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Criticism of Mormonism/Online documents/For my Wife and Children (Letter to my Wife)/Chapter 17
< Criticism of Mormonism | Online documents | For my Wife and Children (Letter to my Wife)
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Contents
- 1 Response to "For my Wife and Children" ("Letter to my Wife"): Chapter 17 - Facsimile #1
- 1.1 Response to claims made in "For my Wife and Children" ("Letter to my Wife"): Chapter 17 - Facsimile #1
- 1.2 Response to claim: "Common burial artwork depicts Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the after life, preparing those recently deceased for their journey to the afterlife"
- 1.3 Question: Was the original head of the priest in Book of Abraham Facsimile 1 actually the jackal head of Anubis?
- 1.4 Response to claim: "Joseph Smith translation: 9. The idolatrous god of Pharaoh...Modern Egyptologists translation: 9. The god Sobek is often portrayed in the form of a crocodile"
- 1.5 Peterson: "the identification of a crocodile as the idolatrous god of Pharaoh...Unas’ pyramid texts, includes the following: 'The king appears as the crocodile god Sobek'"
Response to "For my Wife and Children" ("Letter to my Wife"): Chapter 17 - Facsimile #1
| Chapter 16 - Expert Views | A FAIR Analysis of: For my Wife and Children (Letter to my Wife), a work by author: Anonymous
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Chapter 18 - Facsimile #2 |
Response to claims made in "For my Wife and Children" ("Letter to my Wife"): Chapter 17 - Facsimile #1
Jump to details:
- Response to claim: "Common burial artwork depicts Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the after life, preparing those recently deceased for their journey to the afterlife"
- Response to claim: "Joseph Smith translation: 9. The idolatrous god of Pharaoh...Modern Egyptologists translation: 9. The god Sobek is often portrayed in the form of a crocodile"
Response to claim: "Common burial artwork depicts Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the after life, preparing those recently deceased for their journey to the afterlife"
The author(s) of "For my Wife and Children" ("Letter to my Wife") make(s) the following claim:
Joseph incorrectly filled-in the missing portion of papyrus...Common burial artwork depicts Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the after life, preparing those recently deceased for their journey to the afterlife. Joseph appears to have incorrectly filled-in the missing portion of the papyri he purchased from Mr. Chandler.
FAIR's Response
Fact checking results: This claim is based upon correct information - The author is providing knowledge concerning some particular fact, subject, or event
The missing portions of Facsimile #1 were filled in prior to their publication in the newspaper. Either Joseph Smith or Reuben Hedlock, the engraver, filled in these missing portions. The content of the missing sections appears to have been copied from other, intact, sections of the papyri. In this case, it appears that the head of the figure on the table was used to restore the missing head of the priest. There is no evidence that the content of these restorations have an sort of revelatory origin: they were done simply to make the images look better for publication.
Question: Was the original head of the priest in Book of Abraham Facsimile 1 actually the jackal head of Anubis?
The high-resolution photos show evidence that the head of the priest was originally the jackal-head of Anubis
The head of the priest in the Hedlock restoration appears to simply copy the head of the reclining figure. An examination of the papyrus, however, shows evidence that the head was originally that of Anubis. In this case, the Larson restoration appears to be correct. Theologically, it would not matter to scenes such as this one. Ancient art depcting religious situations such as this frequently had other people impersonating other Gods. Thus, even if this is an incorrect restoration, it would not matter to the overall message of the scene portrayed.
The priest of Elkenah likely could have been wearing an Anubian headdress while performing this scene and the interpretation would still be, for all intents and purposes, correct. Those performing rituals often donned a mask impersonating a particular god for theological effect.[1]
John Gee has written:
The discussion about figure 3 has centered on whether the head should be that of a jackal or a bald man. Whether the head is a jackal or a bald man in no way affects the interpretation of the figure, however, since in either case the figure would be a priest.
