
The Book of Abraham as published in The Pearl of
Great Price consists of five chapters and three
facsimile drawings, along with Joseph Smiths
explanations of the details of the facsimile
drawings. The drawings are called facsimiles
because they are copies of three original pieces
of artwork contained in the collection that was
purchased from Mr. Chandler. Two of the original
pieces were drawings on the papyri, and the other
was a disk. Copies of the scrolls themselves,
showing the original Egyptian hieroglyphic texts
and artwork, were not published.
11

• In 1856, copies of the three reconstructed
  drawings were sent to M. Theodule Deveria, an
  Egyptologist who worked at the Louvre Museum in
  Paris France.
• Deveria immediately accused Joseph Smith of two
  things
• Falsely explaining the drawings
• Falsifying the drawings themselves

But How can someone who has not seen the
original drawings claim that they were falsified?
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13
Deveria claimed that the drawings were from a
book known to Egyptologists as the Book of
Breathings. The ancient Egyptians had some very
elaborate beliefs about the afterlife. During
their history, they developed what is called the
Book of Breathings around 500 B.C., about 1300
years after even the latest estimates of when
Abraham lived. This Book was a group of texts
that was meant to accompany high-ranking
Egyptians on their journeys into the afterlife.
Thus, each individual Book is a customized
version of a standard text, and consists of
several standardized breathings that were
customized with each dead persons individual
name. Every non-Mormon Egyptologist who has seen
the three facsimile drawings has noted that the
drawings have been clearly altered in certain
areas.
14
When Joseph Smith was killed in 1844, the Book of
Abraham papyri were in the possession of his
wife, Emma. Emma eventually sold some things to
a museum in St. Louis, and it was believed by the
Mormons that the Book of Abraham papyri were
among that collection. The museum in St. Louis
sold their collection to the Museum of Chicago.
When that Museum was destroyed in the great
Chicago fire of 1871, it was believed that the
Book of Abraham papyri were destroyed in the
fire.
But
15
On November 27, 1967, a stunning announcement was
made a collection of papyrus manuscripts
believed to be the manuscripts sold by Michael
Chandler to Joseph Smith were presented to the
LDS Church by the New York Metropolitan Museum of
Art.
16
As it turns out, the Book of Abraham papyri were
not a part of the collection that Emma Smith sold
to the museum in St. Louis. Instead, she had
sold them to a Mr. A. Combs. As Dr. Fischer,
Curator of Egyptian Art at the New York
Metropolitan Museum explained in 1967 Our first
knowledge of them goes back to 1918 when our
first curator, Dr. A.M. Lythgoe, was shown these
fragments by a Mrs. Alice Heusser, a woman who
lived in Brooklyn.Her mother had been
housekeeper to a man named Combs, and Combs had
bought them from the family of Joseph Smith.On
the death of Mr. A. Combs, they were left to Mrs.
Heussers mother.they were offered to us by the
widower of Mrs. Heusser, Mr. Edward Heusser. We
acquired them then in 1947.
17
The papyri consist of eleven pieces that were
glued to 19th century stiff backing paper by the
Mormons. They were clear and legible, and both
the text and pictures on them were very readable.
All of the pictures and most of the text were
written with black ink, although some is written
with red ink. The biggest problem with them is
that some small fragments are missing. This is a
common problem with ancient scrolls, including
the Dead Sea Scrolls. What happens is that the
scrolls become very stiff and brittle over time
and also stick to each other. When they are
discovered and unrolled in modern times, it is
very easy for small fragments to break off. This
is apparently what happened to these papyri as
well, and the missing fragments were lost when
the scrolls were originally unrolled before
Joseph Smith ever saw them.
18
The Book of Abraham scroll contained two
pictures and some text. These two pictures
correspond to facsimiles 1 and 3 of the Book of
Abraham, although with critical differences that
become extremely important. How could Deveria and
other Egyptologists who examined the facsimiles
have known that the pictures were altered
without seeing the originals that Joseph Smith
worked from? Well, since 1967 we have had access
to the originals, and it is extremely significant
that fragments are missing from the exact places
where Deveria and other Egyptologists have
claimed that Smith altered the pictures!
19
The Book of Abraham scroll that Smith purchased
from Chandler had small fragments missing, and so
the pictures that the facsimiles were based on
were incomplete. Neither Smith nor anyone else
in Kirtland had ever seen complete versions of
these kinds of Book of Breathings pictures, so
some parts had to be filled in by
them. Egyptologists since Deveria have claimed
that these missing parts have been reconstructed
with drawings that make no sense when compared to
the rest of the common Book of Breathings
scenes that are portrayed.
