An evening with Dr. Gee

[_dartagnan]

Virtually every historic reference to the papyri describes extant material.

They have no leg to stand on here.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Last of all, he got into a conversation with someone about the length of the missing scroll. He mentioned how his 42 foot length was a calculation devised by a non-Mormon Egyptologist, not by him.

I'm wondering if Dr. Gee misspoke here. In his FARMS Review article he seems to indicate that a non-Mormon Egyptologist devised the formula, but that Gee himself devised the 42-foot figure. Over on MADB Rommelator claimed that it was Marc Coenen who came up with the 42-foot figure, but I emailed Dr. Coenen and he wrote back,

As there is no indication whatsoever that a second funerary/ritual text was appended to the PJS, I am of the opinion that only 3 at most 4 columns of text of missing. In fact, the text of the negative confession and the closing paragraph of the Document of Breathing is missing. The measurements of the missing section were more likely around 100 cm than 42 feet. The latter figure is undoubtedly much too high. Moreover, it comes to me as a surprise that I am at the origin of that figure. But as Oscar Wilde already stated:"There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about".

Dr. Coenen also included in his email this quote from one of his published articles:

Some writers have suggested that the actual text of the "Book of Abraham" was not inscribed on the fragments rediscovered in 1966, but on a portion of the papyrus scroll still missing. Unquestionably, PJS I, X and XI were originally longer. A comparison with Papyrus Louvre N 3158, which contains the most complete version extant of the Document of Breathing Made by Isis, indicates that as many as three to four columns of hieratic text may be missing between the end of PJS X and the segment Smith identified as "Book of Abraham" Facsimile ". The Louvre parallel shows that the content of the missing columns concerns only the afterlife of the deceased and not the narrative found in Smith's "Book of Abraham;". Finally, some writers have rightly pointed out that papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt are sometimes inscribed with more than one text. No one denies that other funerary and/or ritual compositions are sometimes appended to a Book of the Dead or other funerary compositions. However, concluding that a record of Abraham or any other text foreign to Ptolemaic Egyptian funerary and/or liturgical practice was once attached to the Smith papyri is an assertion not based upon widely accepted Egyptological analysis.

Dr. Coenen's conclusions coincide exactly with my own.

Best,

-Chris

[_Runtu]

Dr. Coenen's conclusions coincide exactly with my own.

Best,

-Chris

He must be an anti-Mormon.

[_CaliforniaKid]

He must be an anti-Mormon.

Must be. As a sidenote, I tried to obtain the article from which that quote presumably came, and for an 8-page article the publisher wants to charge me over eighteen dollars! Since it's an obscure French journal, I can't get it on interlibrary loan, either. Augh!

[_Chap]

Can you give the full reference, please?

[_CaliforniaKid]

Hi Chap,

The article in question is very probably one of these two:

Marc Coenen, "An Introduction to the Document of Breathing Made by Isis," Revue d'Egyptologie 49 (1998): 37-45.

Marc Coenen, "Owners of Documents of Breathing made by Isis," Chronique d'Egypte 79, no. 157-58 (2004) pp. 59-72.