Response to Rommelator
Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2008 6:34 am
Since I am suspended at MADB, I am here responding to Rommelator's comments there concerning the missing papyrus theory.
Rommelator asserts there that I most certainly have not (his bolding, not mine) succeeded in putting this specious theory to rest. According to Rom, there are three things to consider:
According to Dr. Robert K. Ritner (in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, v. 62, p. 166), "The original width of the papyrus was correctly estimated by Baer as being about 150–55 cm, allowing for textual restorations and the now lost Facsimile 3." Ritner adds in a footnote that "There is no justification for Gee’s unsubstantiated attempt to more than double this figure to '320 cm (about 10 feet)' in Gee, A Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri, pp. 10 and 12–13. Gee presumably wishes to allow space for a supposedly 'lost hieratic text' of The Book of Abraham; his figure derives from the average length of a manufactured (blank) Ptolemaic papyrus roll—not comparable, individual documents cut from such a roll."
In Michael D. Rhodes' critical edition of the Hor Book of Breathings, he projects that portion missing from the end of the BoB would be about 60 cm (or about 2 feet) in length. (The extant portion also has a piece missing from the middle.) The Hor BoB is narrower than Rom's "standard" scroll; there is no reason it should not also be shorter.
If Rom reviews my thread on the missing papyrus equation, he will find that Gee botched his math at the 2007 FAIR conference. My numbers, which Rom is more than welcome to double-check, show that the upper limit for the length of the portion missing from the end of the roll is somewhere between 90 and 110 cm. Definitely not long enough to fit in a Book of Abraham.
In an aside, Rom adds,
Rom is again encouraged to read Ritner, who finds nothing especially unusual in the vignettes in the Hor Book of Breathings. Ritner writes,
Most examples place the directions at the end, but the Joseph Smith papyrus has shifted these before the main text. Perhaps for the same reason, the papyrus inverts its versions of the two common illustrations ("vignettes") that often accompany "Books of Breathings": a scene of the deceased at the court of Osiris, and a scene of the corpse in the process of reanimation. The latter scene may also include a depiction of the risen ba-spirit, the human-headed bird that represents the soul of the deceased individual. Since the fate of the ba-spirit is the focus of the document, this depiction is logical and is found on the Joseph Smith example. The modern designation "Books of Breathings" includes a variety of late funerary compositions, but the text found in the Joseph Smith collection represents a specific type termed in antiquity "The Documentof Breathings Made by Isis for Her Brother Osiris." These were used by (often interrelated) priestly families in Thebes and its vicinity from the middle Ptolemaic to early Roman eras, and the limited distribution probably accounts for their uniform pattern, displaying only minor modifications. Thus the reanimation scene of P Joseph Smith I is adapted from contemporary temple depictions but has precisely the same meaning and purpose as other examples with the mummy reinvigorated by the sun disk.
Actually, Cowdery was not clear that the Book of Abraham text was the one with rubrics. He writes, "Upon the subject of the Egyptian records, or rather the writings of Abraham and Joseph, I may say a few words. This record is beautifully written on papyrus with black, and a small part red, ink or paint, in perfect preservation." Although Cowdery begins by distinguishing the two records, he soon conflates them with the phrase "this record". It therefore ceases to be clear precisely which of the two records his various details are intended to apply to. When one takes the Cowdery letter as a whole, however, it becomes clear that his attention is almost entirely upon the record of Joseph (a.k.a. the Ta-shert-min Book of the Dead). Although Cowdery describes "this record" as "beautifully written," William I. Appleby made it clear in 1841 that "there is a perceptible difference between the writings [of Abraham and Joseph]. Joseph appears to have been the best scribe." Appleby's statement perfectly describes the contrast between the Ta-shert-min and Hor rolls, the latter of which Nibley described as a "badly written, poorly preserved little text." Cowdery had good reason to be fixated on the roll of Joseph. Its vignettes were much more interesting than the ones on the roll of Abaham, and a prophecy ostensibly from the Book of Joseph features prominently in the introduction to Cowdery's patriarchal blessing. All of this is to say, quite simply, that there is no reason to assume that Cowdery's comments about red ink are meant to apply to the record of Abraham.
