Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Why is facsimile 3 of the book of Abraham unlike any scene in the Egyptian corpus? There have been some Egyptologists who have tried to point out that facsimile 3 of the book of Abraham is just like standard Egyptian funerary stuff. But we brought someone on today who has actually done his homework. He brought the receipts, and he has gone through every single copy of the Book of Breathings to show that there's something really complex going on here in facsimile 3. And some of it may actually substantiate what Joseph Smith represents is going on in the facsimile. So welcome, Quinten Barney.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Can you give us a little background? Who are you, and why should we care about what you have to say about the facsimiles today?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: I did my master's in religious education at BYU as well.
And while I was doing that, that's where I came up with this idea to do my master's thesis on facsimile number three, the Book of Abraham. I've done a lot of undergraduate research on that area, and I thought this was an area that still needed some work done.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: And that's what this is. This is a published version of your master's thesis. And it is quite fascinating, especially because facsimile 3 is pretty much. It's the black sheep of the facsimiles. It's the one we don't pay attention to very much. But there's some really interesting stuff going on in there.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: And part of what's interesting about that is it's the one that tells a story that's actually not in the text of the Book of Abraham as we have it. We've talked before about how there might have been more to the Book of Abraham.
And so it's like it's our only source for some of this new lore about Abraham. Yeah, new Abrahamic lore that Joseph Smith dropped. Right. So anyway, and we'll get into more of that, I think, as we go here.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Okay, so let's get diving right into it. Facsimile 3.
Why don't more people study facsimile 3?
[00:01:42] Speaker B: And I think one of the reasons that it's been neglected and not really done, not really have a lot of research done on it is because we don't have any copies of it in any of the, you know, the Joseph Smith papers and the church history library.
It'd be great if we could find something, but we don't.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Presumably, it may have been lost in the Chicago Fire or something?
[00:02:04] Speaker C: Well, I was going to say that was one of the things I thought was interesting reading your thesis is we actually, we don't have any copies of it, but we do have some historical descriptions of it, including from someone who went to, I think, was it The
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Chicago Museum, St. Louis Museum.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: And they actually provide a description of the scene there, which is kind of interesting.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So we do have a description of it which tells you that it was likely there and then it went to Chicago probably. Who knows, maybe it'll turn up. But it's probably been destroyed. But we don't have a drawing of it either. Any copy that they made at the time either. The earliest copy we have of it is the lead printing plate that was used to print it in the Times and Seasons.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Critics will often say that facsimile three is just a dime a dozen copy of standard funerary material. That it's just like, oh, it's just a standard Book of the Dead judgment scene or what does that even mean? Can you unpack, like, what's going on with the Book of Abraham here?
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. So several, several people, not just critics, even have commented, like, this is just, you know, a standard scene. It's one of the standard funerary scenes we see in these documents, I think
[00:03:12] Speaker D: Encyclopedia of Mormonism, even Michael Rhodes, a latter Day Saint, Egyptologist. Right. He even says, oh, it's comparable Book of the Dead, chapter 125, which is. We've all kind of seen, you know, you've seen a copy probably of this. It's the famous judgment scene of the dead. Yeah. So many people made this comparison.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: And what's funny with that scene like the Book of the Dead, you know, the scene that usually is accompanied with the text of 125. It's the judgment scene, the weighing of the heart.
I have a copy of it hanging in my office and I brought it in several times to my classes for object lesson or whatever. And my students, my high school students will not only tell me what it is, they'll tell me, the owner like, oh, yeah, that's the scene from the Book of the Dead of Hunefer. I'm like, yeah, what?
[00:03:53] Speaker D: What? What?
[00:03:54] Speaker B: I never got to learn. This was stuff they learned over at the school.
And I'm like, I never learned that stuff. That's cool. But I mean, they, they, they know it. They can identify some of the figures and everything. But it's probably the most famous scene when people think of a picture on Egyptian papyrus.
[00:04:09] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: They usually think of that.
[00:04:11] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: And I think when, when you take that and then you look at facsimile number three, there's clearly some parallels there.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: And I think throne, you've got people.
I don't know, that's kind of where it ends. You've got an altar there.
[00:04:27] Speaker D: You got the lotus plant, you know, the offering table.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: You've got someone standing behind the throne. You got people standing in front of the throne. You've got hieroglyphs above it.
