As touching Abraham and his book, translated through the instrumentality of the Prophet Joseph Smith:
Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,
I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Matthew 22:31-32).
The living Abraham holds the keys of the Book of Abraham (cf. Doctrine and Covenants 27:5; 110:12). To diminish the Book of Abraham is thus to diminish Abraham, a god who "hath entered into his exaltation and sitteth upon his throne" (Doctrine and Covenants 132:29; 37) and, ultimately, to "diminish the purposes" of the God of Abraham, the God of the living. Neither need we redefine Abraham; his years exceed ours (cf. Elder M. Russell Ballard, 20 August 2013, "Let Us Think Straight").
At a distance, now, of millennia, we strain myopically at Abraham's day, but his own memory continues an unbroken mirror. As we read in the book of memory, that day again swims into mortal ken as places, people, events, and, most importantly, covenants, long since forgotten but, nevertheless, real.
Latter-day Saints have long since (in 1880 and again in 1890) taken upon themselves a covenant to reverence the Book of Abraham as scripture. For the Saints, there is no more need to revisit the genuineness of the writings of Abraham than there is to revisit the reality of the exalted Abraham himself. The Book of Abraham comes to us clothed in purity as a translated record of the living father of the covenant people. Abraham is a living prophet, and the Book of Abraham, a true record of his revelations, covenants, ministry, and teachings.
Indeed, the visions of Adam, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, and Joseph Smith, as attested in unprecedented first-person directness in the Pearl of Great Price, anchor the doctrine of a personal God: "Thus I, Abraham, talked with the Lord, face to face, as one man talketh with another" (Abraham 3:11). We must remove our own shoes on holy ground, and lift our own eyes to God, lest we be found "walking in darkness at noon-day" (Doctrine and Covenants 95:6).
The doctrine is simple: God is God; Abraham is Abraham; covenants are covenants; and scripture is scripture (see Matthew 5:37). And why should Abraham's book prove to be any less iconoclastic than the prophet himself, who, in his day, toppled the learned pretense and wavering consensus of men? The Book of Abraham serves as a compass pointing to true north; we take our bearings by it in both time and eternity and, by this means, avoid the errors inherent in the never-settled, ever-shifting theories of men. Otherwise, Abraham's record, instead of a guiding landmark, becomes just one more instance of "meaningless, decorative masses that have no purpose but to break up the flatness of the horizon" (see President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "Walking in Circles," First Presidency Message, Ensign, June 2013).
President Boyd K. Packer teaches us to examine and to weigh the learning of men in the clear morning light of gospel and scriptural truth--not the other way round. As we do so, the truth will shine fair as the sun, clear as the moon, and terrible as an army with banners. Errors in our understanding of history, language, and letters will take flight as we raise high those bright banners to the glory of God. Then lasting intelligence will be ours.
Notes
St Paul adds:
"They which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham." Faith is required to receive the powerful doctrines found in the Book of Abraham.
"They which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham"; they are also blessed with the book he left to his faithful posterity.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
A Shurr Thing: Jaredite King Amgid (Am-gid), a large and mighty man (Book of Mormon: Ether 10: 31)
Book of Ether Chapter 10 yields Jaredite names a-plenty, including the pair Amnigaddah and Amgid:
31 And he begat Heth, and Heth lived in captivity all his days. And Heth begat Aaron, and Aaron dwelt in captivity all his days; and he begat Amnigaddah, and Amnigaddah also dwelt in captivity all his days; and he begat Coriantum, and Coriantum dwelt in captivity all his days; and he begat Com.
32 And it came to pass that Com drew away the half of the kingdom. And he reigned over the half of the kingdom forty and two years; and he went to battle against the king, Amgid, and they fought for the space of many years, during which time Com gained power over Amgid, and obtained power over the remainder of the kingdom.
Amgid serves up a perfect name for a Jaredite king. The Jaredites were forever led, you will recall, by large and mighty men. Ancient Nimrod, the prototype, was a "mighty hunter" (2:1); the Brother of Jared, "a large and mighty man" (7:8); "there arose another mighty man" (11:17)--then another; all being "large and mighty men as to the strength of men" (15:26); even "two millions of mighty men" (15:2).
Amgid was tough, but Com, who "gained power over Amgid," was even tougher. Com something suggests Proto-Semitic *qm, stand; standing. (Hebrew qwm is a different root, says Professor Stefan Weninger.) The one who stands up fits a king who will one fine day--after a vasty "space of many years"--reunite his fathers' kingdom. And Com, after all, in the fight with Amgid, was the last man standing.
Amgid was tough, but Com, who "gained power over Amgid," was even tougher. Com something suggests Proto-Semitic *qm, stand; standing. (Hebrew qwm is a different root, says Professor Stefan Weninger.) The one who stands up fits a king who will one fine day--after a vasty "space of many years"--reunite his fathers' kingdom. And Com, after all, in the fight with Amgid, was the last man standing.
Amgid, then? The (Proto-)Semitic root *gid signifies tendon or sinew--and Amgid accordingly evinces a Semitic presence in Archaic America. Am-gid is a perfectly good Semitic name, and startlingly apt for a Jaredite king: People of Sinew, that is, tough, muscular people, "large and mighty men." Amnigaddah (am-ngd), in like manner, suggests a Am-nigaddah, a people strong of breast (or breast-and-neck). That Amgid and Amnigaddah should occur on a single page of the Book of Ether should startle the complacent reader (for ngd, see p. 56 of https://jolr.ru/files/(32)jlr2010-3(43-78).pdf).
Notes--and the Valley of Shurr
Stefan Weninger, The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook, 215 (6.1.5): "Tendon, sinew: PS *gid-". Akkadian attests gidu, North West Semitic: Ugaritic, gd; Hebrew, gid; Syriac, gyada. The Arabic, zid, neck, "is related with a meaning shift."
The suggested reading in The Book of Mormon Onomasticon Project is incorrect: "people of fortune" (gad), has the wrong vowel, matches a later cultural setting, and also likely comes from the root gdd.
8.3.5 "PWS *'amm- is also attested with more general meanings such as 'relatives, clan, people." Is Amgid, then, a Proto West Semitic name? CAD G yields the archaic (Ur III) Personal Name, Gidanu, "probably West Semitic," although the editors avoid a link with Akkadian gidu, sinew. No matter. Whatever Gidanu may signify, the early name yet evokes Jaredite Amgid.
Am-nigaddah, n-g-d, a people who stands out, a distinguished people.
The Valley of Shurr (Ether 14:28): Shurr recalls two roots, to be narrow; belly, navel. Shurr, where Coriantumr's vast army tents may be pictured as a narrow place--the tents spread along a long, narrow valley, rather than clumped in one body out in the open. The army takes a breather in the valley, then quickly gathers to a more secure place, a large nearby hill, called Comnor (read Comron), which signifies Place of Rampart, Rampart Hill. Comron matches Nephite Cumorah (also Rampart). Now safe and snug on Rampart Hill, Coriantumr sounds a trumpet as invitation to battle.
Proto-Semitic *shurr- is attested in Hebrew as Shor. The Valley of Shurr, like the Palestinian hill, Tabor (navel), may also be pictured as a centerplace of the Jaredite world, a navel of the universe--a place of panegyris, tenting, or gathering. Shurr also suggests king. I still like my first guess: the Valley Shurr signifies a Long and Narrow Valley, tucked to one side a long, slanting Rampart Hill. At any rate, Shurr, with its strange double r, reflects linguistic and cultural realities the Prophet Joseph Smith knew nothing about (Weninger, 217, 6.1.4).
Notes--and the Valley of Shurr
Stefan Weninger, The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook, 215 (6.1.5): "Tendon, sinew: PS *gid-". Akkadian attests gidu, North West Semitic: Ugaritic, gd; Hebrew, gid; Syriac, gyada. The Arabic, zid, neck, "is related with a meaning shift."
The suggested reading in The Book of Mormon Onomasticon Project is incorrect: "people of fortune" (gad), has the wrong vowel, matches a later cultural setting, and also likely comes from the root gdd.
8.3.5 "PWS *'amm- is also attested with more general meanings such as 'relatives, clan, people." Is Amgid, then, a Proto West Semitic name? CAD G yields the archaic (Ur III) Personal Name, Gidanu, "probably West Semitic," although the editors avoid a link with Akkadian gidu, sinew. No matter. Whatever Gidanu may signify, the early name yet evokes Jaredite Amgid.
Am-nigaddah, n-g-d, a people who stands out, a distinguished people.
The Valley of Shurr (Ether 14:28): Shurr recalls two roots, to be narrow; belly, navel. Shurr, where Coriantumr's vast army tents may be pictured as a narrow place--the tents spread along a long, narrow valley, rather than clumped in one body out in the open. The army takes a breather in the valley, then quickly gathers to a more secure place, a large nearby hill, called Comnor (read Comron), which signifies Place of Rampart, Rampart Hill. Comron matches Nephite Cumorah (also Rampart). Now safe and snug on Rampart Hill, Coriantumr sounds a trumpet as invitation to battle.
28 And they pitched their tents in the valley of Corihor; and Coriantumr pitched his tents in [throughout the length of?] the valley of Shurr. Now the valley of Shurr was near the hill Comnor [Comron: so Royal Skousen]; wherefore, Coriantumr [just as quickly as he could] did gather his armies together upon the hill Comnor [Comron], and did sound a trumpet unto the armies of Shiz to invite them forth to battle.
29 And it came to pass that they came forth, but were driven again; and they came the second time, and they were driven again the second time. And it came to pass that they came again the third time, and the battle became exceedingly sore.
Proto-Semitic *shurr- is attested in Hebrew as Shor. The Valley of Shurr, like the Palestinian hill, Tabor (navel), may also be pictured as a centerplace of the Jaredite world, a navel of the universe--a place of panegyris, tenting, or gathering. Shurr also suggests king. I still like my first guess: the Valley Shurr signifies a Long and Narrow Valley, tucked to one side a long, slanting Rampart Hill. At any rate, Shurr, with its strange double r, reflects linguistic and cultural realities the Prophet Joseph Smith knew nothing about (Weninger, 217, 6.1.4).
