Book of Abraham

Reconstructed papyri from existing and known fragments

Eleven mummies and several papyri were discovered near the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes by Antonio Lebolo between 1818 and 1822. Following Lebolo's death in 1830, the mummies and assorted objects were sent to New York with instructions that they should be sold in order to benefit the heirs of Lebolo.[4] Michael H. Chandler eventually came into possession of the mummies and artifacts and began displaying them, starting in Philadelphia.[5] Over the next two years Chandler toured the eastern United States, displaying and selling some of the mummies as he traveled.[6][7]

In late June or early July 1835, Chandler exhibited his collection in Kirtland, Ohio. A promotional flyer created by Chandler states that the mummies "may have lived in the days of Jacob, Moses, or David".[8] At the time, Kirtland was the home of the Latter Day Saints, led by Joseph Smith. In 1830 Smith published the Book of Mormon which he said he translated from ancient golden plates that had been inscribed with "reformed Egyptian" text. He took an immediate interest in the papyri and soon offered Chandler a preliminary translation of the scrolls.[9] Smith said that the scrolls contained the writings of Abraham and Joseph, as well as a short history of an Egyptian princess named "Katumin".[10] He wrote:

[W]ith 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 [scrolls] 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.[7]

Smith, Joseph Coe, and Simeon Andrews soon purchased the four mummies and at least five papyrus documents for $2,400 (equivalent to $68,000 in 2022).[9][11]

On the right, Page 3 of the Book of Abraham Manuscript in the handwriting of Warren Parrish. The characters from the Breathing Permit Hôr were copied sequentially into a column titled Character, with accompanying English text in a column titled, Translation of the Book of Abraham.[12]

Ancient Egyptian writing systems had been a subject of fascination for centuries, drawing the attention of scholars who attempted to understand the symbols. The Rosetta Stone, an ancient monument discovered in 1799, had the same message written in ancient Egyptian and the Greek alphabet, allowing for the first comprehensive understanding of ancient Egyptian in modern times. However, at the time Smith began his efforts the Rosetta Stone was not fully understood. Not until the 1850s would there be a wide scholarly consensus on how to translate ancient Egyptian writing.

Between July and November 1835 Smith began "translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham, and arranging a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients."[13] In so doing, Smith worked closely with Cowdery and Phelps.[14][15] The result of this effort was a collection of documents and manuscripts now known as the Kirtland Egyptian papers. One of these manuscripts was a bound book titled simply "Grammar & A[l]phabet of the Egyptian Language", which contained Smith's interpretations of the Egyptian glyphs.[15][16] The first part of the book focuses almost entirely on deciphering Egyptian characters, and the second part deals with a form of astronomy that was supposedly practiced by the ancient Egyptians.[17] Most of the writing in the book was written not by Smith but rather by a scribe taking down what Smith said.[15]

The "Egyptian Alphabet" manuscript is particularly important because it illustrates how Smith attempted to translate the papyri. First, the characters on the papyri were transcribed onto the left-hand side of the book. Next, a postulation as to what the symbols sounded like was devised. Finally, an English interpretation of the symbol was provided. Smith's subsequent translation of the papyri takes on the form of five "degrees" of interpretation, each degree representing a deeper and more complex level of interpretation.[17]

In translating the book, Smith dictated, and Phelps, Warren Parrish, and Frederick G. Williams acted as scribes.[18] The complete work was first published serially in the Latter Day Saint movement newspaper Times and Seasons in 1842,[nb 2] and was later canonized in 1880 by the LDS Church as part of its Pearl of Great Price.[1]

Eyewitness accounts of how the Papyri were translated are few and vague. Warren Parish, who was Joseph Smith's scribe at the time of the translation, wrote in 1838 after he had left the church: "I have set by his side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks [sic] as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration from Heaven."[20] Wilford Woodruff and Parley P. Pratt intimated second hand that the Urim and Thummim were used in the translation.[21][22]

A non-church member who saw the mummies in Kirtland spoke about the state of the papyri, and the translation process:

"These records were torn by being taken from the roll of embalming salve which contained them, and some parts entirely lost but Smith is to translate the whole by divine inspiration, and that which was lost, like Nebuchadnezzar's dream can be interpreted as well as that which is preserved;"[23]

For many years, it was believed that all the papyri that served as the basis for the Book of Abraham had been lost during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

After Joseph Smith's death, the Egyptian artifacts were in the possession of his mother, Lucy Mack Smith, and she and her son William Smith continued to exhibit the four mummies and associated papyri to visitors.[73] Two weeks after Lucy's death in May 1856, Smith's widow, Emma Hale Smith Bidamon, her second husband Lewis C. Bidamon,[nb 5] and her son Joseph Smith III, sold "four Egyptian mummies with the records with them" to Abel Combs on May 26, 1856.[73][91][92] Combs later sold two of the mummies, along with some papyri, to the St. Louis Museum in 1856.[90] Upon the closing of the St. Louis Museum, these artifacts were purchased by Joseph H. Wood and found their way to the Chicago Museum in about 1863, and were promptly put on display.[93] The museum and all its contents were burned in 1871 during the Great Chicago Fire. Today it is presumed that the papyri that formed the basis for Facsimiles 2 and 3 were lost in the conflagration.[90][94]