You've got a lot. And just the way our brains work, you know, we have this like analogical reasoning where we like to think. You know, we teach find patterns. We're unfamiliar with find patterns and. Yeah, find patterns and make the comparisons. We kind of catalog it in our minds like that. But we don't naturally stop to think like, hey, what are the differences though? What do the differences mean? And I think that's. I mean, it's so easy to just pass it off. It's like, oh, yeah, it's just one of those funerary scenes that we see all over the place.
[00:05:04] Speaker D: John Gee has an article he published some years ago on facsimile three, and he has a thing. What? Facsimile three is not right. So here's what John says about this. Here's what's missing from facsimile 3, which indicates it's probably not a standard judgment seen from the Book of the Dead.
If we compare. This is John speaking or writing. If we compare this Description of facsimile 3, we find that the description does not match at all. Facsimile 3 lacks the 42 gods. It is missing. Hathor holding a wasp scepter. There's no balance scale. Thoth is missing from the left of the non existent scale. Horus is missing. The figure generally identified with Anubis is not grasping the side of the scale, but the waist of the man. Since Thoth is not depicted, he's not shown reading anything. Ammut is absent along with the knife, sword and scepter. The lotus is missing with the four sons of Phorus on top of it. Although Osiris is there, he's not depicted seated within any chapel. Almost all of the elements which the Egyptians thought were important for the scene are conspicuous by their absence from facsimile 3.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Okay, a lot of differences there. And I think it's important to also note, like what the stakes are. So what if it is a presentation scene or a judgment scene or what are these things? Like, who cares? The stakes are that according to the explanations given. Facsimile 3. It says that this is supposed to be Abraham sitting on a throne. Sitting on pharaoh's throne, talking about astronomy. So if this is actually supposed to be Osiris and there's, like, a funerary scene going on here, then that would undercut, in theory, Joseph Smith's explanation of what's going on.
[00:06:34] Speaker C: Does that text help us address any of these inconsistencies or confusions at all?
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Some would say so, and I think it can, but there's some problems with it. So this. The text has been trans. More problems. More problems. Here we go.
So.
And usually you see that with the Book of Am. You say, well, Egyptologists have said. Right. Well, let's look at what Egyptologists have said. Right. There are three Egyptologists who have printed translations of the hieroglyphic text. I'm sure there's more that have actually looked at it and everything. But as far as published translations, there's Klaus Baer, who did this back, like,
[00:07:11] Speaker D: 68, right when the papyri resurfaced. He did the first stab at it in dialogue.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
And it's funny, you have. I mean, you have 10 columns of text, and you have the line underneath. And he felt comfortable only translating, like, just under half of it. And he said, this is difficult to read. Wow. And so he gave a little bit of translation there. And then just over 30 years later, you get Robert Rittner, who is a student of his, and he publishes his translation.
And then shortly after that, you have Michael Rhodes publishing his translation as well.
And both Rittner and Rhodes publish complete translations. So we're gonna use those. That's what I use.
[00:07:50] Speaker D: Yeah. They're the two benchmarks, Rittner and Rhodes. It's also helpful because they both provide, like, transliterations and hieroglyphic transcriptions of their translation. Well, not Rittner, though. Rhodes does both a hieroglyphic transcription and a transliteration. Rittner, just as transliteration.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Which is really helpful to have that,
[00:08:08] Speaker D: to kind of see if we can just justify their reading. But let it be stated for the record, when people say, well, Egyptologists have translated. You mean two guys in the history of Egyptologists looking at this have actually bothered to translate, not comment on the iconography? I think this is ISIS, because it looks like ISIS. That's what they were doing in the 19th century, 1912. No, like, actually made an attempt to, like, translate the hieroglyphic figures that are in the facsimile. Okay.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: Two of them. What I do actually think Is kind of interesting. Just as a side note, a side interest is, like, the names of some of the Egyptologists who have at least looked at this are some of the biggest names in the field.
Petrie Breasted, James Henry and I. Is it Sayis?
[00:08:50] Speaker D: Is that Sayis? Archibald. Henry says Archibald.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: I mean, those are like. Like in the early 20th century, those are like some of the biggest Egyptologists.
[00:08:58] Speaker D: Was there Edward Meyer? You go down the. Who's there?
[00:08:59] Speaker C: It's kind of. It's kind of cool. Like. And I think a big part of that is. I mean, I know, like, some of them are because Spalding, like, you know, writes to him and tries to get their opinion. But, like, when there's only 33 examples. Right. Of the Book of Breathings.
Right. The copy that we have here is every bit as important as any other copy. Right.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: If not more important, because it's likely the oldest. Well, it's probably the oldest one we have.
