Question: What do the Joseph Smith papyri fragments consist of?

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Question: What do the Joseph Smith papyri fragments consist of?

There are eleven fragments of the original papyrus owned by Joseph Smith. The initial labels given the fragments came from Hugh Nibley's work.

The fragments that exist and their source are described in the table below, as are other materials of interest to students of the Book of Abraham:

Fragments	Source	Comments
I (Facsimile 1) XI X Small part of IV	The Hor Breathing permit	Facsimile 3 was part of this text; the original is not extant. Sometimes called "Horus" instead of Hor.
N/A	The Hypocephalus of Sheshonk	This is Facsimile 2; the original is not extant.
II V VI VII VIII IX (Church Historian's Fragment) Most of IV	The Book of the Dead belonging to the lady Tshenmin.	Fragment IX was not in the papyri returned to the Church by the Metropolitan Museum of Art; it was discovered in the Church Archives and is sometimes called the "Church Historian's Fragment."
IIIa IIIb	The Book of the Dead belonging to the musician of Amon Re, Neferimub.	This is a single vignette, but has been cut into two pieces; hence the designation as (a) and (b) fragments.
N/A	Another copy of Book of the Dead.	Only known from characters copied into the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.

Notes

John Gee, "Book of Abraham, I Presume"

John Gee,  Proceedings of the 2012 FAIR Conference, (August 2012)

So let’s start with the relationship of the Book of Abraham to the Joseph Smith Papyri. There are three different points of view here. One, that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from the papyri that we have. Almost no one really believes this. But to hear the critics tell it this is the official position of the church. It’s not. Nor do most members of the church subscribe to this so far as I can tell. So, it’s a strawman. The second one is that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from papyri that we do not currently have and this is the position that most accords with the historical evidence. And the third one is that Joseph Smith received the Book of Abraham strictly by revelation and it did not come from the papyri at all. This position seems to be popular among Latter-day Saints but seems to have no historical evidence to support it.

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Notes