Speaking of dismal cases, let's look at Gee's supposed eyewitness evidence.
1) The papyri preserved under glass is now in the possession of the Church, and therefore is not missing.
2) The "long roll" described by Charlotte Haven was undoubtedly the remainder of the Book of Breathings roll, which ended up in the Wood Museum where it was viewed by Gustavus Seyffarth in 1856. Gee's assertion that its contents are "only conjecture" is absurd, since Seyffarth told us exactly what was on the roll: "an invocation to the Deity Osirus in which appears the name of the deceased person, [Horus,]" and a vignette answering to Facsimile 3. In other words, the remainder of the Hor Book of Breathings.
3) Haven viewed vignettes "from another roll", but did not indicate that the roll was intact at the time. Quite to the contrary, her statement undoubtedly refers to the Ta-shert-min fragments that are presently preserved under glass. She described a figure of a serpent speaking to Eve in the Garden. A vignette answering to this description appears on one of the extant fragments.
4) The two or three other fragments would be the Amenhotep and Neferirnub fragments, as well as Facsimile 2.
We thus find that the quantity of missing papyrus is very small. And since the KEP make it quite clear that the extant BoB was the source of the Book of Abraham, the missing papyri are more or less irrelevant, anyway.
Rom also adds,
I commented on this briefly in the School of the Pundits at MADB, but a fuller rebuttal will soon be submitted for publication under the names of Chris Smith and Don Bradley. Keep an eye out.
Another poster wrote,
I have nothing against Gee personally. The one conversation I have had with him personally was quite pleasant. I do, however, have very serious objections to his apologetic approach to the Book of Abraham. This has nothing to do with the man (who I'm sure is top flight) and everything to do with his shoddy apologetics.
I think appeals to credentials are lame, but since the issue has been raised, I feel fairly sure that my expertise in the study of 19th century history (Mormon and otherwise) substantially surpasses Gee's. His knowledge of Egyptology will not aid him in the interpretation of English-language sources.
Cheers,
-Chris
Rommelator asserts there that I most certainly have not (his bolding, not mine) succeeded in putting this specious theory to rest. According to Rom, there are three things to consider:
1. The proposed length of the Horos scroll by Egyptologists (including two non-LDS Egyptologists Marc Coenen and Jan Quaegebeur). Standard scrolls (especially those with Letter of Fellowship texts) from the time era of the JSP (the Ptolemaic Era) were 320 cm by 32 cm - although Gee in his 2007 FAIR Conference address showed evidence for an ever longer length of these scrolls. The recovered fragments only measure 96.5 cm by 11 cm. Allowing an additonal 20 cm for the vignette of Fac. 3 and another 20 cm each for the two missing columns of heiratic, that leaves us with 156 cm of the Letter of Fellowship document. By contrast, the Denon Book of Breathings is 187 cm long and has a height of 20.5 cm. So, how do we account for the other missing 164 cm?
According to Dr. Robert K. Ritner (in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, v. 62, p. 166), "The original width of the papyrus was correctly estimated by Baer as being about 150–55 cm, allowing for textual restorations and the now lost Facsimile 3." Ritner adds in a footnote that "There is no justification for Gee’s unsubstantiated attempt to more than double this figure to '320 cm (about 10 feet)' in Gee, A Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri, pp. 10 and 12–13. Gee presumably wishes to allow space for a supposedly 'lost hieratic text' of The Book of Abraham; his figure derives from the average length of a manufactured (blank) Ptolemaic papyrus roll—not comparable, individual documents cut from such a roll."
In Michael D. Rhodes' critical edition of the Hor Book of Breathings, he projects that portion missing from the end of the BoB would be about 60 cm (or about 2 feet) in length. (The extant portion also has a piece missing from the middle.) The Hor BoB is narrower than Rom's "standard" scroll; there is no reason it should not also be shorter.
If Rom reviews my thread on the missing papyrus equation, he will find that Gee botched his math at the 2007 FAIR conference. My numbers, which Rom is more than welcome to double-check, show that the upper limit for the length of the portion missing from the end of the roll is somewhere between 90 and 110 cm. Definitely not long enough to fit in a Book of Abraham.