[00:09:24] Speaker C: Yeah. So it is worth noting, like, some of the biggest Egyptologists have looked at this and most of them have not attempted to translate the character, the captions.
[00:09:36] Speaker D: Excellent figures.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: I would get the impression from ex Mormon Reddit that they've all done.
[00:09:42] Speaker D: Most of them have basically said they punted on it.
[00:09:46] Speaker C: Yeah, most of them basically said, we can't read this.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Right.
And spoiler alert, Rittner and Rhodes will say the same thing with a lot of their translations too.
[00:09:55] Speaker D: Let's look at them. You have them pulled up here?
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Yeah, side by side here. And they do they translate all of it? They give us a translation of all of it. And they agree on a lot of. They do agree on each of the figures, on the identity, I guess. Right. Isis, Osiris and Whore and everything we'll talk about. Just because they agree doesn't necessarily mean that it's right.
We gotta point that out. And not saying that they're wrong either. We'll talk about that.
We don't necessarily know what you're saying, but it is. I mean, when you've got various translations, especially on significant phrases here, it tells you something.
And ultimately, maybe we just want to know the identity of these figures, but if they are disagreeing on big chunks of the text here, it tells you they can't quite see some of these hieroglyphs eye to eye either. You know what I mean?
[00:10:49] Speaker D: Look at all those question marks and brackets in Rittner's translations there.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: And there's even more in his footnotes. He offers alternative translations. It could be this, it could be that. But what's Interesting. With both of them, A lot of the footnotes will say.
They'll compare it to another text. They'll say, this copy of the Book of Breathings has this phrase, and that's used as a justification. Right. There's clearly some comparison going on with other copies of the Book of Breathings when it comes to their translations of these hieroglyphs.
[00:11:17] Speaker D: And that's what you've done, right, Quentin?
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:11:19] Speaker D: Let's look at it.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Let's take a look.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: Show us what it looks like.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: So let's take a look, and we can do this. We'll just do it with maybe Isis here.
Isis.
So it's translated. Isis, the great mother of the God, or the great Isis, mother of the God. That's how Rittner and Rose translate it. If you were to look at the captions above who we think Isis and all the other copies of the Book of Breathings, you can clearly see her name written out on pretty much all of them. And I apologize if these pictures aren't the highest quality, but depending on who sent them my way, that certain copies. But you can still see. You can see the three glyphs that make the name Isis. Right. And there's different ways to write the name Isis. I should point that out.
So granted that. But they all seem to spell the same.
[00:12:09] Speaker C: Well, yeah, they're pretty consistent here.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:11] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: And then when you take a look at facsimile number three.
[00:12:16] Speaker D: Oh, boy, look at that.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: This is what you have.
And there is not really much resemblance there, at least in my opinion, maybe. Well, clearly, other people do have their opinions, but I don't. The same resemblance. Again, you could argue like, well, this was headlock that screwed it up. Or maybe there's a lacuna. You know, it got lost earlier on or somewhere between, you know, the papyri and making the printing plate. And maybe. But this is what we're left with. This is all we have to work with. And when you look at that, it's pretty difficult to argue and say that is Isis. Yeah, I think what. What you have here is you. You have, you know, the. You know, following it where it says the mother of the God. You know, you have that title assigned, and you see that in other copies of the Book of Breathings, too. So then naturally we say, oh, well, this must say Isis, then. But there's a problem with that.
And the problem. Well, there's several problems. Number one, mother of the God is applied to multiple deities in ancient Egypt. It's not just limited to Isis. And you might say, well, but the, the figure standing behind with the cow horns and the sun disc, that it looks like Isis, especially in all the other copies of the book reading. Yes, that's true. So I don't want to say it's clear why people would say this is Isis. I get it. And that makes sense. It's a logical assumption.
But it's an assumption. Right. You know what I mean? It is an assumption.
[00:13:48] Speaker C: We're filling in a blank there.
[00:13:49] Speaker D: Yeah. In other words, what's happening here? There's a difference between translating the text as it actually stands as it's actually legible, as opposed to here's how we think it should read based on other copies that seem to resemble our copy. Therefore, this is the assumed reading that appears the safest. Right?
[00:14:08] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:14:08] Speaker D: Now that is a legitimate scholarly method that you use in other texts to fill in lacunae or things like that. But it's an assumption.
And so it's not actually as definitive as some try to make it seem.
[00:14:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And I think understanding the nuances here and where the gaps in our knowledge are, I think is absolutely vital.