Friday, August 9, 2013
What Does The Book of Mormon Name "Cumorah" Signify? Cumorah's Redoubt; Cumorah's Olivepress
I
"I am going to Cumorah" is what the old man, turning down a ride in their wagon, said to Joseph, Oliver, and David.
(https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/MStar/id/27175)
Hugh Nibley points us a road to Cumorah. In a marginal note--just two words--about Mormon's description of Cumorah as "a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains," Nibley writes "spots"; "rock-pits." A few verses down comes another note: "Redoubt; Armaggeddon; Flanders." It is as though Sargeant Nibley were scouting the area for Mormon, prior to the final battle. Something about the pockmarked, spotty nature of the landscape: rock-pits, fountains, and the criss-cross of watercourses, made of Cumorah, for Nibley, the perfect redoubt. (See his annotated Book of Mormon, one of many, BYU Ancient Studies Library, Hugh Nibley, BX 8622.1 A1 1963b, copy dated 7/5/78.)
Professor Hoskisson also notes in passing (2004) an ancient Syrian place name Kamaru and, following Jean-Marie Durand, suggests it represents an Amorite name deriving from the same root as Akkadian kumara. As Michael C. Astour tells us, Kamaru occurs (up to three times) in ancient Syria--and it persists to this day in the place name Kimar, Syria, just east of the Afrin River (see Michael Astour, "Semites and Hurrians in Northern Transtigris," etc.).
I now turn to James E. Hoch's startling book, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period. Here's what caught this reader's attention in 2011:
A list of place names recorded in the Nubian temple of Amarah West gives us the Syrian Ginta ku-ma-ra, the Winepress of Kumara (or Kumarah). You cannot get any closer to Cumorah than the clear and consistant hierogyphic "group writing," developed by the Egyptian scribes to vocalize Semitic words and names, that expresses West Semitic Ginta Kumara, that is, Gath Kumara (see James E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts, 293, #425 = K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions II, 217, no. 98, Dynasty XIX; for II, 217, Scroll down to page 246: https://archive.org/details/KennethA.KitchenRamessideInscriptionsVol2 ).
A list of place names recorded in the Nubian temple of Amarah West gives us the Syrian Ginta ku-ma-ra, the Winepress of Kumara (or Kumarah). You cannot get any closer to Cumorah than the clear and consistant hierogyphic "group writing," developed by the Egyptian scribes to vocalize Semitic words and names, that expresses West Semitic Ginta Kumara, that is, Gath Kumara (see James E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts, 293, #425 = K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions II, 217, no. 98, Dynasty XIX; for II, 217, Scroll down to page 246: https://archive.org/details/KennethA.KitchenRamessideInscriptionsVol2 ).
The first element, Ginta, says Hoch, appears variously in the Amarna Letters (royal Egyptian correspondence that documents many Syro-Palestinian place names) as Gimtu-, Ginti-, or Giti, which corresponds to Hebrew and Ugaritic, gt or gath, a winepress. As for Kumara, the consonant-cum-vowel syllabic "group writing" is very clear: Gardiner's sign list D28, "arms extended," Hoch, 511, /ku/; Aa15 and D38, "unclassified sign" plus "forearm with hand holding a rounded loaf," Hoch, 508, /ma/ (listed as ma4); D21, "mouth," Hoch, 509, /ra/: ku-ma-ra. (Hoch, #425, Ginta Kumara is the first example listed under Ginta; the "sign groups" for Semitic names are listed in Hoch, 506-512).
Kumarah or Cumorah, as a vineyard, perfectly matches "a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains."
And where was Ginta Kumara?
A second Kumara--if not the very same place--lies in ancient Hurrian country, according to the Great North Syrian List of Thutmose III (and other lists): "k-m-r- (ka-m-r-w)," Michael C. Astour, "Place-Names from the Kingdom of Alalah in the North Syrian List of Thutmose III: A Study in Historical Topography," Journal of Near Eastern Studies (1963, 22:4), 230. The place, "still called Kimar," lies "in the Gebel Sim'an, east of the Afrin River," Michael C. Astour, "Semitic Elements in the Kumarbi Myth: An Onomastic Inquiry," Journal of Near Eastern Studies (1968 27:3), 173. As Professor Astour reminds us, the name of the Hurrian god Kumarbi means "(He) of Kumar."
Professor Astour tells us just what the Syrian place name means. The noun kumaru, kuwaru, etc., which signifies generally a construction of earth, specifically refers to a ramp or rampart (buttressing a city or city gate), a redoubt, or a dike. Such an embankment may also have agricultural uses, that is, the protective wall of a garden (think of the Persian paradeisos). Consider the following theophoric name: 'Ammukumarra, "'Ammu is a rampart." A like epithet speaks to "Teshub, the lord of the kamaru of the city of Irrite" (Michael Astour, "Semites and Hurrians in Northern Transtigris," Ernest R. Lacheman Festschrift, 26). (Think of Gilgamesh and the wall of the city Uruk.) Note, again, the ending in -a: Ginta Kumara, 'Ammukumarra: that's where the Amorite, or West Semitic element, surfaces. Book of Mormon Cumorah properly shows the West Semitic, rather than the East Semitic, that is, Akkadian, ending.
Beetling embankments, ramparts, and dikes: all these may serve for defensive earthworks, heaped up by men. Of superior worth would be a place where nature herself, in a riot of fountains and pits, rivers and embankments and escarpments, dikes and ditches--all criss-crossed and confounding--and rocks of all sizes everywhere, builds for man a place of redoubt--like Flanders. The whole makes for a natural beehive of military preparation, and, to be sure, the editors of the CAL (Comprehensive Lexicon of Aramaic) see in the Syriac word for beehive (kwr) a trace of the same Akkadian kmr in its sense of walling (brick wall and so on).
And where was Ginta Kumara?
A second Kumara--if not the very same place--lies in ancient Hurrian country, according to the Great North Syrian List of Thutmose III (and other lists): "k-m-r-
Professor Astour tells us just what the Syrian place name means. The noun kumaru, kuwaru, etc., which signifies generally a construction of earth, specifically refers to a ramp or rampart (buttressing a city or city gate), a redoubt, or a dike. Such an embankment may also have agricultural uses, that is, the protective wall of a garden (think of the Persian paradeisos). Consider the following theophoric name: 'Ammukumarra, "'Ammu is a rampart." A like epithet speaks to "Teshub, the lord of the kamaru of the city of Irrite" (Michael Astour, "Semites and Hurrians in Northern Transtigris," Ernest R. Lacheman Festschrift, 26). (Think of Gilgamesh and the wall of the city Uruk.) Note, again, the ending in -a: Ginta Kumara, 'Ammukumarra: that's where the Amorite, or West Semitic element, surfaces. Book of Mormon Cumorah properly shows the West Semitic, rather than the East Semitic, that is, Akkadian, ending.
Beetling embankments, ramparts, and dikes: all these may serve for defensive earthworks, heaped up by men. Of superior worth would be a place where nature herself, in a riot of fountains and pits, rivers and embankments and escarpments, dikes and ditches--all criss-crossed and confounding--and rocks of all sizes everywhere, builds for man a place of redoubt--like Flanders. The whole makes for a natural beehive of military preparation, and, to be sure, the editors of the CAL (Comprehensive Lexicon of Aramaic) see in the Syriac word for beehive (kwr) a trace of the same Akkadian kmr in its sense of walling (brick wall and so on).
Nature walls off Cumorah and her hill--Mormon has the advantage.
For the ruins of palatial Tell Ain Dara, our Syrian Kumara towering over the paradisaical Afrin Valley, see http://romeartlover.tripod.com/Deinair.html. Tell Ain Dara, Gath Cumorah, Ginta Ku-ma-ra, Rampart and Winepress and Paradise, Semitic names vocalized in Egyptian hieroglyphs, a kind of "reformed Egyptian" for that special purpose--these are the things that catch one's attention.
II
In an earlier essay (published in 201o), I link Cumorah with a rare Hebrew, Aramaic, and, perhaps, Ugaritic verb kmr, which variously expresses darkness, gloom, blackness. Professor Hoch thinks kmr to be a by-form of the verb kmh (Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts).
While the link isn't convincing, it does call to mind the Egyptian name for the fertile Nile Valley, Km.t, the black land. Again consider the Syrian place name, Gath Kumara (the winepress or olivepress of Kumara). The names of West Semitic presses and vineyards often bespeak blessing and fertility. The Bible gives us Gath Rimmon (Persimmon Winepress) and Gethsemane, which last evokes the fatness of the olive and the purity and brakhah--the blessed nature--of its oil. Gath Kumara fairly sings of fertile soil, and much calls to mind a like West Semitic root, krm, vineyard (Vineyard Winepress; Orchard Winepress). As Gath Kerem, so Gath Kumara. Indeed, Gath Kumara yields inherent possibilities for plays on words: the Gath Kumara thus corresponds to the Gath Kerem, the Wine Press of the Hilltop Vineyard, as we might translate the place name. A play on words certainly arises in Isaiah's Song of the Vineyard: the Kerem is planted in a qeren (horn), "a even the Qeren ben Shamen, or "a very fruitful hill" (Isaiah 5:1). But Qeren ben Shamen, though often rendered as "a hillside rich in oil," that is, "fertile," first registers the "horn of rich olive oil," a cornucopia. In Zenos's allegory of the Olive Tree in Book of Mormon Jacob 5:43, we find such a qeren as symbolic of Lehi's land of promise: "I did plant in a good spot of ground; yea, even that which was choice unto me above all other parts of the land of my vineyard." Much of the vineyard consisted of poor and yet poorer soil, about which the keeper of the Vineyard's owner complained incessantly; the children of Lehi were tucked away into a qeren.
