The Book of Abraham

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:

“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.”

“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

“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

From History of the Church, vol. 2, pp : “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 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 …

…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 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 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, …

…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 …

…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 same—a correct translation of which I shall give in its proper place.”

The Book of Abraham as published in The Pearl of Great Price consists of five chapters and three facsimile drawings, along with Joseph Smith’s 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.

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: 1. Falsely explaining the drawings 2. Falsifying the drawings themselves But… How can someone who has not seen the original drawings claim that they were falsified?

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 person’s 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.

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…

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.

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. Heusser’s mother….they were offered to us by the widower of Mrs. Heusser, Mr. Edward Heusser. We acquired them then in 1947.”

The papyri consist of eleven pieces that were glued to 19 th 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.

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!

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.

The Three Facsimile Drawings Considered

Facsimile 1:

“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

"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…

…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 Chicago’s Oriental University, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, vol. 3, no. 3, pp

Facsimile 2:

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 The unreconstructed version of it comes from a book held by the LDS Church called Joseph Smith’s 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.

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:

“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.”

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 ( 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

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

Facsimile 3: The original papyrus behind “Facsimile 3” has apparently been lost, but in any case the only issue here regards Joseph Smith’s interpretation of the drawing, as the original was apparently undamaged, and Egyptologists have never, to my knowledge, accused the Mormons of altering the drawing.

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.

The Text of the Book of Abraham Papyri:

Shortly after the papyri were turned over to the LDS Church, photos of the eleven pieces were printed in the Church’s 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 Smith’s 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…

“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.

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 title…commonly translated ‘Book of Breathing(s).’ A most welcome guide to the student was ready at hand in J.de Horrack’s 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.”

Conclusion:

Joseph Smith took a common Ptolemaic-era funerary document and claimed that it was it was a scroll written by Abraham himself.