If we're ever going to understand what's really going on here and how that actually relates to Joseph Smith's explanations, we've got to be upfront and transparent about what we do and don't know. Right. When we just assume that we know that that is Isis because the text says Isis, we're eliminating, we're glossing over difficulties and assumptions that have to be made that may prove important in sorting out what's really going on here.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: There's maybe an unearned confidence there, especially when it's touting as like slogans online about the book of Abraham being disproved.
[00:15:10] Speaker D: So let's assume, though, for the sake of argument, that it is Isis. Okay, Again, I concur with Rhodes and Rittner. From an Egyptological perspective, that is a safe identification. Totally not certain, but safe.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Okay, so there's clearly ambiguity about what this hieroglyph says. But Joseph Smith in his explanations say that figure number two, which is identified here as Isis, is supposed to be King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head. So how do we make sense of that?
[00:15:37] Speaker D: Guess who Isis is identified as in multiple different captions and multiple texts, multiple epithets in the Grecoman period.
[00:15:45] Speaker C: Well, it surely cannot be Pharaoh, because that's a man.
[00:15:49] Speaker D: Yes, it surely is Pharaoh. Neil and I will refer listeners to my. To our chapter on this. So even assuming, for the sake of argument it is Isis. Identifying Isis as Pharaoh, which Joseph Smith does in facsimile 3, has some grounds from an Egyptological perspective.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Right? Absolutely. Yeah. So I think it is important. Let's say it is Isis. Right.
And it very well could be Isis. Right. And maybe what you have. And this has been argued in other places, but Joseph Smith is taking these images and seeing a connection with his translation of the book of Abraham that is being received by revelation somehow. Right. And he's saying, oh, this scene looks similar to what I'm reading in this text here.
Let's put it there. Right.
[00:16:35] Speaker D: Syncretize it.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Yeah, let's put it together. And so surely this person must be pharaoh, because in the text, we probably would have a text had he been able to finish the translation, which he wasn't. Right. We don't have the complete translation of the book of Abraham, but maybe you'd have this scene where Pharaoh's standing behind the throne or whatever, and Abraham's sitting on it, and he said, oh, this goes together. This probably is it.
And so he identifies it as Pharaoh. But then you have an issue, because in the explanations for the facsimile, if you were to go back to the explanations, you have several instances, not on all of them, but some. Several instances where it doesn't just identify the individual, but it goes so far as to say, as written in the characters above the hand or above the head or whatever. Right. And so you have an example of what people say, you know, Joseph smacks actually translating or attempting or trying or pretending to translate the Egyptian hieroglyphic text here.
But there's a problem with that as well that I think is important to point out.
The first is the hieroglyphs. It's interesting to know. And this is the first facsimile that doesn't seem to be cropped or cropping. Well, I guess not the first, but the first facsimile was cropped.
[00:17:54] Speaker D: So facsimile one, there's three columns of hieroglyphic captions to the right, and there's like one or two to the left on the left. And there's even in the middle, there is one or two little hieratic captions for some of the figures. And those are taken out of the printed facsimile.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: Yes. And you can see on that paper, and I know you talked about this with Carrie, but the glue marks there, indicating there's probably some papyrus there which would have had more glyphs. Right.
But they're cropped out of the facsimile And Joseph makes no attempt to translate any text in that facsimile. He just gives explanations for the figures. Well, facsimile number two, you have a lot more text, but nowhere in the explanations does he attempt to translate it. In fact, every time he gets to the text, he says, can't be revealed this time. It'll be revealed later on, or whatever. If the world can figure this out, so be it. And we like to think of that. This is like, oh, Joseph Smith has some secret knowledge here.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: Like, wonder what it was, Some secret esoteric knowledge.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: But he simply could just be saying, like, I don't know how to read it. I don't know how to read it. Got to reveal it somehow. Maybe one day an Egyptologist will come along. He's like, I don't know what this means, what this says.
Well, fact symbol number three, you have an opportunity to crop out the hieroglyphs. They're not cropped out, which I think is interesting. That line beneath is left in hieroglyphs above are included. It would have been so much easier to just pay Reuben Hedlock a little bit less money and say, hey, you don't need to do those.
But he includes it.
And so that makes this unique. But then you now have this translation, the explanation where it says, like, it's not just King Pharaoh, but it's King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head.
What's important to recognize here is we do not have a manuscript copy of these explanations. It's the only facsimile we don't have one for.
And so you don't know for sure.
Is this Joseph Smith having his scribe write this down that this is King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above the head?