II
In an earlier essay (published in 201o), I link Cumorah with a rare Hebrew, Aramaic, and, perhaps, Ugaritic verb kmr, which variously expresses darkness, gloom, blackness. Professor Hoch thinks kmr to be a by-form of the verb kmh (Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts).
While the link isn't convincing, it does call to mind the Egyptian name for the fertile Nile Valley, Km.t, the black land. Again consider the Syrian place name, Gath Kumara (the winepress or olivepress of Kumara). The names of West Semitic presses and vineyards often bespeak blessing and fertility. The Bible gives us Gath Rimmon (Persimmon Winepress) and Gethsemane, which last evokes the fatness of the olive and the purity and brakhah--the blessed nature--of its oil. Gath Kumara fairly sings of fertile soil, and much calls to mind a like West Semitic root, krm, vineyard (Vineyard Winepress; Orchard Winepress). As Gath Kerem, so Gath Kumara. Indeed, Gath Kumara yields inherent possibilities for plays on words: the Gath Kumara thus corresponds to the Gath Kerem, the Wine Press of the Hilltop Vineyard, as we might translate the place name. A play on words certainly arises in Isaiah's Song of the Vineyard: the Kerem is planted in a qeren (horn), "a even the Qeren ben Shamen, or "a very fruitful hill" (Isaiah 5:1). But Qeren ben Shamen, though often rendered as "a hillside rich in oil," that is, "fertile," first registers the "horn of rich olive oil," a cornucopia. In Zenos's allegory of the Olive Tree in Book of Mormon Jacob 5:43, we find such a qeren as symbolic of Lehi's land of promise: "I did plant in a good spot of ground; yea, even that which was choice unto me above all other parts of the land of my vineyard." Much of the vineyard consisted of poor and yet poorer soil, about which the keeper of the Vineyard's owner complained incessantly; the children of Lehi were tucked away into a qeren.
Cumorah, the Fruitful Land, the Cornucopia, so much as Protective Rampart of the same, thus bookends nicely with the Book of Mormon Land Bountiful (perhaps reflecting the Semitic root ts-m-r, Tsumar), being respectively the north and south boundaries (rampart as boundary?) of the Land Northward in the Book of Mormon, even Kumar and Tsumar (see F. Grondahl, Die Personennamen der Texte aus Ugarit, 199: ts-m-r, "fruchtbar sein"; the Prophet Joseph Smith is on record as naming fruitful Zion, Zomar). Worthy of note is another Book of Mormon hill, the Jaredite Comron, Place of Comr. . . (Ether 14: 28-29; the Printer's Manuscript names the hill Comron, not, as in our editions, Comnor: Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of The Book of Mormon 6:3874; The Book of Mormon Onomasticon, q.v., "Cumorah," also suggests an etymological link between Cumorah and Comron, though no conclusion is reached.
If kmr is a by-form of kmh, and if both evoke Km.t, could not Gath Kumara at least connote the black, fertile soil? After all, Kumarbi, he of Kumar, is an earthy, chthonic, fertility deity for the ancient Hurrians (in upper Mesopotamia), and his mythology speaks of a descent into the "dark, dark earth." As for Pomegranate Wine Press, the pomegranate with its abundant seeds becomes, like the fertile black humus, a symbol of fruitfulness par excellence. In the palace garden of Ashurnasirpal III pomegranates and vines richly intertwine (see E. Cook, AJA 108, 56).
That said, Michael Astour, and others, correctly assign the Syrian place names built on the root kmr to the semantic field of kumaru, to heap up, pile. Kimar, ancient Kumaru, is thus Rampart or Ramp, the place of the Embankment--just east of the Afrin river. Gath Kumara, if the same place, is thus the Winepress of the place Rampart, the (brick) Walled Winepress, or the like. Any other associations with beehives or the black soil (the rich loam piled up about the river banks, etc.), if made at all, would have been secondary, but the association remains natural and inescapable.
Alexander Militarev, an adventurous lexicographer, links Egyptian km, kmm, Km.t with a West Semitic root for darkness, gloom, blackness ('km), but, here, we find ourselves in by-paths: is the "original" root km? or 'km? or kmr? Or is kmr also a by-form of 'km, and therefore to be linked etymologically with Egyptian km and Km.t? Here is a language confounded and contorted into by-forms and shades of meaning. As early as the 19th century, scholars linked, though weakly, km with some of these same Semitic forms. Hoch has it right: the root has taken on affixes (an -r extension), owing perhaps to dialect or confusion with another verb. Kmr, km, 'km: these likely do not all derive from the same root, but no matter--babel language has thrown them together. The semantic field--and the symbolic--has overlapped since the earliest times.
We cannot know just what came to the ordinary Nephite's mind, when he heard the name Cumorah, but some mind linked name and nature's fortress. We have only a fragment of the Hebrew spoken by the ancients: Biblical Hebrew, much of it poetic, classical, does not yield enough material to provide answers to questions about Semitic roots like kmr.
Yet Mormon tells us what the place Cumorah was like, and does so in terms suggestive of the West Semitic name Kumaru. Yet we may imaginatively perceive a link between the kum of Cumorah and that of Km.t (Kumat or Kamat). (The Greek word for mound is likewise kom.) Ramps and mounds are heaped-up of piles of black earth. And the Nile Valley, after each inundation, runs all a-dot with little black mounds, each awaiting the touch of life. Black earth spells germination, a semiotically rich theme belonging to the common Afro-Semitic "encyclopaedia." Kmr signifies black heaps of fertile soil, so well as ramparts, dikes, and ruined mounds.
While Professor Astour explains the place name Kumaru in light of Akkadian kumaru (to throw down and thus heap up, etc.), the Sumerian lexeme answering to kumaru yields GUR-GUR, which refers to the tallying up of a sum: you heap up, and then you total the gain. So why not associate Hurrian Kumaru with the high-yield Kumat, or Black Land? "Every spring," explains Professor Ronald J. Leprohon, "the Nile flood would subside and what first emerged from the water were triangular-shaped islands of rich black earth. These little mounds represented the promise of new life, which led to the notion that all creation must have begun exactly the same way" ("Egyptian Religious Texts," Egyptology Today (ed) R. H. Wilkinson, 231). Such ideas need not be exclusively Egyptian, and Kumarbi's center place may thus be another Black Land, another place of beginning where life stirs into being. Similar little mounds do indeed appear in the Mesopotamian record, but here the theme is not "the promise of new life," but annihilation: "as if the flood had devastated them, I [Sargon] piled up (his cities) into ruin mounds [u-kam-mi]" (CAD K 114).
That said, Michael Astour, and others, correctly assign the Syrian place names built on the root kmr to the semantic field of kumaru, to heap up, pile. Kimar, ancient Kumaru, is thus Rampart or Ramp, the place of the Embankment--just east of the Afrin river. Gath Kumara, if the same place, is thus the Winepress of the place Rampart, the (brick) Walled Winepress, or the like. Any other associations with beehives or the black soil (the rich loam piled up about the river banks, etc.), if made at all, would have been secondary, but the association remains natural and inescapable.
Alexander Militarev, an adventurous lexicographer, links Egyptian km, kmm, Km.t with a West Semitic root for darkness, gloom, blackness ('km), but, here, we find ourselves in by-paths: is the "original" root km? or 'km? or kmr? Or is kmr also a by-form of 'km, and therefore to be linked etymologically with Egyptian km and Km.t? Here is a language confounded and contorted into by-forms and shades of meaning. As early as the 19th century, scholars linked, though weakly, km with some of these same Semitic forms. Hoch has it right: the root has taken on affixes (an -r extension), owing perhaps to dialect or confusion with another verb. Kmr, km, 'km: these likely do not all derive from the same root, but no matter--babel language has thrown them together. The semantic field--and the symbolic--has overlapped since the earliest times.
We cannot know just what came to the ordinary Nephite's mind, when he heard the name Cumorah, but some mind linked name and nature's fortress. We have only a fragment of the Hebrew spoken by the ancients: Biblical Hebrew, much of it poetic, classical, does not yield enough material to provide answers to questions about Semitic roots like kmr.
Yet Mormon tells us what the place Cumorah was like, and does so in terms suggestive of the West Semitic name Kumaru. Yet we may imaginatively perceive a link between the kum of Cumorah and that of Km.t (Kumat or Kamat). (The Greek word for mound is likewise kom.) Ramps and mounds are heaped-up of piles of black earth. And the Nile Valley, after each inundation, runs all a-dot with little black mounds, each awaiting the touch of life. Black earth spells germination, a semiotically rich theme belonging to the common Afro-Semitic "encyclopaedia." Kmr signifies black heaps of fertile soil, so well as ramparts, dikes, and ruined mounds.
While Professor Astour explains the place name Kumaru in light of Akkadian kumaru (to throw down and thus heap up, etc.), the Sumerian lexeme answering to kumaru yields GUR-GUR, which refers to the tallying up of a sum: you heap up, and then you total the gain. So why not associate Hurrian Kumaru with the high-yield Kumat, or Black Land? "Every spring," explains Professor Ronald J. Leprohon, "the Nile flood would subside and what first emerged from the water were triangular-shaped islands of rich black earth. These little mounds represented the promise of new life, which led to the notion that all creation must have begun exactly the same way" ("Egyptian Religious Texts," Egyptology Today (ed) R. H. Wilkinson, 231). Such ideas need not be exclusively Egyptian, and Kumarbi's center place may thus be another Black Land, another place of beginning where life stirs into being. Similar little mounds do indeed appear in the Mesopotamian record, but here the theme is not "the promise of new life," but annihilation: "as if the flood had devastated them, I [Sargon] piled up (his cities) into ruin mounds [u-kam-mi]" (CAD K 114).
Mormon's Cumorah speaks to ruin, even annihilation.
The Sumerian lexicon also yields KUM (to be, become hot, heat), a word likely to be a Semitic loan-word; it's a shared word anyhow. How to bridge the gap between Egyptian Kuma and Sumerian KUM, between black and hot? Lamentations 5:10 speaks of faces "hot like an oven" (nikmaru), and some have translated the word as scorched, blackened. Hot as an oven; black as an oven, it is all the same. Blackness absorbs heat. Afroasiatic Km, together with its by-forms kmr and 'km, signifies heat. Heat, gloom, sadness, darkness, blackness all come together in an original root, kum. For Job, a very trying day, a day in which everything piles on, is a kamirirey yom--not just kmr but kmr-r.