His footnote here reads as follows:
The argument for the identification runs as follows:
(2) Assume on the other hand that the head on Facsimile 1 Figure 3 is that of a jackal, as was first suggested by Theodule Devéria. We have representations of priests wearing masks, one example of an actual mask, [and] literary accounts from non-Egyptians about Egyptian priests wearing masks. . . . Thus, however the restoration is made, the individual shown in Facsimile 1 Figure 3 is a priest, and the entire question of which head should be on the figure is moot so far as identifying the figure is concerned. (John Gee, “Abracadabra, Isaac, and Jacob,” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 7/1 [1995]: 80–82)[2]
(1) Assume for the sake of argument that the head on Facsimile 1 Figure 3 is correct. What are the implications of the figure being a bald man? Shaving was a common feature of initiation into the priesthood from the Old Kingdom through the Roman period. Since “Complete shaving of the head was another mark of the male Isiac votary and priest” the bald figure would then be a priest.
Gee gives an example of this of a bald priest donning the head of Anubis at the temple of Dendara. The first image is an actual drawing created during the Ptolemaic period from Dendara of the priest putting on the mask. The second is an example of such a mask that would be placed on them.
- Note that there is a portion of the back of Anubis's headdress visible in the original.
- It is more likely that the back of the headdress showed hair rather than a solid as represented in the Larson image.
Response to claim: "Joseph Smith translation: 9. The idolatrous god of Pharaoh...Modern Egyptologists translation: 9. The god Sobek is often portrayed in the form of a crocodile"
The author(s) of "For my Wife and Children" ("Letter to my Wife") make(s) the following claim:
compared to modern Egyptologists’ translation of the image, Joseph’s interpretation of each section contains errors. ...
- Joseph Smith translation: 9. The idolatrous god of Pharaoh
- Modern Egyptologists translation: 9. The god Sobek is often portrayed in the form of a crocodile.
FAIR's Response
Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources
Joseph actually wasn't far off the mark on this one.
Peterson: "the identification of a crocodile as the idolatrous god of Pharaoh...Unas’ pyramid texts, includes the following: 'The king appears as the crocodile god Sobek'"
Daniel C. Peterson:
One noteworthy element of the religious situation portrayed in the Book of Abraham is the identification of a crocodile as the idolatrous god of Pharaoh, right there underneath the lion couch. That’s a kind of odd thing to come up with if you’re a yokel farm-boy from upstate New York. Is that the first thing that comes to your mind? “Oh, idolatrous god of Pharaoh!”
Although this may have seemed strange in Joseph Smith’s day, discoveries in other ancient texts confirm this representation. Unas or Wenis, for example, was the last king of the fifth dynasty, around 2300 B.C., and his pyramid still stands at Saqqara, south of modern Cairo. Utterance 317, Unas’ pyramid texts, includes the following: “The king appears as the crocodile god Sobek, and Unas has come today from the overflowing flood. Unas is Sobek, green plumed, wakeful, alert….Una arises as Sobek, son of Neith. One scholar observes that “the god Sobek is … viewed as a manifestation of Horus, the god most closely identified with the kingship of Egypt” during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom era (around 2000 B.C., maybe a little later), which includes the time period that tradition indicates is Abraham’s time.
Intriguingly, Middle Kingdom Egypt saw a great deal of activity in the large oasis to the southwest of modern Cairo known as the Faiyum. Crocodiles were common there. You know what the name of the place was to the Greeks? The major town there was called “Crocodileopolis.” [3]
Notes
- ↑ See Robert K. Ritner "Osiris-Canopus and Bes at Herculaneum". As Ritner writes herein: "Although the Herculaneum dancer probably represents a masked participant impersonating the god, the matter is theologically unimportant. The British Museum Bes statue, noted above, has been assumed to be a masked man because of his kilt, moderate belly and flattened face, but no clear cords or fittings indicate that the face is a mask. A Middle Kingdom mask of Bes does survive from Kahun proving the existence of Bes—masked priests, but statue ary of masked humans is more problematic than masked figures in religious scenes. A potentially more relevant sculpture derives from a far earlier period in Egyptian history, on a Fifth Dynasty relief also in the British Museum. Defying the general taboo on representing gods in Old Kingdom tombs, this relief (EA 994) includes a leonine Bes in profile carrying a wand within a scene of the 'd‘ance of the youths.' As in the Herculaneum fresco more than two millennia later, a priest masked as Bes performs at a ritual dance."
- ↑ John Gee, "A Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri" (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2000) 36-9, 66
- ↑ Daniel C. Peterson, "Some Reflections On That Letter To a CES Director," 2014 FairMormon Conference.