Pearl of Great Price Central Facsimile 1 as a Sacrifice Scene

[Shulem]

Now take into consideration the Facsimile No. 1. The rising of Osiris took place on earth where his wife received him in order to conceive Horus. There is no motif of stars because it's not a heavenly scene. The motif is that of the Nile and the niched bricking or carved stones signifies the temple walls adjacent to the Nile where the river crocodiles are ever present.

All glory to Osiris my lord!

And now, to demonstrate that Smith and his comrades were not entirely ignorant about some of the finer matters that were known to educated people of his day. And in doing this it shows that Smith was WRONG in his Facsimile interpretations when he should have known better, especially if revelation was really coming from God. Apologists make a big deal that Smith got the crocodile correct in Facsimile No. 1, which is no big deal seeing it was his only bullseye, per se. But had he not got that right it would have simply meant he was stupid and surrounded by totally ignorant people but neither was the case. Smith was highly intelligent and he had some pretty smart guys to consult with in regards to the vignettes.

Now, with that said, here is a clip from the Times and Seasons which might suggest that Smith should have properly labeled Osiris and Isis in Facsimile No. 3. But as it was, the only thing Smith got right in Facsimile No. 1 was the crocodile and that's a no-brainer! The following is from John Greenhow a faithful member from England who sent a letter to the Times and Seasons editor for publishing in the Church periodical. At least someone in the Church knew who Osiris and Isis were! But Smith had already published the Book of Abraham so it was too late to recant.

For the Time Seasons.

The Egyptians had a number of ideal Gods, to whom they erected temples of prodigious size and architectural splendor. The principal of these deities were Osiris and Isis, which are thought to be typical of the sun and moon. But they also offered worship to various creatures, as the ox or bull, with divers animals, birds, &c. They likewise paid adoration to the Nile, personifying it in the crocodile, to which temples were erected, and priests set apart for its service.

<snip>

We as a church have nothing to boast of, for it is God that has made the difference in raising up a prophet to instruct his people, for of ourselves we know nothing, and should we be left without a man of God to direct us, we should soon become weak as other men; therefore to him be the glory, for now we can sing with the poet:

<snip>

I remain as ever, your affectionate brother in the new covenant, JOHN GREENHOW.

[Shulem]

Now, with that said, here is a clip from the Times and Seasons which might suggest that Smith should have properly labeled Osiris and Isis in Facsimile No. 3. But as it was, the only thing Smith got right in Facsimile No. 1 was the crocodile and that's a no-brainer! The following is from John Greenhow a faithful member from England who sent a letter to the Times and Seasons editor for publishing in the Church periodical. At least someone in the Church knew who Osiris and Isis were! But Smith had already published the Book of Abraham so it was too late to recant.

For the Time Seasons.

The Egyptians had a number of ideal Gods, to whom they erected temples of prodigious size and architectural splendor. The principal of these deities were Osiris and Isis, which are thought to be typical of the sun and moon.

No, I'm not going to get off on a tangent about Facsimile No. 3 because that's not germane to this thread and I promised not to. But, as a matter of reference and to fortify the above quote made by a learned man (John Greenhow) who tendered a written submission to the Church periodical in which he mentions the goddess "ISIS", I think it's important that we assume the brethren of Kirtland/Nauvoo knew about the myth of the Egyptian goddess Isis, although it would have been a basic or crude knowledge that was commonly known in their time.

It's seems clear to me that Joseph Smith did preserve the name "ISIS" in the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language and associated the different levels or degrees of understanding of the name Isis with astronomy. This is proof that Smith was trying to maintain some semblance of authentic Egyptian into his mixed bag of revelatory treats.

NOTE also that the name OSIRIS is also incorporated into the wordings.

Flos=isis: The King of day. or central moving planet, from which, those other gove[rn]ing moving planets receive their light.

Kliflosisis— signifies time— now, present, any messenger, being comissioned by supreme authority.

Vehklifloisis The fifth planet <​fixed star​> in its motion (namely) Limdi, whose motion, according to the cubit measure of time is twelve <​six​> days to one cubit.