Cumorah, with its many waters, rivers, and fountains, calls up Spring's fertility, a black land like the Egyptian Kumat, as km.t was likely pronounced. (For the vocalization of Egyptian km.t, see Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, 42, 88. Egyptians referred to themselves as the Ramats ni Kumat (the people of Kumat), or even as the Kumut). Where such a link between ku-ma-ra and the black earth may not be linguistically sound, we may yet term it semiotically suggestive, part of a shared connotative encyclopaedia, somewhere on the other side of denotation and dictionary. Matching dictionary and the denotative would be Cumorah the Redoubt, the Rampart Land, "serving," as Shakespeare would have it, "in the office of a wall." In other words, Cumorah denotes a Rampart, a stronghold, "this fortress built by Nature for herself"; it may also connote a land rich in promise.
III
Is a New York Cumorah a rampart too far?
The search for Cumorah will be facilitated so well by the meaning of the name as by Mormon's description of the land and the hill that bear the name. And until those who seek Cumorah identify a place that better matches the linguistic and narrative evidence, a study of New York antiquities can still serve up surprises.
E. G. Squire's study of the native antiquities of New York, whether Huron or a bit older, comes chock full of details about how First Nations threw up earthworks and dug ditches in tandem with the natural defenses found in springs, spits, pits, bays, fissures in the limestone, etc. Squire's descriptions astonish. The natural defenses are already sufficiently strong to require but little in the way of the works of men: some ditches for palisades, earthen gates and ramparts--these last, large but not spectacular--and so forth.
Even for the reader who situates Cumorah in Mexico (and as Hugh Nibley reminds us, Anahuac, that is the Valley of Mexico, does signify waters), Squire's study will prove indispensable in setting forth the proper Cumorah terrain (Ephraim G. Squire, Antiquities of New York, 1853). Western New York, anyway you slice it, has always been good Cumorah land. Nibley argued that a New York setting for Cumorah was not a bridge too far; he also saw the merit in a Mesoamerican or Peruvian setting, provided Cumorah's hill remained a hill, and not some ridiculous mountain, upon which no armies could be arranged in battle formation. That's how Hugh Nibley saw it. Now we also see Cumorah in Syria.
And Syria today sadly sees Cumorah.
Notes
Curiosity about Zarahemla, the land of Nephi, or the narrow neck of land comes with the reading. Hugh Nibley once answered a direct question about the location of the city of Zarahemla with some specific indications. I don't know what startled me more: that I would ask so directly or that such specificity would be immediately forthcoming.
The Sumerian lexicon also yields KUM (to be, become hot, heat), a word likely to be a Semitic loan-word; it's a shared word anyhow. How to bridge the gap between Egyptian Kuma and Sumerian KUM, between black and hot? Lamentations 5:10 speaks of faces "hot like an oven" (nikmaru), and some have translated the word as scorched, blackened. Hot as an oven; black as an oven, it is all the same. Blackness absorbs heat. Afroasiatic Km, together with its by-forms kmr and 'km, signifies heat. Heat, gloom, sadness, darkness, blackness all come together in an original root, kum. For Job, a very trying day, a day in which everything piles on, is a kamirirey yom--not just kmr but kmr-r.
Any relation to Akkadian kumaru? Who can say?
Again, I can't make a lexical connection, but it's easy to see how semantic and symbolic fields might overlap. In West Semitic one of the meanings of kmr and 'km has to do with the heat necessary for the germination of plant life in the dark earth. Which brings us back to the greatest Hurrian god, Kumarbi, he of Kmr, the chthonic rampart god. A blade of wheat is his symbol. Does Syrian Kumaru, then, signify rampart? or black earth? or both?
Again, I can't make a lexical connection, but it's easy to see how semantic and symbolic fields might overlap. In West Semitic one of the meanings of kmr and 'km has to do with the heat necessary for the germination of plant life in the dark earth. Which brings us back to the greatest Hurrian god, Kumarbi, he of Kmr, the chthonic rampart god. A blade of wheat is his symbol. Does Syrian Kumaru, then, signify rampart? or black earth? or both?
Cumorah, with its many waters, rivers, and fountains, calls up Spring's fertility, a black land like the Egyptian Kumat, as km.t was likely pronounced. (For the vocalization of Egyptian km.t, see Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, 42, 88. Egyptians referred to themselves as the Ramats ni Kumat (the people of Kumat), or even as the Kumut). Where such a link between ku-ma-ra and the black earth may not be linguistically sound, we may yet term it semiotically suggestive, part of a shared connotative encyclopaedia, somewhere on the other side of denotation and dictionary. Matching dictionary and the denotative would be Cumorah the Redoubt, the Rampart Land, "serving," as Shakespeare would have it, "in the office of a wall." In other words, Cumorah denotes a Rampart, a stronghold, "this fortress built by Nature for herself"; it may also connote a land rich in promise.
III
Is a New York Cumorah a rampart too far?
The search for Cumorah will be facilitated so well by the meaning of the name as by Mormon's description of the land and the hill that bear the name. And until those who seek Cumorah identify a place that better matches the linguistic and narrative evidence, a study of New York antiquities can still serve up surprises.
E. G. Squire's study of the native antiquities of New York, whether Huron or a bit older, comes chock full of details about how First Nations threw up earthworks and dug ditches in tandem with the natural defenses found in springs, spits, pits, bays, fissures in the limestone, etc. Squire's descriptions astonish. The natural defenses are already sufficiently strong to require but little in the way of the works of men: some ditches for palisades, earthen gates and ramparts--these last, large but not spectacular--and so forth.
Even for the reader who situates Cumorah in Mexico (and as Hugh Nibley reminds us, Anahuac, that is the Valley of Mexico, does signify waters), Squire's study will prove indispensable in setting forth the proper Cumorah terrain (Ephraim G. Squire, Antiquities of New York, 1853). Western New York, anyway you slice it, has always been good Cumorah land. Nibley argued that a New York setting for Cumorah was not a bridge too far; he also saw the merit in a Mesoamerican or Peruvian setting, provided Cumorah's hill remained a hill, and not some ridiculous mountain, upon which no armies could be arranged in battle formation. That's how Hugh Nibley saw it. Now we also see Cumorah in Syria.
And Syria today sadly sees Cumorah.
Notes
Curiosity about Zarahemla, the land of Nephi, or the narrow neck of land comes with the reading. Hugh Nibley once answered a direct question about the location of the city of Zarahemla with some specific indications. I don't know what startled me more: that I would ask so directly or that such specificity would be immediately forthcoming.
On the other hand, I also heard Brother Nibley say on more than one occasion, "I wouldn't touch Book of Mormon geography with a forty-foot pole." Did he place any value on John Sorenson's Mesoamerican research, a Mesoamerican approach to the Book of Mormon? Yes. Brother Nibley praised and recommended his work to students. Where a question remains open, we might profit from any thoughtful study.
I greatly prize my own copy of John Sorenson's last book, Mormon's Codex. There is so much in the book that calls to mind the Book of Mormon. On the other hand, everywhere we turn the Book of Mormon swims into ken, from news reports to ancient place names in Syria. Even thumbing through a Greek lexicon presents surprising correspondences to Book of Mormon thought. Scripture is resonant.
So what about the "forty-foot pole"?
An overmuch concern with Book of Mormon geography in the Americas, beyond noting the internal consistency of geographic reference within the book, lies outside intelligent endeavor. Determined argument on such matters becomes the mark of the huckster or the fanatic and hardly speaks to spiritual or social refinement.
Notes
"I am going to Cumorah": Joseph F. Smith, Orson Pratt, Interview with David Whitmer, 1878 Millennial Star
Paul Y. Hoskisson, "What's in a Name: Cumorah," The Journal of the Book of Mormon
The Book of Mormon Onomasticon Project (BYU, Neal A. Maxwell Institute), q.v. "Cumorah"
Michael Astour, Journal of Near Eastern Studies
An overmuch concern with Book of Mormon geography in the Americas, beyond noting the internal consistency of geographic reference within the book, lies outside intelligent endeavor. Determined argument on such matters becomes the mark of the huckster or the fanatic and hardly speaks to spiritual or social refinement.
Notes
"I am going to Cumorah": Joseph F. Smith, Orson Pratt, Interview with David Whitmer, 1878 Millennial Star
Paul Y. Hoskisson, "What's in a Name: Cumorah," The Journal of the Book of Mormon
The Book of Mormon Onomasticon Project (BYU, Neal A. Maxwell Institute), q.v. "Cumorah"
Michael Astour, Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Monday, August 5, 2013
Joseph Smith and Hannibal: Mount Hanabal in Joseph Smith Translation Genesis 14:10
The Prophet Joseph Smith left for the benefit of the Saints not one but two books of Abraham. The first appears in the added words, phrases, sentences, and even paragraphs of the New Translation of Genesis. The second came to light from a roll of papyrus, written in hieratic script and purporting, in its title, to be The Book of Abraham, Written by His Own Hand upon Papyrus. Like the gold plates of the Book of Mormon, the record on papyrus, scribal copy though it be, becomes a tangible earnest of the resurrection of the dead. Together, these two offerings yield startling details, stories, and revelations not found in the Holy Bible and set forth the covenant of the priesthood God made with the fathers.
Among the many easily missed details Brother Joseph added to the ancient story of Abraham is the place name Hanabal, a name which could refer to one or several of the Mountains of Moab--perhaps Jebel Shihan, with its high ruins and caves. A stele depicting a form of Ba'al wearing Egyptian accoutrements was found just to the west of Shihan. Another candidate is Bemot Ba'al, the High Place of Ba'al, to which "Balak took Balaam" (Numbers 22:41). The mountain towers out of nowhere in Joseph Smith Translation Genesis 14:9--a verse not found in the footnotes of the current LDS edition of the Holy Bible.
