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): 233-36
Figures 8–11 of Facsimile 2
Joseph Smith left untranslated, commenting instead that these figures contain
“writings that cannot be revealed unto the world” because they are “to be had
in the Holy Temple of God.” [71] The hieroglyphs that appear in both the
manuscript and published versions of Facsimile 2 appear legible enough for us
to secure a fairly reliable reading. [72]
Translations of these
figures have, accordingly, been offered by Nibley and Rhodes, [74] Mekis,
[75] and most recently Gee, [76] with a substandard presentation of
the text offered by Ritner. [77] There is broad agreement in the
translation of these figures, but problematic transcriptions of the hieroglyphs
in both the unpublished and published versions of Facsimile 2 give rise to some
disagreements, as noted in my translation (see Table 3).
Table 3. Translation
of Figures 8-11 of Facsimile 2..
|
Original |
Translation |
|
i nTr Sp(s) m sp |
O noble [78] god at the first |
|
Tp(y) nTr aA nb{t} pt tA |
Time [79] — great god, lord of heaven, earth, |
|
dwAt mw [Dw.w] |
the underworld, the waters, [and the mountains] [80] — |
|
di (?) anx bA Wsir 5Sq |
may the soul [81] of Osiris-Sheshonq [82] live! |
Although it may not be
obvious at first glance how this relates to the temple, a closer look at the
underlying context of this brief inscription and attested parallels reveals
something significant. For starters, the ordering of the epithets attributed to
the unnamed deity in these lines, most likely the god Amun, [83] finds
near-verbatim attestation on the pylon gates of both the Amun and Khonsu
temples at Karnak. [84] The reference to the “first time” (sp tpy; “first
occasion,” “first instance,” etc.), is also noteworthy for understanding this
inscription as having a temple context, since “frequent are the instances in
temple inscriptions in which the historical temple is equated with the st
n sp tpy, the Seat of the First Occasion.” [85] The phrase was
used to describe the Luxor Temple, for example, “first and foremost a creation
site and as such [a site that] had a primary role to play in the grand drama of
the cyclical regeneration of Amun-Re himself. The god’s rejuvenation was
achieved through his return to the very place, even the exact moment, of
creation at Luxor; and the triumph over chaos represented by the annual rebirth
of the kingship ensured Amun’s own re-creation.” [86] So too was it used
to designate the “Holy of Holies” of the temple (st Dsrt nt sp tpy; “the sacred
place of the first time”). [87] The conceptual link between the “first
time” of creation and the temple is clear from the ancient Egyptian
perspective.
Then there is the
benediction of the concluding line: “may the soul of Osiris-Sheshonq live!” It
is not difficult to suggest the appropriateness of this invocation for a
Latter-day Saint temple context. “A common theme of all Egyptian funerary
literature is the resurrection of the dead and their glorification and
deification in the afterlife, which is certainly a central element of our
own temple ceremony.” [88]
By reconsidering this line from the perspective of the modern Latter-day Saint
temple, we begin to see both the logic behind Joseph Smith’s explanation of
these figures in Facsimile 2 as well as how the text may be brought to bear on
temple ritual and vice versa. This may also explain why Joseph Smith may have
intended to display the Egyptian papyri and the published translation of the
Book of Abraham in the Nauvoo temple upon its completion. [89] With this
methodology a symbiotic relationship between text and temple begins to
manifest, so that the Latter-day Saint participant in the temple informs and is
informed by these lines in the facsimile. Barring the Latter-day Saints from
partaking in this universal habit of religious syncretism as it pertains to
their ritual performances in the temple, or somehow insisting that such is
illegitimate, is nothing short of special pleading.
Notes for the Above:
71. “A Fac-Simile from the
Book of Abraham, No. 2.”
72. See “Copy of
Hypocephalus, between circa July 1835 and circa March 1842,” The Joseph Smith
Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/copy-of-hypocephalus-between-circa-july-1835-and-circa-march-1842/1.
74. Nibley and Rhodes, One
Eternal Round, 327; cf. Michael D. Rhodes, “A Translation and Commentary of
the Joseph Smith Hypocephalus,” BYU Studies 17, no. 3 (1977):
264–65; “The Joseph Smith Hypocephalus…Twenty Years Later,” FARMS Preliminary
Report (1997), 4–5.
75. Mekis, The
Hypocephalus, 113, 208.
76. John Gee, “Hypocephali
and Gates,” in Aegyptus et Pannonia 6 (Budapest: The Ancient
Egyptian Committee of the Hungarian-Egyptian Friendship Society, 2020), 33–34.
77. Substandard because of
his perplexing omission of any hieroglyphic transcriptions. Robert K.
Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri, A Complete Edition: P. JS 1–4
and the Hypocephalus of Sheshonq (Salt Lake City: The Smith-Pettit
Foundation, 2011), 222–23.