See also the these manuscripts:

Flos-isis.
Kli-flos-isis
Kli-flos-isis

Flos-isis (Sun)
Kli-flos-isis.
Veh-Kli-flos-isis

Flos=isis
Kli-flos isis
Veh kli flos-isis

[Shulem]

Mask, mask, masks and more masks! I'm sick of the damn mask excuse! Stop this nonsense NOW!

Gee and Muhlestein cite references of mortal priests in Egyptian funerary rituals who wore masks to simulate the god Anubis. It's all well and good that priests wore masks during certain ritualistic rites. But the Facsimile No. 1 is not such a rite. It's the actual depiction of ANUBIS assisting the actual god OSIRIS in rising from the dead and Isis is ever present ready to receive her husband. Gee and Muhlestein's pitiful attempt to marry the masks worn by mortal men with the immortal Egyptian god Abubis as portrayed in Facsimile No. 1 is a pitiful and DISHONEST attempt to justify Smith's false interpretation of the Egyptian vignette.

It's should be readily understandable why I get so upset with these two Egyptologists who continue to make a mockery of the ancient Egyptian religion for the sole purpose of justifying Smith who didn't know what he was talking about and was caught red-handed in falsely interpreting and translating Egyptian.

Yes, I confess, I'm bloody angry with Gee and Muhlestein! They are two peas in a pod -- liars and deceivers. Neither of them are honest in their dealings as they continue to shell out volumes of reprehensible apologetic nonsense that's utterly abhorrent. It's more stain upon stain of the lying ways in which Mormons defend their religion.

I call upon Ritner and 100 Egyptologists worldwide to denounce the apologetic use of the "mask" to defend Smith's wrong interpretation of Facsimile No. 1 and the priest's head.

Soooooo, if I am not mistaken, I think what you are trying to say here is that you have a testimony..... :biggrin:

[Shulem]

So how does Joseph Smith come up with two absolutely correct Egyptian theophoric suffixes for his ladies?

Ze-PTAH and Katu-MIN?

Were both Ptah and Min known as Egyptian deities by the 1840s?

Asking for a friend.

Dup

Consiglieri,

There really isn't anything overly remarkable with the assorted words Smith used in his Egyptian Grammar which is a hodgepodge he put together with the help of his friends -- it was a collective effort and project of several minds coming together to create what they thought would be a Grammar to help produce and translate the Book of Abraham. Ancient Egyptian words for gods and kings have come down through the ages in various tongues -- namely Greek. Prior to the cracking of the code by Champollion, others took a crack at it. One of the more famous linguists who was a forerunner and contributor was Athanasius Kircher a scholar during the Renaissance who produced the Oedipus Aegyptiacus which was wacky and wild ride through Egyptian symbolism and translation:

His renditions of hieroglyphic texts tended to be wordy and portentous; for example, he translated a frequently occurring phrase in Egyptian, dd Wsr, "Osiris says," as "The treachery of Typhon ends at the throne of Isis, the moisture of nature is guarded by the vigilance of Anubis."

Later, just prior to Champollion cracking the Rosetta Stone another linguist by the name of Thomas Young a British decipher was hard at work and made some genuine contributions to Egyptology -- very correct and precise connections between actual hieroglyphs and their meaning -- to include gods, kings, and important terms.

Here is a letter written by Thomas Young in 1818 and I want you to take a look at the translations below and you can plainly see that these things become widely known even in Smith's neck of the woods. But I'm not sure about Ptah and Min and how general those names were known in Smith's time. Thoth, Osiris, Isis, and others are listed below:



you're welcome

Thank you for sharing some of your prodigious knowledge with me, Shulem.

These are things that do make me wonder from time to time.

Sort of like the startling name of "Aha" thrown off as a secondary character in the Book of Mormon.

I know that coincidences do happen, and it doesn't make up for the hugely anachronistic Timothy jumping off the pages of Third Nephi, but still it is unusual.

Do these kinds of thoughts ever run through your head?