In an aside, Rom adds,
Furthermore, the Joseph Smith Book of Breathings is the only only known copy that contains a lion couch motiff like Fac. 1. The same goes for Fac. 3. Klaus Baer was the first to identify the uniqueness of these vignettes in the 1960's. We know that the vignette in JSP I has absolutely nothing to do with the text of columns 1,2 and 3. It would, therefore, make little sense for this vignette to be present on the Horos scroll unless an accompanying text (like the Book of Abraham text) followed shortly thereafter.
Rom is again encouraged to read Ritner, who finds nothing especially unusual in the vignettes in the Hor Book of Breathings. Ritner writes,
Most examples place the directions at the end, but the Joseph Smith papyrus has shifted these before the main text. Perhaps for the same reason, the papyrus inverts its versions of the two common illustrations ("vignettes") that often accompany "Books of Breathings": a scene of the deceased at the court of Osiris, and a scene of the corpse in the process of reanimation. The latter scene may also include a depiction of the risen ba-spirit, the human-headed bird that represents the soul of the deceased individual. Since the fate of the ba-spirit is the focus of the document, this depiction is logical and is found on the Joseph Smith example. The modern designation "Books of Breathings" includes a variety of late funerary compositions, but the text found in the Joseph Smith collection represents a specific type termed in antiquity "The Documentof Breathings Made by Isis for Her Brother Osiris." These were used by (often interrelated) priestly families in Thebes and its vicinity from the middle Ptolemaic to early Roman eras, and the limited distribution probably accounts for their uniform pattern, displaying only minor modifications. Thus the reanimation scene of P Joseph Smith I is adapted from contemporary temple depictions but has precisely the same meaning and purpose as other examples with the mummy reinvigorated by the sun disk.
2. Oliver Cowdry and other eye witnesses to the papyri identifed red rubrics or paint on the Abraham text. On two occasions Cowdry clearly identified such and specified that they belonged with the Abraham text. The extant fragments of Joseph Smith Papyrus I, IX and X (the ones critics say Joseph Smith identified as the Abraham text) contain no such rubrics. How do the critics account for this? Charles Larson proposes that Cowdry was simply describing the papyri themselves based on a report published in Philedelphia and carried with Michael Chandler. However, this does not account for how Cowdry specifically said that the Abraham text had red letters. If he had simply said that the record of Joseph alone had red paint and never mentioned the Abraham text, then this would be a viable option as it would then seem that Cowdry was describing the Scroll of Semminis. However, he was clear that both the records of Abraham and Joseph had red paint. The critics, as I have seen, have yet to explain this.
Actually, Cowdery was not clear that the Book of Abraham text was the one with rubrics. He writes, "Upon the subject of the Egyptian records, or rather the writings of Abraham and Joseph, I may say a few words. This record is beautifully written on papyrus with black, and a small part red, ink or paint, in perfect preservation." Although Cowdery begins by distinguishing the two records, he soon conflates them with the phrase "this record". It therefore ceases to be clear precisely which of the two records his various details are intended to apply to. When one takes the Cowdery letter as a whole, however, it becomes clear that his attention is almost entirely upon the record of Joseph (a.k.a. the Ta-shert-min Book of the Dead). Although Cowdery describes "this record" as "beautifully written," William I. Appleby made it clear in 1841 that "there is a perceptible difference between the writings [of Abraham and Joseph]. Joseph appears to have been the best scribe." Appleby's statement perfectly describes the contrast between the Ta-shert-min and Hor rolls, the latter of which Nibley described as a "badly written, poorly preserved little text." Cowdery had good reason to be fixated on the roll of Joseph. Its vignettes were much more interesting than the ones on the roll of Abaham, and a prophecy ostensibly from the Book of Joseph features prominently in the introduction to Cowdery's patriarchal blessing. All of this is to say, quite simply, that there is no reason to assume that Cowdery's comments about red ink are meant to apply to the record of Abraham.