20
The Three Facsimile Drawings Considered
21
Facsimile 1
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30
This is a well-known scene from the Osiris
mysteries, with Anubis, the jackal-headed god, on
the left ministering to the dead Osiris on the
bier. The pencilled(?) restoration is incorrect.
Anubis should be jackal-headed. The left arm of
Osiris is in reality lying at his side under him.
The apparent upper hand is part of the wing of a
second bird which is hovering over the erect
phallus of Osiris (now broken away). The second
bird is Isis and she is magically impregnated by
the dead Osiris and then later gives birth to
Horus who avenges his father and takes over his
inheritance. The complete bird represents
Nephthys, sister to Osiris and Isis. Beneath the
bier are the four canopic jars with heads
representive of the four sons of Horus,
human-headed Imseti, baboon-headed Hapy,
jackal-headed Duamutef and falcon-headed
Kebehsenuf. -- Richard A. Parker, Chairman of
Department of Egyptology at Brown University,
Dialogue A Journal of Mormon Thought, vol. 3,
no. 2, p. 86
31
"The vignette on P. JS I shows the resurrection
of Osiris and the conception of Horus. Osiris is
represented as a man on a lion-couch attended by
Anubis, the jackal-headed god who embalmed the
dead and thereby assured their resurrection and
existence in the hereafter. Below the couch are
the canopic jars for the embalmed internal
organs. The lids are the four sons of Horus, from
the left to right Imset, Hapi, Qebeh-senuwef, and
Duwa-mutef, who protect the liver, lungs,
intestines, and stomach, respectively. At the
head of the couch is a small offering stand with
a jug and some flowers on it and two larger vases
on the ground beside it. The ba of Osiris is
hovering above his head. The versions of Osiris
myth differ in telling how Seth disposed of
Osiris after murdering him, but he was commonly
believed to have cut Osiris into small pieces,
which he scattered into the Nile, leaving Isis
the task of fishing out and assembling the parts
of her brother and husband so that he could be
resurrected and beget Horus. In this she was
helped by Horus in the shape of a crocodile, who
is represented in the water
32
below the vignette. There are some problems
about restoring the missing parts of the body of
Osiris. He was almost certainly represented as
ithuphallic, ready to beget Horus, as in many of
the other scenes at Dendera. I know of no
representations of Osiris on a couch with both
hands in front of his face. One would expect only
one hand in front of his face, while the other
was either shown below the body (impossible in P.
JS I) or grasping the phallus. In the latter case
it would be hard to avoid the suggestion of
Professor Richard A. Parker that what looks like
the upper hand of Osiris is actually the wingtip
of a representation of Isis as a falcon hovering
in the act of copulation. -- Klaus Baer,
Associate Professor of Egyptology at Chicagos
Oriental University, Dialogue A Journal of
Mormon Thought, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 118-119
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34
Facsimile 2
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37
The original of Facsimile 2 was what is called a
hypocephalus. A hypocephalus is an art- and
text-covered disk that Egyptians would place
under the head of the deceased at burial. The
hypocephalus that Mr. Chandler sold to the
Mormons in 1835 has never been found, and it was
not a part of the collection turned over to the
LDS Church in 1967. The unreconstructed version
of it comes from a book held by the LDS Church
called Joseph Smiths Egyptian Alphabet and
Grammar. This is a book written by Joseph Smith
but never published by him, which contained the
characters of the Book of Abraham papyri
alongside his English translation of those
characters. Included in the book is his copy of
the original hypocephalus that Chandler sold to
the Mormons.
38
In December 1979, Edward H. Ashment wrote the
following as part of an article in Sunstone
magazine. Ashment had received a BA from BYU in
history with a minor in anthropology, and a Ph.D.
from the University of Chicago in Egyptology. At
the time he wrote this article about the
facsimiles, he worked in the Translation
Department of the LDS Church
39
Any study of the second facsimile of the Book of
Abraham is hampered because the original document
is not available. In spite of that, a reasonably
good copy of the original, before it was restored
by Hedlock, has been preserved and is in the
Church Historian's collection of the Joseph Smith
Egyptian Papers in Book of Abraham folder 5.
Moreover, there are many other hypocephali
available for comparison. The Church Historian's
facsimile is different from the Hedlock version
in one very important way it reveals that the
original papyrus was damaged in the very areas in
which Hedlock's version radically differs from
other Egyptian hypocephali--in other words, the
same phenomenon that has occurred with the first
facsimile apparently recurs with the second.