P.S. There is an annoying guy named Joe posting at my RFM web page and also my RFM Facebook page about the Book of Abraham who could use a Shulem-sized paddling if you have the notion.

consiglieri,

I've been through all these things that made me wonder quite a long time ago. Smith loved to employ words and lots of them. Lots of words are found in his novels. Smith loved to play with words!

Aha? Oh, the old Egyptian word to "fight" which by chance is found in the Book of Mormon. Bullseye? My ass. It's just another name concocted by Smith who was well read and quite able to mix words to name his characters. Smith didn't know Egyptian anymore than he knew auto mechanics.

Yes, Aha is found in the Book of Mormon in various form:

AHA

AbrAHAm

RAHAb

AHAz

AHAh

MAHAh



It doesn't make it Egyptian. It's no big deal except for apologists who are searching for any kind of bullseye.

Aha!

[Shulem]

M O R M O N
D I S C U S S I O N S

Is celebrating the destruction of Book of Abraham apologetics.

Victory!

[Shulem]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The book of Abraham speaks disapprovingly of human sacrifice offered on an altar in Chaldea. Some victims were placed on the altar as sacrifices because they rejected the idols worshipped by their leaders. Recent scholarship has found instances of such punishment dating to Abraham’s time. People who challenged the standing religious order, either in Egypt or in the regions over which it had influence (such as Canaan), could and did suffer execution for their offenses. The conflict over the religion of Pharaoh, as described in Abraham 1:11–12, is an example of punishment now known to have been meted out during the Abrahamic era.

Radio Free Mormon: The Games People Play -- dial to 44:00 minute mark

Inclusion of footnote #36 should NOT have been used by the Church in attempt to defend the Book of Abraham.

Kerry Muhlestein, Violence in the Service of Order: The Religious Framework for Sanctioned Killing in Ancient Egypt (Oxford, U.K.: Archaeopress, 2001), 37–44, 92–101; Kerry Muhlestein, “Royal Executions: Evidence Bearing on the Subject of Sanctioned Killing in the Middle Kingdom,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 51, no. 2 (2008): 181–208; Anthony Leahy, “Death by Fire in Ancient Egypt,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 27, no. 2 (1984): 199–206; Harco Willems, “Crime, Cult and Capital Punishment (Mo’alla Inscription 8),” Journal of Egyptian Archeology 76 (1990): 27–54.

Author Harco Willems has made it clear that his work should not be included in this apologetic article produced by the Church because it does not reflect his opinion in the least. Either the Church remove his name from the footnote or face a lawsuit. I think Harco should sue for say, uh, hmm, 10 million sounds good.

I'll split the finders fee with RFM, okay okay, I'm not greedy, just give me 20% and we're square.

[Shulem]

I am glad we were able to bring Dr. Gee's important "Two Inks Theory" to a wider audience.

To be gleaned from the podcast beginning at the 51:00 mark:
Radio Free Mormon: The Games People Play

Three of the documents from the Kirtland Egyptian Papers contain a partial copy of the translated Book of Abraham in which a word or two in Egyptian characters is written in the left-hand margin at the beginning of each paragraph of English text. According to this theory, the text to the right is the translation of the Egyptian characters to the left. Unfortunately for the theory, the Egyptian characters were added after the entire English text was written (as evidenced by the use of different inks, Egyptian characters that do not always line up with the English text). Thus it was not a matter of writing the characters in the margin at the beginning paragraphs of text without explicitly stating the reason for doing do.

I gave a full analysis of how the characters correspond with the writing when Smith created his (see here: Grammar & Alphabet of the Egyptian Language). The characters were written FIRST and the text was written SECOND just as they were in the other manuscripts Gee refers to in his book. It's an absolute dead ringer that the text was written after the characters! I brought this to the attention of William Schryver ten years ago here on Mormon Discussions, and all he could say after referring to my link was, "What an ... impressive display of erudition! I confess I had no idea you had already "figured out" all of the secrets of the KEP".