Or could this be an editorial gloss made by the editors of the Times of Comics? Yeah. And I know Bruce Van Orden has talked about this in his biography of W.W. phelps. He talks about how he was kind of a ghostwriter for Joseph Smith, an editor, you know, nominal editor for him, and he would publish things under Joseph's name. But there's evidence that this was actually William W. Phelps that was doing this under the direction of Joseph, of course, and everything.
We know that Phelps was very interested in the Egyptian language and other ancient languages. Right. He played a big role in stuff with that.
Could it be possible that Joseph says, oh, yeah, this is Pharaoh, and oh, yes, this is Shulem, and this is Olimlah. Right. And this is the Prince. And then Phelps, as he's Helping get this ready for print. He takes it a step further and says, well, if that's Pharaoh, then clearly that's what the text above him says.
Right. And is this him? And then later Joseph Smith gets published. Joseph looks at it and maybe doesn't bother to make any corrections. Maybe it does and just lets it be. It's not a big deal.
But I think it is interesting. Joseph doesn't attempt to translate text in facsimile one. He doesn't attempt to do it with facsimile number two. But then all of a sudden, facsimile three, we do have him.
[00:21:15] Speaker D: That is interesting.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: We don't know for sure, but I think it's important to point out.
[00:21:18] Speaker D: Well, I think we should point out that there are statements from Joseph Smith saying, today I assisted Brother Hedlock in preparing the cuts of the Times and Seasons. And as editor of the Times and Seasons, he approves at least or allows to go to print sort of the final version of. But you're definitely right. And other scholars with the Joseph Smith papers have now kind of urged caution in over attributing to Joseph Smith, like the actual sort of words coming on the page and some of the things that are published under his supervision. The idea of a ghostwriter like William Phelps or Wilford Woodruff, who's assisting with the newspaper at the time. Right. It's possible that they have a hand in formulating some of these explanations. So we don't want to entirely divorce Joseph Smith from these explanations since he does have a role in their publication. But yeah, I think we need to be sensitive to the possibility that it's not just purely Joseph Smith, that others may have had a hand in crafting them. And just being more nuanced how we parse out some of these details, let's
[00:22:15] Speaker C: maybe get back to some of these figures here. So we talked about isis, but I know that one of the big ones that generates a lot of controversy is the dark skinned figure at the end there. And he's typically identified as Anubis.
And there's a lot of assumptions going into that. If I'm understanding right, there are a
[00:22:38] Speaker B: lot of assumptions in there. I'll just start by saying it could be Anubis, it could be Anubis, but there are some problems with that. And so I think it's important to recognize those.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Well, what does Joseph Smith say that this character is? I mean, he says in facsimile number three that this is, let's say, see Olimla, a slave belonging to the Prince. So that's what Joseph Smith says this figure is. But we're saying here that Egyptologists have said, no, no, no, no, that's Anubis. Joseph Smith got that wrong.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: And why do they say it's Anubis?
[00:23:11] Speaker D: Yeah, the black skin.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: The black skin.
We won. Anubis is off to drawn with black skin. And then, of course, the hieroglyphs above.
And we'll look at those. But one thing I've seen floating around out there, people say we have the printing plate. This is clear evidence. If you zoom in and look at the printing plate, you can clearly see where the snout of Anubis has been chiseled away.
And you can see chisel marks there. You totally can. Where else do you see chisel marks?
[00:23:41] Speaker D: Everywhere else surrounding it.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Everywhere. Yeah.
That's the nature of making the woodcut. You chisel away the negative, so space. So there's no special extra chiseling going on there that you would be able to identify. So I don't think that's a very good bit of evidence that, oh, this was clearly meant to be Anubis. But there are some other things that are worth pointing out, and one of them is the hieroglyphs above him. I think I actually have the slide blanked out on there, but maybe we could talk. The hieroglyphs above, like Djed Madhu. Words spoken or recitation by. And then the name that follows is Anubis, usually. Right. And it's Impu. You have the reed and the water and the little square there. But if you look, it's missing a glyph.
[00:24:32] Speaker D: Yep. I'm looking at right here. This is Michael Rhodes transcription of the hieroglyphs. Yeah, I can see Djed in. So words spoken by. Or Djed Medu' in words spoken by. And then where he's supposed to have inpu, the name of Anubis there. I mean, like, you kind of squint. I can see the reed leaf. I can see the water. I can see Yin. I can see Netcher. Right. The determiner for God.
[00:24:54] Speaker C: But very clearly that.
