The Missing Papyrus Equation

[_harmony]

Perhaps Dr Gee doesn't consider you to be important enough to address at all, Chris. Perhaps he doesn't remember that really bad viruses are carried by really small insects, and ignoring those insects has often resulted in really bad things happening.

Perhaps ignoring you isn't such a great idea.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Perhaps Dr Gee doesn't consider you to be important enough to address at all, Chris. Perhaps he doesn't remember that really bad viruses are carried by really small insects, and ignoring those insects has often resulted in really bad things happening.

That could be. So I guess the crucial question, then, is whether I am carrying malaria or west nile virus.

[_Kishkumen]

Bravo, California Kid!

I guess you have proven in spades that the ill-regarded Shades board really does have substance, after all. It looks to me that Gee is simply wrong, and that he is flailing about for some way to revive his flagging reputation. Poor sod.



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[_CaliforniaKid]

Hi, friends! I just wanted to let everyone know that I repeated this experiment, this time using two sets of photographs.

For the first set, Larson's photos, I assumed the accuracy of his reported scale (which I think may actually be a little too high) and merely honed the measurements I took before. A line-of-best-fit projection in Excel gave a value of 84.6 cm for the missing portion. This is slightly lower than my previous projection due to more accurate measurement.

The second set of photos I used is from the original Improvement Era publication of the papyri back in 1968. These photographs actually include a ruler alongside each papyrus fragment in order to show its exact size. The photos are slightly distorted along their edges-- you can tell from looking at the rulers-- but the distortion is minimal and the presence of the rulers makes it possible to correct for it anyway. Using the Improvement Era photographs, I obtained a line-of-best-fit projection of 103.5 cm.

This comparison should hopefully alleviate concerns about the potential for inaccurate scale or photographic distortion to corrupt my results. There is another set of exact-size photographs in an old issue of BYU Studies, but unfortunately the version of this publication that is available for free download on the BYU Studies website does not preserve the original page sizes. I intend to obtain an exact-size copy of these images and to repeat my experiment a third time, just for the sake of excessive redundancy. I also have asked to see the papyri in person, and my request has gone to some shadowy committee for consideration.

The above-reported results are quite similar to the ones I obtained in my original analysis, and continue to raise serious questions about Dr. Gee's projection of 41 feet for the length of the missing portion. Gee appears to have significantly underestimated the length of the initial wrap and to have seriously overestimated the length of the final wrap. This is very surprising, since he claims in the FARMS Review to have checked his measurements three times. I can only conclude that he did not do so with the critical eye that a professional Egyptologist would normally be expected to employ.

[Guest]

I am delighted to see that my Excel line-fitting technique is proving useful. It has the double advantage of dealing automatically with the messiness of actual measured data, and handling the data in a way that makes it obvious to the non-mathematical exactly what is going on as we consider the diminishing length of successive wraps as we move towards the center of the roll.

Whether or not you are allowed to see the original papyri. it is clear that you are already in a position to say firmly that if there was a missing portion, its maximum possible length would be of the order of 1 meter (to one significant figure, which is probably the right precision to use when the nature of the rolling process and the presence or absence of a central rod are both unclear), as opposed to Gee's estimates which are of the order of 10 times that length (again to 1 s.f.).

Have you thought of sending a short note on this topic to a refereed Egyptological journal - perhaps the one in which Ritner published his paper on the Joseph Smith papyri?

That should induce Gee to put up or shut up.

[_CaliforniaKid]

I am delighted to see that my Excel line-fitting technique is proving useful.

Have you thought of sending a short note on this topic to a refereed Egyptological journal - perhaps the one in which Ritner published his paper?

That should induce Gee to put up or shut up.

Hey Chap,

I wouldn't want to even think about submitting to an Egyptological journal till I've seen the papyri in person, and even then I'm not sure it would be the appropriate venue to carry on this conversation. I may be presenting it at Sunstone West this month, though. I've not heard back yet on whether my proposal was accepted.

-Chris

[_Chap]

See my edits, done after your post.

By all means try to see the papyri, if they will let you. If they don't, my point is that you already have enough solid data to make an important point about this document. So if the Brethren decide you are unworthy to be let near the sacred scroll, you need not let this stop you going ahead - and of course any decision not to let you see the papyri may well have the object of doing precisely that.

I am not suggesting that an Egyptological journal is the place to say everything one would want to say about this affair. But you have a solid scientific point to make about this document that relates only to a point of professional interest to Egyptologists, ie. how much of it could be missing and how one could tell. Egyptologists working on other damaged scrolls could find the discussion useful. That could go very well into a short research note, and if such a note was published in a reputable journal in his own field Gee would no longer be able to refuse to meet your point in reasoned dialogue by vaporing about your lack of qualifications. Math is math, whoever does it.

[_Brackite]

I Am Bumping up This Important Discussion Thread, For William and For Anyone Else New Here.

[_William Schryver]

I Am Bumping up This Important Discussion Thread, For William and For Anyone Else New Here.

I'm already familiar with the thread, and with Chris' arguments.

From what I can tell, the bottom line is that Chris and his buddies flat out claim that John Gee has not measured the papyrus correctly, and that is what accounts for the huge difference in calculated total length.

My only problem with that argument is that Gee is the one who has access to the original papyri, and claims to have made precise measurements to the 1/10th of a millimeter. Neither Chris nor anyone else disputing Gee's arguments has anything to measure except photo reproductions.

That's why I've already gone on record stating that, if Gee is mistaken, there can only be two possibilities as I see it:

1- He is lying.

2- He is inept.

[_Runtu]

That's why I've already gone on record stating that, if Gee is mistaken, there can only be two possibilities as I see it:

1- He is lying.

2- He is inept.

Or both. Just saying. :)