This of course stopped him dead in his tracks! At the time, William was a student of the KEP and I was the master. He hated that idea.

Examples of Egyptian characters writen in the margins of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers Book of Abraham manuscripts (KEPA). The examples show that the characters (1) were written in different ink than the English text (examples 2,3,4,6), (2) do not line up with the English text (examples 3,4,6), and (3) run over the margins (examples 1,2,5) and sometimes the English text (example 1). This indicates that the Egyptian characters were added after the English text was written, perhaps to decorate the beginnings of paragraphs, although the reason for their inclusion was never explicitly stated.

"The examples show that the characters were written in different ink than the English text do not line up with the English text and run over the margins and sometimes the English text"

Gee is saying that the ink of the characters run over the margin line and the text. Examine the facts and understand how Gee explained it. He said what he meant and meant what he said.

Fact 1: The characters are in the left side of the margin
Fact 2: The vertical margin line separates the characters from the text
Fact 3: The text is to the right of the margin

Claim 1: There are two inks
Claim 2: Character ink run over the margin line
Claim 3: And sometimes the character ink run over the English text

Analysis:

A. Ink #1 (character ink) run over the margin line
B. Ink #1 (character ink) run over the text ink (Ink #2)

1. Gee implies that character ink run over the margin ink
2. Gee implies that character ink run over the text ink
3. Gee implies that the character ink was written after the text ink because it is "over" the text ink. Gee uses the word "over" as the opposite of the word "under" insomuch as the one ink runs over not under the other ink. Hence, Gee implies that the one ink leaves the boundary set by the margin and literally runs over the ink of the other. He does this to attempt to prove that the ink that is over came second, hence, the characters were written after the text purely for the purpose to decorate the page -- nonsense that Nibley suggested.

[Shulem]

RECAP of Facsimile No. 1 Scene

Here is a recap of significant points made in this thread that PROVE Facsimile No. 1 was not a Sacrifice Scene:

1. The scene occurs in Preynastic times
2. The scene takes place on the banks of the Nile in Egypt
3. The lion bed was furniture designed to bless the dead
4. The lion bed was made of wood, not iron
5. There was no knife in the original vignette
6. The god is jackal-headed Anubis wearing a headdress
7. The ba is the soul of Osiris in bird form with a human head
8. The man on the bed is the body of Osiris rising from the dead
9. The scene is one of blessing and life

Thanks be to Anubis and glory to Osiris.

Amen.

[Shulem]

A FACSIMILE FROM THE BOOK OF BREATHING
NO. 1



EXPLANATION

Fig. 1. The Ba of Osirs.
Fig. 2. Osiris rising from the dead.
Fig. 3. Anubis the jackal-headed god assisting Osiris.
Fig. 4. The lion bed for resurrection through the blessing of Anubis, standing before the gods of Qebehsenuef, Duamutef, Hapi, Imsety, and Sobek.
Fig. 5. The god Qebehsenuef.
Fig. 6. The god Duamutef.
Fig. 7. The god Hapi.
Fig. 8. The god Imsety.
Fig. 9. The god Sobek.
Fig. 10. Libation stand with lotus, flowers, and jars.
Fig. 11. Designed to represent brick and stone walls, as built by the Egyptians.
Fig. 12. Nile river flowing from Upper Egypt down into Lower Egypt within the Delta and into the sea.

[Shulem]

Thank you so much for this whirlwind tour of your brilliance, Professor Shulem!

And thank you for taking Joe out to the woodshed on my Facebook page!

What is the king's name, indeed!?

You are most welcome and thanks for the wonderful compliment. Yes, I think this thread has run a wonderful course and was happy to do it. Facsimile No. 2 is even more fun and I will have to do that sometime. Oh what a ride! Woohoo.

Poor Joe. I just wont let up on repeating the golden question, "What's the king's name?". They try and detract and take you away in all that apologetic nonsense but I never fall for it. Just stick to the question, hold to your guns, and add more tidbits. Eventually they fall apart, every time. Believe me, I have tricks up my sleeve and I do use them -- to win.