The story begins with KJV Genesis 14:10:
Among the many easily missed details Brother Joseph added to the ancient story of Abraham is the place name Hanabal, a name which could refer to one or several of the Mountains of Moab--perhaps Jebel Shihan, with its high ruins and caves. A stele depicting a form of Ba'al wearing Egyptian accoutrements was found just to the west of Shihan. Another candidate is Bemot Ba'al, the High Place of Ba'al, to which "Balak took Balaam" (Numbers 22:41). The mountain towers out of nowhere in Joseph Smith Translation Genesis 14:9--a verse not found in the footnotes of the current LDS edition of the Holy Bible.
The story begins with KJV Genesis 14:10:
1 And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations;
2 That these made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar.
8 And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar;) and they joined battle with them in the vale of Siddim;
9 With Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, and with Tidal king of nations, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar; four kings with five.
10 And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits [JST OT Manuscript 1 has: was filled with slime pits]; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain.
To the last verse, the Prophet adds:
and they that remained fled to the mountains [with the s crossed out] which is called Hanabal. (Old Testament Manuscript 2, p. 640),
or,
to the Mountain [note the capital letter] which was called [Hanable: crossed out] Hanabal (Old Testament Manuscript 1, p. 125).
In an earlier essay, posted on 21 June 2010, I suggested deriving the name from the root n-b-l. Ha-nabal (even Har-nabal) could signify either The Lofty, the Elevated, or Mount Lofty, Mount Eminent, and so forth. I no longer subscribe to that view.
The name of Mount Hanabal clearly combines the root h-n-n (to be gracious, graced) and the epithet Ba'al (master, husband). The author of Genesis 14, after all, had a "predilection for composite place names," and the like (Michael C. Astour, "Hazazon-Tamar", Anchor Bible Dictionary, III, 86). Though I did, in my first try, briefly compare Hanabal to the name of the Carthaginian general Hannibal, the name of another odd mountain known to the patriarchs, Lubar (in Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon), threw me off track. Lubar, nevertheless, has its own fascinating etymology. . .
Hanabal signifies Ba'al is gracious, or Ba'al graces, even as the Hebrew name Hananiah signifies Jehovah is gracious. The Old Testament does twice attest Ba'al-Hanan (the Akkadian Ba'al ha-nu-nu), Ba'al has shown mercy: Ba'al Hanan names a king of Edom (Genesis 36:38; see Ernst Axel Knauf, "Baal-Hanan," Anchor Bible Dictionary I 551-2). A list of personal names from Ebla yields Hanna-Il, "God (Il or El) is gracious" (#792). Also from Ebla: Har-Ba'al, Harra-Ba'al, Ba'al is a Mountain (see Cybernetica Mesopotamica: Ebla PNs).
Ba'al is a Mountain also reminds me of Mount Lubar. Might not Lubar derive from Ilu-Ba'al, a combination of the two divine names Ilu and Ba'al? If so, Lubar could then be read as Ba'al is (my) God. Lubar is leading me off track again. . . Delitzsch derives Lubar from the Alborz Mountains of Persia (The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906, "Noah"). The derivation doesn't go far enough. In the Encyclopaedia Iranica entry for "Alborz," we read that the Hara berezaiti in Avestan texts (later shortened to Harborz) names a vast cosmic mountain or mountain range stretching from horizon to horizon; the connection with the Persian range dates to later times. Lubar is a kind of cosmic mountain for Noah and his sons. Can Lubar really derive from Hara berezaiti? It can.
Ba'al is a Mountain also reminds me of Mount Lubar. Might not Lubar derive from Ilu-Ba'al, a combination of the two divine names Ilu and Ba'al? If so, Lubar could then be read as Ba'al is (my) God. Lubar is leading me off track again. . . Delitzsch derives Lubar from the Alborz Mountains of Persia (The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906, "Noah"). The derivation doesn't go far enough. In the Encyclopaedia Iranica entry for "Alborz," we read that the Hara berezaiti in Avestan texts (later shortened to Harborz) names a vast cosmic mountain or mountain range stretching from horizon to horizon; the connection with the Persian range dates to later times. Lubar is a kind of cosmic mountain for Noah and his sons. Can Lubar really derive from Hara berezaiti? It can.
When looking for derivations, we mustn't expect exact matches. Shouldn't we demand of Joseph Smith the spelling Hananabal in place of Hanabal? Consider Hannibal and Hamilcar of Carthage: here we find West Semitic names in Latin texts and Latin forms. Today we might justifiably spell Hannibal in a variety of ways: Hananibal, Hananibal, Hananabal, Hannabal, even Anibal (as in Spanish). Joseph Smith's Hanabal (or even the odd Hanable) sufficiently signals Hannabal or, just so well, Hananabal. Joseph Smith gives us only one n, it is true, but the consonant is long. (Semitic languages have long consonants.)
How have students understood the name Hannibal? Hannibal may signify "Ba'al has been gracious (in providing me with a son")--that's Hamilcar speaking; others read "Ba'al is gracious." John Huehnergard, "Semitic Roots," in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, suggests Hann-i-bal, "my grace is Baal."
How have students understood the name Hannibal? Hannibal may signify "Ba'al has been gracious (in providing me with a son")--that's Hamilcar speaking; others read "Ba'al is gracious." John Huehnergard, "Semitic Roots," in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, suggests Hann-i-bal, "my grace is Baal."
Why the name of a mountain? One has only to consider the home of Ba'al Hadad on Mount Zaphon, just north of Latakia. Zaphon was Ba'al Hadad's Olympus, but, for the Canaanites, other mountain tops also reflected that central home. Hadad's thunder reverberated from peak to peak. And then there's the name from Ebla: Har(ra)-Ba'al.
We return to the stele found "in the vicinity of Jebel Shihan [Mount Shihan]," another candidate for our Hanabal: "The Rujm al-'Abd figure with its downward-thrusting spear, cap with streamer, and accompanying lion fits iconographic features used to identify the Canaanite god Ba'al, especially when fused with Seth as the slayer of Apophis the serpent in Egyptian art" (Bruce Edward Routledge, Moab in the Iron Age: Hegemony, Polity, Archaeology, 180). Again: "Some scholars have speculatively identified this figure as the god Kemosh, a suggestion that cannot be completely discounted, as local deities were frequently represented as the hypostasis of Ba'al as storm god" (180; illustration of stele on page 179). The Rujm al-'Abd figure, which blends Egyptian and Canaanite iconography in violent aspect (and note the lion!), might as well be called Facsimile 4 of the Book of Abraham.
And any reader familiar with the hill at the head of the plain of Olishem, the place of Elkenah's sacrifical altar in Abraham 1, will wish to visit the hilltop stele of Ramesses the Great, which overlooks an obscure Syrian village. The stele shows the pharaoh offering a figurine of Ma'at to a divinity sporting a bizarrely horned Osirian Atef Crown. An accompanying legend yields: Ilu (El) k-n-a Zaphon, which both Giveon and de Moor read as El qny Zaphon (El Creator of Zaphon). While the transliteration and meaning of the sequence k-n-a is disputed, it does recall "the god of Elkenah" in the Book of Abraham. Or what to make of the many bronze figurines of El, accoutred in "the manner of the Egyptians" and in the pose of a smiting god? So accoutred, the priest of Elkenah, who was also priest of Pharaoh, sought to slay Abraham upon the altar (Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions II, 263.)
Because people are constantly casting aspersions on the Prophet's Book of Abraham, Latter-day Saints might consider a standard response. One response would be to invite all to see in the Joseph Smith Translation yet another restored Book of Abraham. Criticize Abraham's works and watch how, like his seed, they multiply. More scripture from father Abraham is forthcoming.
Nephi has another response: "But behold, there are many that harden their hearts against the Holy Spirit, that it hath no place in them; wherefore, they cast many things away which are written and esteem them as things of naught" (2 Nephi 33:2). Cast out the pearl of great price, then where will you be?
Learned posturing borders on imposture:
"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see" (Revelation 3: 17-18).
None of us sees very well in the mortal state--and we must walk by faith--still, what evidence we do have for the divine Book of Abraham shows that it deserves a second look.
Because the scriptures revealed through the Prophet Joseph Smith give us many a mountain and hill heretofore unknown: Shelem, Hanabal, Potiphar, Cumorah, etc., we should take that second look from a lofty perspective. From a cosmic vantage point, we may see all heights and depths.
Yet before we consider Joseph Smith as linguist (or as student of early Canaanite religion), let's taste of his prophetic irony:
10 And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits [JST OT Manuscript 1 has: was filled with slime pits]; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain,
which is called Hanabal (Old Testament Manuscript 2, p. 640),
which is, being interpreted, Ba'al is gracious.
Some final words
Abraham holds the keys of the Book of Abraham. To diminish the Book of Abraham is thus also to diminish Abraham, a god, who "hath entered into his exaltation and sitteth upon his throne" (Doctrine and Covenants 132), and, ultimately, to challenge and to diminish the purposes of the God of Abraham, the God of the living. Neither need we redefine Abraham; his years exceed ours.
Latter-day Saints have long ago (1880 and 1890) taken upon themselves, by obligation, a covenantal promise to reverence the Book of Abraham as scripture. For the Saints, there is no more need to revisit the genuineness of the writings of Abraham than there is to revisit the reality of the exalted Abraham himself. The Book of Abraham comes to us clothed in purity as a translated record of the living father of the covenant people. Abraham is a living prophet, and the Book of Abraham, a true record of his revelations, covenants, ministry, and teachings.
The doctrine is simple: God is God; Abraham is Abraham; covenants are covenants, and scripture is scripture. The Book of Abraham serves as a compass pointing to true north; we take our bearings by it in both time and eternity and, by this means, avoid the errors inherent in the never-settled, ever-shifting theories of men.