78. Nibley and Rhodes
read Sps as SDr (“sleeping”). This reading is less likely
than the one preferred by Mekis, Gee, Ritner, and myself of Sps (“noble”).
79. That is, the primordial
time of creation.
80. Nibley and Rhodes follow
the reading of the printed facsimile, which filled in the lacuna with the
hieroglyphs for f and aA stacked on top of each other, to
form the reading mw=f aA “his great waters.” Again, this reading is
less likely than the one preferred by Mekis, Gee, Ritner, and myself of Dw.w (“mountains”).
But consider also the intriguing alternative suggestion of David Calabro, “The
Choreography of Genesis,” 257–58n23, who reads Figures 8–9 as ir pt tA
dwAt mw=f aA, “he who made heaven, earth, and the Duat — its (i.e., the
earth’s) great waters” with the comment that this reading “relates directly to
the visionary and cosmological content of Abraham 3 … [and] may bear similarity
to the creation theme of Abraham 4–5.” Calabro further notes, “The term ‘great
waters’ does not appear in the creation account in Genesis, but it does appear
in Abraham 4:9–10, where it describes the primordial waters out of which land
emerged. The phrase ‘its great waters,’ with the masculine suffix pronoun
referring to the masculine noun ‘land’ (the words for ‘heaven’ and ‘Duat’ are
feminine), could thus be understood as a gloss relating the Egyptian concept of
the Duat (the netherworld, understood in Egyptian cosmology as the source of
the Nile inundation) to the cosmology of the Book of Abraham.”
81. Read by Mekis and Ritner
as sanx (s-causative of anx; “cause to live…”) instead of the
prospective/optative di anx, which is favored by Nibley and Rhodes and
myself. The first figure on the far right seems unlikely to be s as
read by Mekis and Ritner, although admittedly it also does not look entirely
like di.
82. Ritner implausibly
argues that traces of n in the name of Sheshonq/Shishak are
detectable underneath the first SA sign. Instead, the two strokes
underneath appear to be an unidentifiable sign on the right and q on
the left.
83. Nibley and Rhodes, One
Eternal Round, 326–27, believe the deity in question is Osiris, but this is
unlikely, as in other hypocephali (e.g., Mekis, The Hypocephalus,
110–113), the identity of this god is explicitly said to be Amun.
84. Gee, “Hypocephali and
Gates,” 33–34.
85. E. A. Reymond, The
Mythical Origin of the Egyptian Temple (Oxford: Manchester University
Press, 1969), 300.
86. Lanny Bell, “Luxor
Temple and the Cult of the Royal Ka,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 44,
no. 4 (Oct. 1985): 290 and n217a.
87. James K.
Hoffmeier, Sacred in the Vocabulary of Ancient Egypt, Orbis
Biblicus et Orientalis (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1985), 173. Compare Margaret Barker, Creation: A
Biblical Vision for the Environment (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 73,
who observes that in the biblical cosmic imagination, “Day One [of Creation]
was the holy of holies, the state beyond time and matter, and the earliest
picture of Christian worship is set in the holy of holies.” Barker, Creation,
73–101, then proceeds to catalogue numerous biblical and para-biblical writings
illustrating this important point. All of this, of course, fits rather nicely
with a Latter-day Saint temple perspective and with the Book of Abraham, which
narrates the pre-mortal council and Creation in a context that easily lends
itself to a temple setting.
88. Nibley and Rhodes, One
Eternal Round, 327; cf. Rhodes, “The Joseph Smith Hypocephalus … Twenty
Years Later,” 12: “Since the designated purpose of the hypocephalus was to make
the deceased divine, it is not unreasonable to see here a reference to the
sacred ordinances performed in our Latter-day temples.” One need look no
further than the Book of Breathings among the Joseph Smith Papyri to encounter
this expectation for the postmortem divinization of the deceased in other forms
of funerary literature besides hypocephali. “The beginning [of the Document of
Breathing], which [Isis] made [for her brother, Osiris to cause his soul to
live, to cause his body to live, to rejuvenate all his limbs] again, [so that
he might join] the horizon with his father, Re, [to cause his soul to appear in
heaven as the disk of the moon, so that his body might shine like Orion in the
womb of Nut, and to] cause [the same] thing to happen to the Osiris Hor,
justified.” Michael D. Rhodes, The Hor Book of Breathings: A
Translation and Commentary (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2002), 28.
89. An anonymous visitor to
Nauvoo in 1840 met with Joseph Smith and, among other things, was shown the
Egyptian papyri and mummies kept in his house. According to the published
report of the encounter, when the visitor observed “what an ornament it would be
to have these ancient manuscripts handsomely set, in appropriate frames, and
hung up around the walls of the temple which you are about to erect in this
place,” the Prophet replied, “Yes, and the translation hung up
with them.” See “A Glance at the Mormons,” Alexandria Gazette, July
11, 1840, [2], emphasis in original.
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