The following comes from Stephen O. Smoot, "Temple Themes in the Book of Abraham," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 60 (2024): 230-33
Figure 3 of Facsimile 2 Joseph Smith identified as “God,
sitting upon his throne, clothed with power and authority; with a crown of
eternal light upon his head; representing, also, the grand Key words of the
Holy Priesthood, as revealed to Adam in the Garden of Eden, as also to Seth,
Noah, Melchisedek, Abraham and all to whom the Priesthood was revealed.” [56] A
similar interpretation is given to Figure 7, which is said to be “God sitting
upon his throne, revealing, through the heavens, the grand Key words of the
Priesthood; as, also, the sign of the Holy Ghost unto Abraham, in the form of a
dove.” [57] The main operative temple element in both of these
interpretations is that God is revealing the keywords of the priesthood. This
seems to reflect Joseph Smith’s interpretation or understanding of the seated
deity in the proximity of the wedjat (wDAt)-eye in both of
these figures.
What might we say about the wedjat-eye that
could illuminate Joseph Smith’s interpretation as it pertains to the keywords
of the temple? [59] First, it might be helpful to know the meaning of the
word. In Egyptian, wDA means “hale, uninjured,” and also
“well-being,” [60] or otherwise “wohlbehalten, unverletzt, unversehrt
sein.” [61] The
word can describe the health or wholeness of the physical body, the soul, or
even an individual’s moral character. [62] In the Ptolemaic period the
word meant “whole or complete” and also “perfect,” and appears in ritual
settings where the ib (“heart”) is said to be wDA when the
words of the ritual are “spoken exactly” (that is, properly executed). [63] In
Coptic, true to its Egyptian roots, the word ⲟⲩϫⲁⲓ̈ came
to mean “healthy, whole” and, significantly from a temple perspective,
“salvation, saved” in the Christian theological sense. [64] In the
colophon to the Discourse on Abbaton, to name just one of several possible
examples, we read of the monk who secured ⲡⲟⲩϫⲁⲓ ⲛⲧⲉϥⲯⲩⲭⲏ (“the
salvation of his soul”) for writing and donating the book to the monastery of
St. Mercurius in Tbo. [65]
Beyond its etymology, we can also say something about how
the wDAt-eye functioned in Egyptian religion. In its Egyptian context
the wDAt-eye was imagined as the “whole” or “sound” eye of the god Horus
used in the process of revivifying his father, the god Osiris, and so it held a
pronounced apotropaic function. In this regard the eye appropriately symbolized
the divine restoration and renewal of the body. [66] But the wDAt-eye
was more than this. It “could represent almost any aspect of the divine order,”
observes Geraldine Pinch, “including kingship and the offerings made to the
gods and the dead.” [67] It also appears in temple contexts. In Ptolemaic
temple inscriptions the term is connected with “saving and protecting the body,
or being saved in the temple.” [68] The phrase di wDA (“giving wDA”)
is used in one Demotic creation text “as something the creator god does to the
gods while eternally rejuvenating them, a usage reflected in prayers for mortal
individuals,” and it appears in the temple graffiti of petitioners requesting
blessings. [69] Joseph Smith’s syncretistic recontextualization of the
iconography of the wDAt-eye for a Latter-day Saint temple setting is thus
entirely appropriate and finds solid grounding from both an ancient Egyptian
and an ancient Christian perspective. (What’s good for Coptic Christians is
good for Latter-day Saint Christians.) With this understanding, therefore,
Latter-day Saints may better appreciate how the figure of the wDAt-eye in
Facsimile 2 relates to their own expectation for eternal life and resurrection
in God’s presence obtained through the keywords of the priesthood as
revealed in the temple liturgy. [70]
Notes for the Above:
56. “A Fac-Simile from the Book of Abraham, No. 2,” Times
and Seasons 3, no. 10 (March 15, 1842): insert between 720–21.
58. Times and Seasons, March 15, 2842.
The wedjat-eye features prominently in both of these figures. In
Figure 3, the seated figure in the boat is flanked front and back by the
wedjat-eye; in Figure 7 it is presented to the seated figure. © Intellectual
Reserve, Inc. Courtesy of the Church History Library, The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints.
59. See Stephen O. Smoot et al., “God Sitting Upon His
Throne (Facsimile 2, Figure 7),” BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no.
4 (2022): 259–63.
60. Raymond O. Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of
Middle Egyptian (Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1962), 74–75.
61. Rainer Hannig, Großes Handwörterbuch Ägyptisch-Deutsch
(2800–950 v. Chr.) (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1997), 231–32.
62. Adolf Erman and Hermann Grapow, Wörterbuch der
aegyptischen Sprache (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1958), 1:399–400; Hannig, Großes
Handwörterbuch, 231.
63. Penelope Wilson, A Ptolemaic Lexicon (Leuven:
Peeters, 1997), 283.
64. Wolfhart Westendorf, Koptisches
Handwörterbuch (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1977),
287; Richard Smith, A Concise Coptic-English Lexicon, 2nd ed.
(Atlanta, GA: Scholar’s Press, 1999), 39; John Gee, “Some Neglected Aspects of
Egypt’s Conversion to Christianity,” in Coptic Culture: Past, Present
and Future (Stevenage: Coptic Orthodox Church Centre, 2012), 51–52.
65. E. A. Wallis Budge, ed., Coptic Martyrdoms,
Etc., in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: The British Museum,
1914), 1:248–49.
66. Nibley and Rhodes, One Eternal Round,
314.
67. Geraldine Pinch, Handbook of Egyptian
Mythology (Oxford: ABC–CLIO, 2002), 131.
68. Gee, “Some Neglected Aspects of Egypt’s Conversion to
Christianity,” 51–52.
69. Ibid., 52.
70. Furthermore, on Figure 7 of Facsimile 2 as being a
protector of the temple, See Jorge Ogdon, “Some Notes on the Iconography of
Min,” Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar 7 (1985/6): 29–41.
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