[00:24:56] Speaker D: That's. I know, yeah. Everybody's like, you nerd. But no, the key figure.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Yin.
[00:25:02] Speaker D: I don't know. I mean, you kind of squint and maybe. But again, just. I think it's a little dicey.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: It could be. It could have flaked off.
[00:25:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: If it didn't. I mean, like, you read in there, Djed Medu.
You have two ins in there, right?
[00:25:16] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: And usually they abbreviate the Djed Medu formula kind of thing there. And the yin isn't actually written out. And so that's an argument and everything. But what's interesting is the determinative on Anubis here. And I think Rhodes gives the. You know, the hieroglyph there is like the seated jackal.
[00:25:35] Speaker D: Yeah, he's got a seated jackal and then the God flag.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: There's a lexicon in Egyptian lexicon. You can look at the glyphs in there. You can look at every.
Every known attested determinant for Anubis. And this one here, as seen, in fact, slimming number three does not seem to line up with any of those known determinative.
[00:25:58] Speaker C: Really.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: It doesn't. If you zoom in on it, you'll see there. It's like you can kind of see almost like a face and maybe an ear there, but then like two arms sticking out and then it kind of hooks up maybe for legs.
There's none that look like that. You do have a seated jackal, but not with those two arms ever and everything. So there's an issue there too.
But there's a lot of unique things in this facsimile. Maybe the scribe was just doing things a little different. And it is meant to be Anubis, but there are some problems with this. And I think if you were to just simply go off the glyphs alone,
[00:26:38] Speaker D: you're gonna have a hard time.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: You might question a little bit more. People may be a little bit more hesitant to say it's probably Anubis and maybe this is. This glyph is missing. But. But no, they're going off of the iconography as well. And so they're able to be a little bit more, you know, sure, they think on this has got to be a noob, but let's talk about some of these. These problems.
[00:26:57] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: Number one, in the Book of Breathings, Noobis is never leading or. Sorry, he's always leading. He's never following.
[00:27:04] Speaker C: He's never following.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: But here he's following. He's not leading. In fact, stupid number three, he's behind.
He has both hands on kind of like the waist of the individual in front of him.
You don't see Anubis ever doing that. He's always leading from the front.
So you have this weird anomaly there also. He's always drawn with two tall, distinct ears on top of his head. And you can see both ears in every instance in the Book of Breathings, at least. And here you have. And people have said, like, oh, you can even see the remnant of his ear on top of him, you can
[00:27:39] Speaker A: see a little something, stubby thing coming out of his head.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: Which is true.
The question then is, if Joseph Smith is so intent on disguising Anubis and making it look like some slave here, why only do part of it? Why not remove the entire ear?
[00:27:54] Speaker C: Why leave an ear?
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Yeah, remove the entire ear. I mean, it could have been fixed at any step of the process from the papyri to the printed plate. But no, that little stub was left there and likely intentionally.
And so I think there's a problem with that. You don't see both ears clearly, then
[00:28:13] Speaker C: that's actually a proto Mormon, because Mormons
[00:28:16] Speaker D: have
[00:28:19] Speaker A: A question I would ask then is like, okay, if he didn't deliberately get rid of it, like, well, what on earth is that thing sticking out of his head? Like, what could that be?
[00:28:28] Speaker B: That's a great question. I don't know the answer to that. But if you were to look at other.
Other. You can see, like, cones on.
[00:28:36] Speaker D: Yeah. Basically a little cone thing with, like, incense on their head.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So it could be something like that, but I don't know exactly what it is, but there are possibilities.
Another thing, and this is, again, it's interesting, Rittner, I know, comments on this in his footnotes, but he says, well, Joseph Smith, you know, he sees this individual with, you know, with black skin. So instantly he jumps, oh, this must be a slave. Right. And Joseph Smith is clearly confused here.
This is Anubis. Right.
But the problem is with that is a lot of their assumption, this is Anubis is based on the black skin as well. Right.
But Anubis is not the only individual in Egyptian texts, in paintings, on walls and tombs, or on papyri with black skin. There are others. There's the shadow of the deceased. There's Nubians that are painted with black skin and other individuals, you see. And so you can't base it just off the color in there. This is the only figure in facsimile three with black skin. So it must be Anubis. You can't do that.