As President Boyd K. Packer teaches, we are to examine and scrutinize, yes, critique, the learning of men from the perspective of gospel and scriptural truth--not the other way round. As we do so, the truth will shine fair as the sun, clear as the moon, and terrible as an army with banners. Errors in our understanding of history, language, and letters will take flight as we raise high those bright banners to the glory of God. Then intelligence will be ours.
NOTES
1) The text of JST Genesis 14, transcribed according to accepted standards, appears in Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts, Scott Faulring, Kent Jackson, Robert Matthews (eds). The introduction to the volume, with its explanations of the various manuscripts of the JST, are invaluable. I further recommend "The Doctrinal Restoration," the transcript of a talk delivered by Elder Bruce R. McConkie, The Joseph Smith Translation, Monte S. Nyman and Robert S. Millet (eds).
Other useful editions of the JST include Joseph Smith's "New Translation" of the Bible (Independence, Missouri, 1970), which I studied as a young child and of which I'm fond, and The Bible Corrected by Joseph Smith, Kenneth and Lyndell Lutes (eds), which shows the changes with more clarity. Neither is a perfect edition, and both perpetuate errors. Other editions are available, given that Latter-day Saints never tire of publishing the same things over and again.
2) Geography of the Pentapolis: J. Simons, The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament, 222-229; Neballat: Simons, p. 390.
Of Jebel Shihan: it "overlooks the Wadi al-Mujib (the Arnon) and the Dead Sea. It rises to 965 meters above sea level, and its summit is occupied by ruins and caves [a place of refuge]," Online Article: "The Karak District in the Madaba Map," by Fawzi Zayadine, part of the study, Jordan: the Madaba Mosaic Map, on the Franciscan Cyberspot. Ba'al's Mount Zaphon itself is not so very much higher: ca. 1500 meters.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Omer, King; Emer, Witness (The Book of Ether Testifies of Jesus Christ)
Chapters eight and nine of the Book of Ether yield, in a sweep of narrative and admonitory commentary, the "exceedingly many days" of Omer, the son of Shule, "which were full of sorrow." Here we see the dancing "daughter of Jared"; we see enamored Akish, who turned, with the turn of a foot, from close friendship for Omer, to found a secret association in "the house of Jared" in order to kill Omer and take away his kingdom.
Like Lehi, Omer dreamed a dream "that he should depart out of the land" and "traveled many days" with his family. "He pitched his tent" in "a place which was called Ablom, by the seashore." (And, perhaps, "by" New York City.) There he lived, in exile, until civil war engulfed the kingdom of Akish, "Wherefore, Omer was restored again." He lived long enough to beget an heir, Emer. After anointing Emer "to be king to reign in his stead," Omer "saw peace in the land for two years, and he died." Emer "did prosper exceedingly" and "saw peace"; "yea, and he even saw the Son of Righteousness, and did rejoice and glory in his day; and he died in peace."
What does Omer signify? According to a glossary of Semitic roots, prepared by John Huehnergard for the 5th edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, the Central Semitic verbal root 'mr [ayin-mem-resh] signifies "to live, dwell, build." As a noun, *'umr is Life. Professor Huehnergard goes on to say that Israelite King Omri (my life) bears a shortened form of the name Omriyah (Jehovah [is] my life = Hebrew *'omer ~ *'umr, life). Here we recall the Arab caliph, Omar. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., "Semitic Roots": "Proto-Semitic Language and Culture; Semitic Roots.")
Life begets Life, and that new Life lives to see The Light and the Life of the world.
That Omer and Emer bear ancient Semitic names, which trace back to early Proto-Semitic rootage, attests to the truth of the Book of Mormon. But the Book of Mormon, through its many testimonies, all the more importantly attests to the reality of the Son of Righteousness, even Jesus Christ! It is that second attestation--the manner in which the Book connects the reader to Christ--that brings testimony not only unto, but into the heart.
Emer, who shall live ("he shall live" - with "e" as third person verbal prefix), both lives and prospers as he builds upon his father's heritage. And, unique among kings and captains of the earth, he lives to see the Son of God. Emer thus becomes a witness of Him who shall live "in his day," and who shall live forevermore.
The root that underlies Emer, ayin-mem-resh, also invokes--at least to the modern reader--aleph-mem-resh ("to see, know, make known, say"). The anointed King who "shall live," shall also see, know, and make known. Perhaps Emer signifies sight, after all. Huehnergard also gives the Proto-Semitic verb for anoint, that is, the same ancient root known to Ether. M-sh-h likewise names Christ, the Messiah.
Ether, after bearing testimony of the glory and rejoicing--and the longed-for peace--quietly moves on. Yet even in the quick passing of a single, light-bearing verse, with Abraham as co-witness, who also, in his day, saw His day, we receive in the Holy Ghost Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
Like Lehi, Omer dreamed a dream "that he should depart out of the land" and "traveled many days" with his family. "He pitched his tent" in "a place which was called Ablom, by the seashore." (And, perhaps, "by" New York City.) There he lived, in exile, until civil war engulfed the kingdom of Akish, "Wherefore, Omer was restored again." He lived long enough to beget an heir, Emer. After anointing Emer "to be king to reign in his stead," Omer "saw peace in the land for two years, and he died." Emer "did prosper exceedingly" and "saw peace"; "yea, and he even saw the Son of Righteousness, and did rejoice and glory in his day; and he died in peace."
What does Omer signify? According to a glossary of Semitic roots, prepared by John Huehnergard for the 5th edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, the Central Semitic verbal root 'mr [ayin-mem-resh] signifies "to live, dwell, build." As a noun, *'umr is Life. Professor Huehnergard goes on to say that Israelite King Omri (my life) bears a shortened form of the name Omriyah (Jehovah [is] my life = Hebrew *'omer ~ *'umr, life). Here we recall the Arab caliph, Omar. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., "Semitic Roots": "Proto-Semitic Language and Culture; Semitic Roots.")
Life begets Life, and that new Life lives to see The Light and the Life of the world.
That Omer and Emer bear ancient Semitic names, which trace back to early Proto-Semitic rootage, attests to the truth of the Book of Mormon. But the Book of Mormon, through its many testimonies, all the more importantly attests to the reality of the Son of Righteousness, even Jesus Christ! It is that second attestation--the manner in which the Book connects the reader to Christ--that brings testimony not only unto, but into the heart.
Emer, who shall live ("he shall live" - with "e" as third person verbal prefix), both lives and prospers as he builds upon his father's heritage. And, unique among kings and captains of the earth, he lives to see the Son of God. Emer thus becomes a witness of Him who shall live "in his day," and who shall live forevermore.
The root that underlies Emer, ayin-mem-resh, also invokes--at least to the modern reader--aleph-mem-resh ("to see, know, make known, say"). The anointed King who "shall live," shall also see, know, and make known. Perhaps Emer signifies sight, after all. Huehnergard also gives the Proto-Semitic verb for anoint, that is, the same ancient root known to Ether. M-sh-h likewise names Christ, the Messiah.
Ether, after bearing testimony of the glory and rejoicing--and the longed-for peace--quietly moves on. Yet even in the quick passing of a single, light-bearing verse, with Abraham as co-witness, who also, in his day, saw His day, we receive in the Holy Ghost Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Reading the Rim: Restoring The Missing Hieroglyphs on Book of Abraham Facsimile 2
While most of the hieroglyphs on the rim of the lost Joseph Smith hypocephalus come through clearly on both the printed facsimile made from the Hedlock woodcut (Book of Abraham, Facsimile 2) and the early pen-and-ink copy (Kirtland Egyptian Papers, Church Historian's Office), about a third has vanished. Can that third be restored? We'll need a parallel text and at least one readable trace lingering on the torn or erased right-side portion of our rim.
And a trace we do have. At the upper end of the torn and rubbed-out rim (and much of the right side) of the hypocephalus, we find on both Hedlock and the Church Historian's copy the traces of three signs: from top to bottom, a horizontal, a dot, and a horizontal (the Church Historian shows two specks and a horizontal). Examination of a like text on the rim of Leiden AMS 62 gives the reading away: the high horizontal stroke represents n; the mid-level dot, t; the low horizontal, s (on Leiden), or perhaps f, or n. Nts is the 3rd person feminine singular independent personal pronoun, she, and refers to the lady Tanetirt, owner of the Leiden hypocephalus. Because the owner of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus appears to be a certain Sheshonq, we would expect the 3rd person masculine, ntf. The question remains whether the last horizontal stroke is consistent with an f, given the fact that it appears to end at left in a tiny, near-rectangular loop. But such a loop at the tip of the tail of the viper also appears in the other, clearer instances of the f on our hypocephalus.
While one word might appear to be a slim basis for the reconstruction of a third of the rim, given the close parallel otherwise found between the rims of Leiden AMS 62 and the Joseph Smith hypocephalus, one word suffices.
Any other traces? Yes, but only a trace. The break in the text on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus begins just after the place name Heliopolis and what remains of the following word, a trace of low horizontal strokes. Hedlock shows something like a loop at the end of the horizontal stroke; the Church Historian's copy shows two small horizontal strokes, which together make up nearly a loop (the feet of an owl?). The low horizontal is consistent with the feet of the owl hieroglyph (an m) that, together with the arm, writes the imperative mj (Come!) on the Leiden rim. On Leiden mj immediately follows Heliopolis.
Nibley and Rhodes translate the Leiden rim as follows (One Eternal Round, 231):
"O Debabty in the House of the Benben most high and most glorious, procreating bull mighty and great in the house of the Great Old One in Heliopolis! Come to the Osiris, the priestess of Re [her name and the names of her justified parents follow], Justified! Grant that she become as one of your followers. She is that god who is in the temple (house) of the Great Old One in Heliopolis."
The wording is close to that found on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus on ps. 334-5. Here is my translation of the hieroglyphs reproduced in Nibley and Rhodes.
"I am the Db3.ty [the one of the Db3.t-box or shrine] in the House of the Benben in Heliopolis, most high and most glorious, the matchless procreating bull, even this particular (greatest) god in the House of the Benben in Heliopolis [long break] that (greatest) god in Heliopolis."
