Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Just so I'm tracking this development correctly, you're saying that Joseph Smith knew the slave or Anubis figure actually had the head of a jackal, and he deliberatley removed it?
- Doc
Add me to the line of the curious on this question. I do not possess anything like Shulem's erudition on this topic, so I want to make sure I understand:
1) the facsimile claims the dark-skinned humanoid is a slave named Olimlah
2) the text above "Olimlah" actually says "the recitation of Anubis..." and positing Anubis makes sense here
3) we longer have that portion of the papyri to see what the image actually was, so we have to rely on the facsimile
4) the apologetic claim is that each of these vignettes that survive are unique, so it could be a person rather than Anubis
5) you are suggesting that the woodcut originally had a one-eared Anubis (or in other words only one ear was drawn in the original)
6) Joseph Smith had the head of the jackal etched away, leaving behind an odd-looking eye and a stumpy ear above the head.
Am I right? If so, it all seems to hinge on establishing 5). Sanctorian's image shows quite clearly that something was etched away where we would expect the snout of Anubis, but on the other hand I'm not sure that is a strong point, because ultimately this is a relief that depends on creating the illusion of depth by etching away everything not part of the image. The only reason this empty space is more significant that other empty space is because we can imagine a snout going there—confirmation bias, in other words. I think the only way to be sure would be to examine the original plates and to see if the area in question is deeper or higher than the surrounding areas; that would indicate that some special attention was given to that empty space as opposed to all of the other empty space created in the engraving. And the one problem that is difficult for me is not the missing snout—which I agree
could have fit into the space—but the short ear. All of the images I can see contain an Anubis with quite long ears, but there is no space for there to have been a larger ear there, since a larger ear would have run right into the text. So I would try to get some comparative data here; are there other images of Anubis with correspondingly short ears? Maybe it's immaterial from one point of view, because the text is quite explicit as to who this is.
Item 5) certainly does complicate the liberal Mormon view of Joseph Smith. The conservative position became ridiculous the moment an Egyptologist could read the name of Anubis above Anubis, but the liberal position—that these texts were a catalyst for Joseph to receive inspiration—doesn't hold together so well if Smith was doctoring the texts in order to fit his conception of those texts. No longer would we have a Joseph who is exerting his mind to puzzle out the meaning of the Egyptian, relying on the mind of the Lord to fill in the gaps of his understanding and the will of God to bring the world a view of theology that would one day be comfortable for nostalgic Mormon bloggers. When one feels inspired to change a document in order to make one's claims about the document seem more believable, one is engaging in forgery.
In any event, if we believe the apologists, then Olimlah must have looked something like this:
"As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them."
—B. Redd McConkie
