Who can count the windings?

[Guest]

Here's a fun exercise. Around 1:15 in this podcast on Papyrus Toronto ROM 978x43.1 they scan the camera along the entire length of the scroll. It is possible to count the windings during this scene. There's a right way to count them and a wrong way. Who can get the right number?

[_Kevin Graham]

Im checking it out on my phone but it looks like 26-28 segments.

[_Drifting]

Is the number of windings equal to, or greater than, in importance to the colour of the ink used.....?

[_Kevin Graham]

John Gee claims there are seventy-three!

[_Drifting]

John Gee claims there are seventy-three!

Windings or shades of ink?

[_Chap]

OK, Mortal Man!

Now please clue us in ... I am fascinated by the Book of Abraham trainwreck, but must confess to having forgotten some of the details, such as the role of Papyrus Toronto (when did the ancient Egyptian colony in Canada start, I wonder? Before or after the arrival of Lehi's party in the US?).

[_CaliforniaKid]

Is that part of the same scroll, at the end of the table? (Visible in the upper-left just before they pan?)

[_Chap]

I'm checking it out on my phone but it looks like 26-28 segments.

Indeed.

What we have here is, it appears, a papyrus roll that has been squashed flat and cracked into rectangular segments.

Squash a roll, and that produces two cracks for each layer, one on the left side and one on the right if the roll is upright in front of you, so that each layer produces two rectangular bits of papyrus. That would mean that the number of windings would be half the number of segments, and hence there would be about 13-14 windings.

How many windings did John Gee conclude there had been? And what effect did that have on his calculations? I can't see any way he can have come up with 73. Surely the worst possibility would have been 26-28, if he had made the mistake of counting one segment per winding.

[_Kevin Graham]

Andrew, are you certain this clip represents the entire scroll? Later on the lady says it is more than 6 meters but this clip looks like 3 meters or less. Further along in the video you can see this portion set beside another portion that makes it look much longer. If it is actually 6+ meters in length it makes sense that they would divide it up into segments. Maybe we're looking at just one segment here?

[_Mortal Man]

I'm checking it out on my phone but it looks like 26-28 segments.

Pretty close for a phone-size screen.