Here is Michael Rhodes's translation, which includes his reconstruction of the missing part, a reconstruction he also derives from comparing like hypocephali:
"I am Djebabty in the temple of the benben in Heliopolis. [I am] exalted and very glorious. [I am] a copulating bull without equal. [I am] that Mighty God in the temple of the benben in Heliopolis. [May the Osiris Shishaq live forever, di 'anx b3 Wsir SSq r nHH D.t] with that Mighty God in Heliopolis" (335).
As can be seen from the foregoing, in reading the rim of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus I prefer following the translation given for the Leiden hypocephalus on page 231 of One Eternal Round, rather than that given for Facsimile 2 itself on page 335.
Despite tearing and erasures, can we yet fill in the blank space on the rim of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus? If we follow Leiden AMS 62, and so consider the traces to represent the independent pronoun ntf, and in the other trace see m[j], we might expect, given the space left to us: mj rk n wsjr SS[n]q m3'-xrw dj=k xpr=f mj w' m sSm.w=k ntf nTr pf '3 m iwnw, Come to the Osiris Sheshonq, Justified! Grant that he become as one of your followers. He is as that (greatest) god in Heliopolis.
One slight correction is in order. Michael Tilgner, who has worked with Leiden AMS 62, reads the formula (and I think the reading preferable to my own): "Grant that he become as one of your followers, for he is as that greatest god in Heliopolis." What we then have is: "Come to the Osiris Sheshonq, Justified! and grant that he become like one of your followers, since he is [even as] that greatest god in Heliopolis" (better: "for he is indeed that same Heliopolitan god." i.e., Re/Osiris). That is the reading I now propose for the missing and erased portion of the rim.
And a trace we do have. At the upper end of the torn and rubbed-out rim (and much of the right side) of the hypocephalus, we find on both Hedlock and the Church Historian's copy the traces of three signs: from top to bottom, a horizontal, a dot, and a horizontal (the Church Historian shows two specks and a horizontal). Examination of a like text on the rim of Leiden AMS 62 gives the reading away: the high horizontal stroke represents n; the mid-level dot, t; the low horizontal, s (on Leiden), or perhaps f, or n. Nts is the 3rd person feminine singular independent personal pronoun, she, and refers to the lady Tanetirt, owner of the Leiden hypocephalus. Because the owner of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus appears to be a certain Sheshonq, we would expect the 3rd person masculine, ntf. The question remains whether the last horizontal stroke is consistent with an f, given the fact that it appears to end at left in a tiny, near-rectangular loop. But such a loop at the tip of the tail of the viper also appears in the other, clearer instances of the f on our hypocephalus.
While one word might appear to be a slim basis for the reconstruction of a third of the rim, given the close parallel otherwise found between the rims of Leiden AMS 62 and the Joseph Smith hypocephalus, one word suffices.
Any other traces? Yes, but only a trace. The break in the text on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus begins just after the place name Heliopolis and what remains of the following word, a trace of low horizontal strokes. Hedlock shows something like a loop at the end of the horizontal stroke; the Church Historian's copy shows two small horizontal strokes, which together make up nearly a loop (the feet of an owl?). The low horizontal is consistent with the feet of the owl hieroglyph (an m) that, together with the arm, writes the imperative mj (Come!) on the Leiden rim. On Leiden mj immediately follows Heliopolis.
Nibley and Rhodes translate the Leiden rim as follows (One Eternal Round, 231):
"O Debabty in the House of the Benben most high and most glorious, procreating bull mighty and great in the house of the Great Old One in Heliopolis! Come to the Osiris, the priestess of Re [her name and the names of her justified parents follow], Justified! Grant that she become as one of your followers. She is that god who is in the temple (house) of the Great Old One in Heliopolis."
The wording is close to that found on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus on ps. 334-5. Here is my translation of the hieroglyphs reproduced in Nibley and Rhodes.
"I am the Db3.ty [the one of the Db3.t-box or shrine] in the House of the Benben in Heliopolis, most high and most glorious, the matchless procreating bull, even this particular (greatest) god in the House of the Benben in Heliopolis [long break] that (greatest) god in Heliopolis."
Here is Michael Rhodes's translation, which includes his reconstruction of the missing part, a reconstruction he also derives from comparing like hypocephali:
"I am Djebabty in the temple of the benben in Heliopolis. [I am] exalted and very glorious. [I am] a copulating bull without equal. [I am] that Mighty God in the temple of the benben in Heliopolis. [May the Osiris Shishaq live forever, di 'anx b3 Wsir SSq r nHH D.t] with that Mighty God in Heliopolis" (335).
As can be seen from the foregoing, in reading the rim of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus I prefer following the translation given for the Leiden hypocephalus on page 231 of One Eternal Round, rather than that given for Facsimile 2 itself on page 335.
Despite tearing and erasures, can we yet fill in the blank space on the rim of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus? If we follow Leiden AMS 62, and so consider the traces to represent the independent pronoun ntf, and in the other trace see m[j], we might expect, given the space left to us: mj rk n wsjr SS[n]q m3'-xrw dj=k xpr=f mj w' m sSm.w=k ntf nTr pf '3 m iwnw, Come to the Osiris Sheshonq, Justified! Grant that he become as one of your followers. He is as that (greatest) god in Heliopolis.
One slight correction is in order. Michael Tilgner, who has worked with Leiden AMS 62, reads the formula (and I think the reading preferable to my own): "Grant that he become as one of your followers, for he is as that greatest god in Heliopolis." What we then have is: "Come to the Osiris Sheshonq, Justified! and grant that he become like one of your followers, since he is [even as] that greatest god in Heliopolis" (better: "for he is indeed that same Heliopolitan god." i.e., Re/Osiris). That is the reading I now propose for the missing and erased portion of the rim.
As does Michael Rhodes, I reconstruct the rim by using like hypocephali. The difference lies in my use of the traces on both Hedlock and the Church Historian's copy to match any possible reconstruction and in the estimate of space available on the rim. Let's turn now to the question of available space.
The very same expression dj=k xpr=s mj w' m sSm=k (Grant that she become as one of your followers) appears on the fourth (and lowest) left-hand panel of another hypocephalus, Ashmolean 1982-1095, where it follows the petition formula on Panels 2 and 3: "Come to the Osiris so-and-so." The rim of Ashmolean 1982-1095 has another petition formula of the type "Come and Rescue Osiris so-and-so," but here the sought-for blessing is much expanded: dj=k n=s 3x.w m pt xr r', wsr m t3 xr gb, m3'-xrw xr n3 nb.w dw3.t. Nts nTr pfy m Hw.t wr m jwnw (Cause thou that she will be an Akh (or glorious) in heaven along with Re, mighty on earth with Geb, and justified along with the lords of the netherworld. She is that god who is in the Shrine of the Great One (Old One) in Heliopolis).
The blessing formula on Ashmolean 1982.1095 (Tasheritenkhonsu) runs too long for the blank space on the right rim of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus; the Leiden formula fits nicely. That same compact formula also appears on the left-hand panels of the Ashmolean hypocephalus, evidence it had already become a fixed blessing following the petition "Come and Rescue." What we find on the rim of Ashmolean 1982.1095 therefore clearly represents an expansion on the theme found on its panels and also on the rim of Leiden. "Grant that she may become as one of your followers in the solar circuit" perforce also comprehends the three spheres of heaven, earth, and underworld. The conception of the Egyptian cosmos as a three-tiered world is central to the doctrine of the Transcendent Amun, yet we are to think of the three worlds not only as tiers but also as stations along the solar circuit. The followers of Re visit each of these stations, in a continual round, and in turn, participate in the glories and ceremonies therewith associated (an idea also set forth in Doctrine and Covenants, Section 88). The message of the hypocephalus embraces cosmic fullness.
Now that we have it in its entirety, how is the text on the rim of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus to be understood? There are four parts to the inscription. The first part manifests the god who is invoked for help. The invocation is expressed on various hypocephali either directly as O Db3.ty or, indirectly, through the disarmingly powerful first person assertion: I am the Db3.ty. Next follows the prayer, a desperate prayer: Come to his aid! Third, we meet a petition: Grant him a place in the solar retinue! At last, comes the hoped-for conclusion: He is now even as Thou art.
Notes
Images Consulted: New and startlingly clear images of the Church Historian's copy of Facsimile 2, along with the other so-called Kirtland Egyptian Papers, were made in 2009 and are housed in the Church History Library. I was given permission to view this sole image. [Note: the same image may now be found online on the Joseph Smith Papers Web page.]
For the Hedlock woodcut, as found in the Pearl of Great Price, see http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr/fac-2?lang=eng
Reuben Hedlock prepared woodcuts of the facsimiles, from which lead printer's plates were made. These served for the original publication in the Times and Seasons periodical (1842). "All three of the Hedlock woodcuts were subsequently reproduced and have been used since the 1981 printing of the Pearl of Great Price" (Catalog for "Treasures of the Exhibition: Presidents of the Church," Church History Library, April 2013). The catalog does not give the entire picture where Facsimile 1 is concerned: the new woodcut would show the details of the now-recovered, though much damaged, vignette (recovered from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1966), as well as what appears on the original Hedlock cut.
For Leiden AMS 62 (Tanetirt), which is housed at the Rijsmuseum va
n Oudheden in Leiden, Netherlands, see: http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?object=AMS+62.
For Ashmolean 1982.1095 (the Tasheritenkhonsu hypocephalus), see: http://www.ashmoleanprints.com/image/453787/amuletic-disk-hypocephalus-made-for-tasheritenkhonsu
Erasures on the rim: The rim of Facsimile 2 has suffered erasure and tearing on both the right and left sides. Because the loss of signs on the left side is minimal, restoration by comparison with parallel hypocephali makes for a simple task.
Michael Tilgner: Tilgner's work with the rim inscription appears on an online Egyptology discussion Web site:
http://www.aegyptologie.com/forum/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.pl?board=guan&action=display&num=1167121882&start=0
An update of earlier work
The foregoing discussion on the rim is taken from a longer piece in which I examine the entire text found on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus ("Book of Abraham Facsimile 2: A New Reading," published and copyrighted on 5 October 2010). I extracted the discussion on the rim and made slight modifications to it, so that it may be read and assessed more directly.