40
Mormon Egyptologist Michael Dennis Rhodes has
pointed out several things about hypocephali in
general and about this one in particular. What
is most damaging is his statement that
Hypocephali first appeared during the Saite
Dynasty (663-525 BC) and their use continued down
at least to the Christian era. He also states
The text of this particular hypocephalus
indicates that it was dedicated to Osiris, the
god of the Dead, on behalf of the deceased. --
BYU Studies, Spring 1977, p. 260, 274
41
Joseph Smith also explained Figure 3 in
facsimile 2 as God sitting upon His throne.
Concerning this, Dr. Albert M. Lythgoe, head of
the Department of Egyptian Art at the
Metropolitan Museum, stated And when it comes
to the Mormon picture of God on His throne,
signifying the Grand Key-Words of the Holy
Priesthood as revealed to Adam in the Garden of
Eden, why that is a sad joke. The
representation is the most common of all in
Egyptian papyri. It is the view of the Sun god
in his boat. The Mormon version is right in
that this is the picture of a god, but it is the
chief god of a polytheistic people instead of
God, who was worshipped by monotheistic Abraham,
and pictures of him the Sun god were among the
widely distributed pictures in Egypt. -- New
York Times, December 29, 1912
42
Facsimile 3
The original papyrus behind Facsimile 3 has
apparently been lost, but in any case the only
issue here regards Joseph Smiths interpretation
of the drawing, as the original was apparently
undamaged, and Egyptologists have never, to my
knowledge, accused the Mormons of altering the
drawing.
43
The drawing in facsimile 3 represents a common
and well-known scene from The Book of
Breathings. This has even been admitted by no
less a figure than Dr. Hugh Nibley, a longtime
Mormon defender, writing in the Improvement Era
magazine (Sept. 1968, p. 76). He admits that
figures 2 and 4, which Joseph Smith explained as
Pharaoh and The Prince of Pharaoh, are
unmistakably drawn as Egyptian women.
44
The Text of the Book of Abraham Papyri
45
Shortly after the papyri were turned over to the
LDS Church, photos of the eleven pieces were
printed in the Churchs Improvement Era magazine,
in the February 1968 issue. The most important
papyrus is what Dr. Nibley labeled Papyrus
Joseph Smith XI. Small Sensen text
(unillustrated). It is the most important piece
because the hieratic characters on it are the
same as the characters in the Grammar next to
Smiths English translation of the Book of
Abraham. This papyrus originally joined with two
others. On the right it joined with the papyrus
that contained the original broken version of
facsimile 1, which has been labeled Papyrus
Joseph Smith I. On the left it joined with
46
Papyrus Joseph Smith X. Hieratic text, the
Sensen papyrus (unillustrated). Thus the
original Book of Abraham scroll as Joseph Smith
received it had the Facsimile 1 original on the
right, which joined to the Small Sensen
papyrus, which joined the Papyrus X. The papyrus
upon which Facsimile 3 is based was almost
certainly attached to the left edge of this, but
it remains lost and so this cannot be proven.
Sensen is the Egyptian word for breathings, and
the simple fact that Dr. Nibley himself labeled
them as such is an admission by the chief Mormon
scholar involved that the text is part of the
Egyptian Book of Breathings. Every
Egyptologist who has considered the text has
reached this same conclusion, including Mormon
ones.
47
This fact has been stated most clearly by Dr.
Nibley himself Upon their publication in 1967,
the Joseph Smith Papyri Nos. X and XI were
quickly and easily identified as pages from the
Egyptian Book of Breathings.its contents
closely matched that of other Egyptian writings
bearing the titlecommonly translated Book of
Breathing(s). A most welcome guide to the
student was ready at hand in J.de Horracks text,
translation, and commentary on a longer and
fuller version of the same work (Pap. Louvre
3284) which he published in 1878 along with
another version of the text (Louvre No. 3291) and
variant readings from a half dozen other Paris
manuscripts.The Book of Breathings is the great
time-binder it comes towards the end of Egyptian
civilization.The Book of Breathings is not to be
dismissed, as it has been, as a mere talisman
against stinking corpses it is a sermon on
breathing in every Egyptian sense of the word.
48
Conclusion
49
Joseph Smith took a common Ptolemaic-era funerary
document and claimed that it was it was a scroll
written by Abraham himself.