[00:29:42] Speaker C: And I think it's maybe worth noting that there's also in facsimile one. Right. There's the priestly figure that a lot of people think was probably Anubis with a jackal head. Right. So we actually know Joseph Smith had two opportunities to comment on a black figure. A black figure. And in the first instance, he did not jump to like, oh, it's a slave, you know, and maybe that's because of the figure's position there made it more difficult to interpret that way. But clearly Joseph Smith isn't just equating black skin with slaves here.
I also think that would be an odd interpretation for Joseph Smith to have jumped to. If, as some people argue, there was actually a jackal headed snout there.
I don't know that that's an association Joseph Smith necessarily would have made.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: In all the copies of the Book of Breathings, you have some that are colored, the vignettes are colored, and some where they're just line drawings. And Anubis is only colored black when the entire vignette is also colored.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Huh. So like in these other line drawings, no black there.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: Right. His skin is not filled in as black, but he's painted black when you have other colors in there too. So I think that that's important to recognize as well. It's again, anomaly. It could be Anubis, but as you stack up all these things, you just have to take a little bit more seriously. You can't just pass off and say so confidently, oh, this has got to be Anubis. There are some challenges you have to deal with and wrestle with before you can confidently say that.
Another thing, the headdress. So Anubis always has this headdress on, right? And it kind of goes over his shoulders and hangs down. You don't see that in facsimile number three.
And if this were a change, if it was originally there on the papyri and this was a change that Joseph Smith instructed Hedlock to make, it would have had to have been made on the very first step of the process of making the plate. Right.
But you don't see any of that there. And so no evidence that this was removed later on or something in the process.
And then the clothing, Anubis, if you look at facsimile three, he's wearing identical clothing to the figure in front of him. Right.
You don't see Anubis wearing the same type of clothing as the deceased individual in any of the copies of the Book of Breathings, except for there's an exception of one copy of the wearer. They look similar, but this is a colored vignette and Anubis clothing is painted yellow and the deceased is wearing white. And it goes a little bit lower. The deceased kind of goes up like mid chest and his is there at the waist on Anubis. And so. But if you look at him, he's always wearing this short kilt, right? And then he's got like the longer one. Behind, kind of in the background, behind his legs.
[00:32:21] Speaker C: He's kind of got like an overall sort of top going on some of those.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Yes, he does.
So the clothing doesn't match up either. And I think that. And I'm not saying there are images outside of the Book of Breathings where Anubis does dress like we see the figure dress in facsimile number three, but when we're comparing it with. With the Book of Breathing's corpus, which is probably the best comparisons you're going to get, and the most significant ones, he's not wearing the same clothing. And I think that's also worth recognizing.
[00:32:51] Speaker C: So, basically, we have two things that have been cited for saying this is Anubis, the text and the iconography.
But the text actually has difficulties in terms of identifying it as Anubis. And honestly, the iconography, it looks like, has even more difficulties. Like, iconographically, it doesn't actually look like it is at least the Book of Breathing's version of Anubis in these throne scenes that you would usually see.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: And I would just add, too, if you look at the translations that Rittner and Rhodes gave for these lines or these columns above Anubis, they agree for the most part, up to a point, like recitation or. Sorry, yeah, recitation by Anubis is what Rittner gives. And then Rose gives words spoken by an Anubis, and they both had, you know, who makes protection. But then after that, the rest of it, they totally. What does it say?
[00:33:48] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: What does it say?
[00:33:50] Speaker D: With a big fat question mark from Rittner on his translation.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: Right. And it's just so interesting that is. Is it really that the names were just written in such good, you know, handwriting, but everything else wasn't? Or is it that they're comparing in order, you know, they're using other things.
[00:34:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:34:05] Speaker D: And again, making that assumption.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: I think there's a lot more assumptions. I guess I'm assuming there are a lot more assumptions being made than they're willing to put in their. In their translation.
[00:34:16] Speaker D: I'm looking through one last kind of note on that and sort of some of the unique elements in facsimile three that perhaps sort of queued up Joseph Smith to associate this with astronomy or Abraham teaching astronomy. I'm looking through your vignettes in your thesis.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: There are stars.
[00:34:33] Speaker D: There are stars. Yes, Exactly. Our facsimile 3 has stars above the heads of the figures. I'm not seeing others.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: None of the other ones do.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: Interesting. So the one facsimile that Says this is about astronomy, has stars, and that's not attested in any other facsimile.
[00:34:50] Speaker C: From the Book of Breathings.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: Yeah, from the Book of Breathings. You do see it in other vignettes elsewhere, but in the Book of Breathings, if I remember right, I don't think it's.
[00:34:58] Speaker D: Yeah, I was just looking here, and I'm not.