After the fire, however, it was believed that all the sources for the book had been lost.[95] Despite this belief, Abel Combs still owned several papyri fragments and two mummies. While the fate of the mummies is unknown, the fragments were passed to Combs' nurse Charlotte Benecke Weaver, who gave them to her daughter, Alice Heusser. In 1918 Heusser approached the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) about purchasing the items; at the time, the museum curators were not interested, but in 1947 they changed their mind, and the museum bought the papyri from Heusser's widower husband, Edward. In the 1960s the MMA decided to raise money by selling some of its items which were considered "less unique". Among these were the papyri that Heusser had sold to the museum several decades earlier.[96] In May 1966, Aziz S. Atiya, a Coptic scholar from the University of Utah, was looking through the MMA's collection when he came across the Heusser fragments; upon examining them, he recognized one as the vignette known as Facsmile 1 from The Pearl of Great Price.[96][97] He informed LDS Church leaders, and several months later, on November 27, 1967, the LDS Church was able to procure the fragments,[96] and according to Henry G. Fischer, curator of the Egyptian Collection at the MMA, an anonymous donation to the MMA made it possible for the LDS Church to acquire the papyri.[97] The subsequent transfer included ten pieces of papyri, including the original of Facsimile 1.[98] The eleventh fragment had been given to Brigham Young (then church president) previously by Chief Banquejappa of the Pottawatomie tribe in 1846.[99]

Three of these fragments were designated Joseph Smith Papyrus (JSP) I, X, and XI.[100] Other fragments, designated JSP II, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII, are thought by critics to be the Book of Joseph to which Smith had referred. Egyptologist John A. Wilson stated that the recovered fragments indicated the existence of at least six to eight separate documents.[101] The twelfth fragment was discovered in the LDS Church Historian's office and was dubbed the "Church Historian's Fragment". Disclosed by the church in 1968, the fragment was designated JSP IX.[102] Although there is some debate about how much of the papyrus collection is missing, there is broad agreement that the recovered papyri are portions of Smith's original purchase, partly based on the fact that they were pasted onto paper which had "drawings of a temple and maps of the Kirtland, Ohio area" on the back, as well as the fact that they were accompanied by an affidavit by Emma Smith stating that they had been in the possession of Joseph Smith.[103]

In the late 19th century, French Egyptologist Théodule Devéria was one of the first to offer a scholarly critique of Joseph Smith's translation.

Since its publication in 1842, the Book of Abraham has been a source of controversy. Non-Mormon Egyptologists, beginning in the late 19th century,[73] have disagreed with Joseph Smith's explanations of the facsimiles. They have also asserted that damaged portions of the papyri have been reconstructed incorrectly. In 1912, the book 'Joseph Smith, Jr., As a Translator' was published, containing refutations to Smith's translations. Refuters included Archibald Sayce, Flinders Petrie, James Henry Breasted, Arthur Cruttenden Mace (refute below), John Punnett Peters, C. Mercer, Eduard Meyer, and Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing.[104]

I return herewith, under separate cover, the 'Pearl of Great Price.' The 'Book of Abraham,' it is hardly necessary to say, is a pure fabrication. Cuts 1 and 3 are inaccurate copies of well known scenes on funeral papyri, and cut 2 is a copy of one of the magical discs which in the late Egyptian period were placed under the heads of mummies. There were about forty of these latter known in museums and they are all very similar in character. Joseph Smith's interpretation of these cuts is a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end. Egyptian characters can now be read almost as easily as Greek, and five minutes' study in an Egyptian gallery of any museum should be enough to convince any educated man of the clumsiness of the imposture.

The controversy intensified in the late 1960s when portions of the Joseph Smith Papyri were located. The translation of the papyri by both Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists does not match the text of the Book of Abraham as purportedly translated by Joseph Smith.[105] Indeed, the transliterated text from the recovered papyri and facsimiles published in the Book of Abraham contain no direct references, either historical or textual, to Abraham,[95][106][94] and Abraham's name does not appear anywhere in the papyri or the facsimiles. Edward Ashment notes, "The sign that Smith identified with Abraham [...] is nothing more than the hieratic version of [...] a 'w' in Egyptian. It has no phonetic or semantic relationship to [Smith's] 'Ah-broam.'"[106] University of Chicago Egyptologist Robert K. Ritner concluded in 2014 that the source of the Book of Abraham "is the 'Breathing Permit of Hôr,' misunderstood and mistranslated by Joseph Smith",[107] and that the other papyri are common Egyptian funerary documents like the Book of the Dead.[98]

Original manuscripts of the Book of Abraham, microfilmed in 1966 by Jerald Tanner, show portions of the Joseph Smith Papyri and their purported translations into the Book of Abraham. Ritner concludes, contrary to the LDS position, due to the microfilms being published prior to the rediscovery of the Joseph Smith Papyri, that "it is not true that 'no eyewitness account of the translation survives'", that the Book of Abraham is "confirmed as a perhaps well-meaning, but erroneous invention by Joseph Smith", and "despite its inauthenticity as a genuine historical narrative, the Book of Abraham remains a valuable witness to early American religious history and to the recourse to ancient texts as sources of modern religious faith and speculation".[107]

As noted above, a second untranslated work was identified by Joseph Smith after scrutinizing the original papyri. He said that one scroll contained "the writings of Joseph of Egypt". Based on descriptions by Oliver Cowdery, some, including Charles M. Larson, believe that the fragments Joseph Smith Papyri II, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII are the source of this work.[108][nb 6]

• Kirtland Egyptian Papers
• Mormon cosmology
• Scrolls of Abraham
• Testament of Abraham

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Book of Abraham.

• Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham, from the LDS Church website
• The Pearl of Great Price (containing the Book of Abraham), from the LDS Church website
• Book of Abraham manuscript materials from The Joseph Smith Papers