3. The eyewitness accounts clearly establish that Joseph Smith had a lot more papyri then is now present. John Gee aptly summed it up this way:
Eyewitnesses from the Nauvoo period (1839—1844) describe "a quantity of records, written on papyrus, in Egyptian hieroglyphics,"32 including (1) some papyri "preserved under glass,"33 described as "a number of glazed slides, like picture frames, containing sheets of papyrus, with Egyptian inscriptions and hieroglyphics";34 (2) "a long roll of manuscript"35 that contained the Book of Abraham;36 (3) "another roll";37 (4) and "two or three other small pieces of papyrus with astronomical calculations, epitaphs, &c."38 Only the mounted fragments ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and thence were given back to the Church of Jesus Christ. When eyewitnesses described the vignettes as being of the mounted fragments, they can be matched with the fragments from the Metropolitan Museum of Art; but when the vignettes described are on the rolls, the descriptions do not match any of the fragments from the Met. Gustavus Seyffarth's 1856 catalog of the Wood Museum indicates that some of the papyri were there. Those papyri went to Chicago and were burned in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. Whatever we might imagine their contents to be is only conjecture. Both Mormon and non-Mormon eyewitnesses from the nineteenth century agree that it was a "roll of papyrus from which our prophet translated the Book of Abraham,"39 meaning the "long roll of manuscript" and not one of the mounted fragments that eventually ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.40
http://www.farms.byu.edu/publications/r ... m=2&id=670
I have seen the critics try to refute this, but I remain unimpressed. And after re-reading Larson and Chris' posts that are supposed to have destroyed the missing scroll theory, I can now see just how dismal the case against Gee's thesis really is.
Speaking of dismal cases, let's look at Gee's supposed eyewitness evidence.
1) The papyri preserved under glass is now in the possession of the Church, and therefore is not missing.
2) The "long roll" described by Charlotte Haven was undoubtedly the remainder of the Book of Breathings roll, which ended up in the Wood Museum where it was viewed by Gustavus Seyffarth in 1856. Gee's assertion that its contents are "only conjecture" is absurd, since Seyffarth told us exactly what was on the roll: "an invocation to the Deity Osirus in which appears the name of the deceased person, [Horus,]" and a vignette answering to Facsimile 3. In other words, the remainder of the Hor Book of Breathings.
3) Haven viewed vignettes "from another roll", but did not indicate that the roll was intact at the time. Quite to the contrary, her statement undoubtedly refers to the Ta-shert-min fragments that are presently preserved under glass. She described a figure of a serpent speaking to Eve in the Garden. A vignette answering to this description appears on one of the extant fragments.
4) The two or three other fragments would be the Amenhotep and Neferirnub fragments, as well as Facsimile 2.
We thus find that the quantity of missing papyrus is very small. And since the KEP make it quite clear that the extant BoB was the source of the Book of Abraham, the missing papyri are more or less irrelevant, anyway.
Rom also adds,
I see the KEP as possibily an attempt by Joseph and his scribes (and moreso by his scribes) afterwords to reverse engineer a grammar based on Joseph's translation as offered by Hauglid and Nibley.
I commented on this briefly in the School of the Pundits at MADB, but a fuller rebuttal will soon be submitted for publication under the names of Chris Smith and Don Bradley. Keep an eye out.
Another poster wrote,
Since we know that Chris has as much if not more problems with Prof. Gee as he does with the "missing scroll" theory we have to assume that Chris has as much bias against as Gee does for. Don't get me wrong, Chris has proven himself extremely educated on the subject and has made many great points, but he also admits that Gee is significantly more experienced in the language and other aspects of the discussion. That being said, and I admittedly don't have the background to even begin to rebut Chris or Gee, I don't think the "missing scroll" theory was put to rest in that post. Gee would have to much more involved to show that. Only a good two sided discussion can enlighten to it's fullest and that thread was heavily one sided at best.
I have nothing against Gee personally. The one conversation I have had with him personally was quite pleasant. I do, however, have very serious objections to his apologetic approach to the Book of Abraham. This has nothing to do with the man (who I'm sure is top flight) and everything to do with his shoddy apologetics.
I think appeals to credentials are lame, but since the issue has been raised, I feel fairly sure that my expertise in the study of 19th century history (Mormon and otherwise) substantially surpasses Gee's. His knowledge of Egyptology will not aid him in the interpretation of English-language sources.
Cheers,
-Chris