[00:35:00] Speaker C: I mean, I didn't notice it in any of the images you showed. Obviously, that wasn't a comprehensive showcase.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: That itself is pretty remarkable.
[00:35:06] Speaker C: On the images, that is, we have
[00:35:08] Speaker A: all of these characters that maybe we've. Egyptologists have made assumptions about and we've kind of broken down here, like. Okay, let's actually take this a little bit more carefully. What does all of this say about the meaning of facsimile three in the Book of Abraham?
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Great question. I think.
Well, ultimately, the meaning of facsimile number three, at least what it was intended to do. You have to look at the explanations in the scriptures there. Right. As published and in the times and seasons. And at the bottom, it's described. This is a scene where Abraham is in Pharaoh's court and he's teaching astronomy to the Egyptians.
And if you look at the text of the Book of Abraham, we don't have that described anywhere. It's alluded. That's going to happen. As you read Abraham, chapter three, he's
[00:35:55] Speaker C: taught astronomy by the Lord with the intention of going to teach Pharaoh and the Egyptians, but then never the story.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: And I wish we did, but we don't have. And you don't have that in Genesis either.
Right.
But what you do have, you have over at least a half dozen examples from antiquity where you have writers talking about Abraham going to Egypt and teaching astronomy to the Egyptians.
[00:36:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know, Stephen. I don't know.
[00:36:25] Speaker D: Does that sound familiar at all?
[00:36:26] Speaker B: To us?
[00:36:27] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: Abraham, an astronomer wonder. Right. Joseph Smith clearly had all these ancient texts in front of him to be able to read and show to. But honestly, we don't. We don't have any evidence that he was, you know, referring to these sources. And a lot of them, most of them weren't even available to him or translated at that time. And so to me, I think the cool thing with facts, to me, number three, at least for me, it's a testimony to me that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. I guess it would be the learning by study and the learning by faith. This would be like the learning by study testimony. In me that has been confirmed by that study, by faith, by the Power of the Holy Ghost that this really is a prophet of God working to bring us this text.
And it testifies of so many things, so many doctrines and of the divinity of God and Jehovah. And I think it is a testimony that we have a living prophet on the earth that God has called to provide us scripture.
[00:37:27] Speaker C: Well, I don't know. Gallon H. Oaks hasn't given us any interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphs or vigilance.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: Come on.
[00:37:35] Speaker C: Because this has been a very interesting but very technical, technical conversation.
The long and the short of it
[00:37:43] Speaker B: is
[00:37:45] Speaker C: this is probably, you know, when you compare it to other scenes that you see, it has the most similarities. Let's just say it has the most similarities with what you would call a presentation scene.
It's not totally consistent with that, but it has the most similarities. It's some sort of throne scene and there seems to be an initiate or whatever you might want to call it,
[00:38:05] Speaker D: being brought into the presence of deity.
[00:38:06] Speaker C: Being brought into the presence of deity, which I feel like we should note is very Latter Day Saint Temple esque. There's a lot of cool stuff going on there, regardless of how you make sense of it.
But the Egyptological interpretations of that have.
There's some complications and maybe some problems with there. Maybe Rhodes and Rittner are right about a lot of this stuff and other Egyptologists who have commented on. But we maybe need to pump the brakes. We don't know exactly what's going on there. And the interpretation Joseph Smith has given us does seem to have actually some connection to. For one thing, Egyptological interpretations. We mentioned Isis as Pharaoh. There's other things we could talk about.
[00:38:47] Speaker A: Shulem, the principal waiter, John of the.
[00:38:49] Speaker C: Yeah, and I do think it is worth noting like Kerry Muhlstein has published on Osiris being associated with Abraham and people would.
Egyptologists associate that enthroned figure with Osiris. So there are maybe some interesting things going on there. But what you're talking about here is aside from that, how Joseph Smith interpreted the scene and applied it to the Book of Abraham or what we think might have been in the Book of Abraham does have resonance and contact with ancient Abrahamic traditions. Absolutely, absolutely. So that's a lot to unpack.
[00:39:24] Speaker D: But.
[00:39:25] Speaker C: But I think it's really cool.
[00:39:26] Speaker D: Yeah, for sure.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: It's so cool.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: And if you guys want to dive more into this, we're going to put a link in the description. You can read this master's thesis all about unpacking Facsimile 3 for free. You can get a PDF of it at the BYU Scholars Archive. And remember, you can study deeply and believe boldly. And we'll see you next time.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: Sam.