All translations of the rim are my own and depend upon the work of no other person, except as clearly stated (Nibley, Rhodes, Tilgner). Nothing I write here should be taken as the official interpretation or doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Everyone has the right to his or her own interpretation of Facsimile 2. Despite new readings derived from parallel hypocephali, the starting place for all translations of Facsimile 2 remains the work of Michael Rhodes (for which now see Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 2010).
Professor Robert K. Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri, 2011, also draws on the several hypocephali to suggest readings for the Joseph Smith hypocephalus rim. Though he does not try to match traces to these hypocephali or to consider the question of spacing with any more precision than does Rhodes (as the ellipses show), he does transcribe closer to that which I suggest: [. . . my Wsir SSnq m3' xrw z3 . . .], [. . . Come to the Osiris Shoshenq, the justified, son of. . .], page 217-8. For the remainder of the rim, Professor Ritner reads: ntf nTr pf '3 m Hw.t Sr, "He is that great god in the House of the Noble," Ibid.
The very same expression dj=k xpr=s mj w' m sSm=k (Grant that she become as one of your followers) appears on the fourth (and lowest) left-hand panel of another hypocephalus, Ashmolean 1982-1095, where it follows the petition formula on Panels 2 and 3: "Come to the Osiris so-and-so." The rim of Ashmolean 1982-1095 has another petition formula of the type "Come and Rescue Osiris so-and-so," but here the sought-for blessing is much expanded: dj=k n=s 3x.w m pt xr r', wsr m t3 xr gb, m3'-xrw xr n3 nb.w dw3.t. Nts nTr pfy m Hw.t wr m jwnw (Cause thou that she will be an Akh (or glorious) in heaven along with Re, mighty on earth with Geb, and justified along with the lords of the netherworld. She is that god who is in the Shrine of the Great One (Old One) in Heliopolis).
The blessing formula on Ashmolean 1982.1095 (Tasheritenkhonsu) runs too long for the blank space on the right rim of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus; the Leiden formula fits nicely. That same compact formula also appears on the left-hand panels of the Ashmolean hypocephalus, evidence it had already become a fixed blessing following the petition "Come and Rescue." What we find on the rim of Ashmolean 1982.1095 therefore clearly represents an expansion on the theme found on its panels and also on the rim of Leiden. "Grant that she may become as one of your followers in the solar circuit" perforce also comprehends the three spheres of heaven, earth, and underworld. The conception of the Egyptian cosmos as a three-tiered world is central to the doctrine of the Transcendent Amun, yet we are to think of the three worlds not only as tiers but also as stations along the solar circuit. The followers of Re visit each of these stations, in a continual round, and in turn, participate in the glories and ceremonies therewith associated (an idea also set forth in Doctrine and Covenants, Section 88). The message of the hypocephalus embraces cosmic fullness.
Now that we have it in its entirety, how is the text on the rim of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus to be understood? There are four parts to the inscription. The first part manifests the god who is invoked for help. The invocation is expressed on various hypocephali either directly as O Db3.ty or, indirectly, through the disarmingly powerful first person assertion: I am the Db3.ty. Next follows the prayer, a desperate prayer: Come to his aid! Third, we meet a petition: Grant him a place in the solar retinue! At last, comes the hoped-for conclusion: He is now even as Thou art.
Notes
Images Consulted: New and startlingly clear images of the Church Historian's copy of Facsimile 2, along with the other so-called Kirtland Egyptian Papers, were made in 2009 and are housed in the Church History Library. I was given permission to view this sole image. [Note: the same image may now be found online on the Joseph Smith Papers Web page.]
For the Hedlock woodcut, as found in the Pearl of Great Price, see http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr/fac-2?lang=eng
Reuben Hedlock prepared woodcuts of the facsimiles, from which lead printer's plates were made. These served for the original publication in the Times and Seasons periodical (1842). "All three of the Hedlock woodcuts were subsequently reproduced and have been used since the 1981 printing of the Pearl of Great Price" (Catalog for "Treasures of the Exhibition: Presidents of the Church," Church History Library, April 2013). The catalog does not give the entire picture where Facsimile 1 is concerned: the new woodcut would show the details of the now-recovered, though much damaged, vignette (recovered from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1966), as well as what appears on the original Hedlock cut.
For Leiden AMS 62 (Tanetirt), which is housed at the Rijsmuseum va
n Oudheden in Leiden, Netherlands, see: http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?object=AMS+62.
For Ashmolean 1982.1095 (the Tasheritenkhonsu hypocephalus), see: http://www.ashmoleanprints.com/image/453787/amuletic-disk-hypocephalus-made-for-tasheritenkhonsu
Erasures on the rim: The rim of Facsimile 2 has suffered erasure and tearing on both the right and left sides. Because the loss of signs on the left side is minimal, restoration by comparison with parallel hypocephali makes for a simple task.
Michael Tilgner: Tilgner's work with the rim inscription appears on an online Egyptology discussion Web site:
http://www.aegyptologie.com/forum/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.pl?board=guan&action=display&num=1167121882&start=0
An update of earlier work
The foregoing discussion on the rim is taken from a longer piece in which I examine the entire text found on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus ("Book of Abraham Facsimile 2: A New Reading," published and copyrighted on 5 October 2010). I extracted the discussion on the rim and made slight modifications to it, so that it may be read and assessed more directly.
All translations of the rim are my own and depend upon the work of no other person, except as clearly stated (Nibley, Rhodes, Tilgner). Nothing I write here should be taken as the official interpretation or doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Everyone has the right to his or her own interpretation of Facsimile 2. Despite new readings derived from parallel hypocephali, the starting place for all translations of Facsimile 2 remains the work of Michael Rhodes (for which now see Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 2010).
Professor Robert K. Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri, 2011, also draws on the several hypocephali to suggest readings for the Joseph Smith hypocephalus rim. Though he does not try to match traces to these hypocephali or to consider the question of spacing with any more precision than does Rhodes (as the ellipses show), he does transcribe closer to that which I suggest: [. . . my Wsir SSnq m3' xrw z3 . . .], [. . . Come to the Osiris Shoshenq, the justified, son of. . .], page 217-8. For the remainder of the rim, Professor Ritner reads: ntf nTr pf '3 m Hw.t Sr, "He is that great god in the House of the Noble," Ibid.
Recovering the Missing Hieroglyphs on the Right Panels of the Book of Abraham Facsimile 2
The nearly blank panels numbering from top down: 12, 13, 14, 15, as found on the right side of Book of Abraham Facsimile 2, have for too long remained unrestored and thus unread. Joseph Smith leaves their interpretation to futurity: "12. Figures 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 will be given in the own due time of the Lord." (For LDS Book of Abraham Facsimile 2, see: http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr/fac-2?lang=eng.)
Reuben Hedlock's woodcut facsimile of the original hypocephalus, as reflected in the extant printer's plate for the Times and Seasons periodical (1842), adds hieratic characters, taken from the Book of Breathings as filler, to the blank spaces of the right panels and the right-side of the rim, and to a smaller degree, to a blank patch in the left panels. Such mixing of hieratic with the few extant hieroglyphic traces on those "blank spaces" precludes a ready reading.
Why are there blank spaces on the right side? A piece of the original hypocephalus has been torn away; other writing has, in part, been rubbed off. Here an undated pen-and-ink copy of the hypocephalus showing a few remaining hieroglyphs and traces of others becomes essential, for these few are enough to match up with what appears on other hypocephali. Hugh Nibley calls the pen-and-ink copy, which is housed in the Church's historical archives, the Church Historian's copy.
The key to reconstructing the text of these four panels lies in the traces of the noun phrase md.t=f (his word) in figure 15 (that is, right-hand panel 4), followed by the determinative sign of a seated god or seated man. Because that same noun phrase, in the company of a specific prayer for divine aid, is also found in the side panels of at least three other hypocephali (Hesikheb = BM 37908 = BS.8445f, panel 2 only; Wien AS 253 a/1, on right side, panels 1, and part of 2 and of 3 only, panel 4, nearly all torn away; Leiden AMS 62, on left side), we can confidently move forward. The task will not be difficult if extant traces show the way, though wording and spelling on the several hypocephali may vary.
Panel 1 (fig. 12) is the logical place to start, as we work our way down to md.t=f. Panel 1, reading from right to left, shows, on the left, traces of what I take to be two flowering reeds and a short mid-level horizontal stroke ending at left in a small knob. I reconstruct the second, leftmost reed from traces of two vertical strokes that nearly touch, the right stroke being a bit longer than the left. Though the signs find no match in the corresponding panel of BM 37908, Wien AS 253 a/1, or Leiden AMS 62, working from what I see on the top panel of yet another hypocephalus (Ashmolean Museum 1982.1095), that is, j nTr pfy '3, I transcribe the reeds and the horizontal stroke on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus as y and '3 (great) respectively, and thus as belonging to a partly erased pfy '3. The demonstrative pronoun pf(y), with its superfluous y tagged on, as is common in late texts, means "that"; '3 means "great" or "greatest": "O that great(est) god." We can leave such descriptive flourishes out when translating: no need to state the obvious about each god being the greatest of all. . . What we are left with, then, is simply the invocation of "that particular god" shown in figure 1 (Kolob; the Transcendent, Universal Amun) of the hypocephalus.
Moving to Panel 2 (fig. 13), both Hedlock and the Church Historian's copy show many traces (except at very right), including traces of the sail, or hieroglyph for air, as also found on our three presumably parallel hypocephali, where we read 'nx m T3w (the one who lives on air, that is, by breathing air). It is not easy to read the traces on the left half of Panel 2 on either the Hedlock or the Church Historian's copy. Still, the first few dots, or right descending oblique strokes, as the Hedlock cut particularly makes clear, outline the hieroglyph of the owl, which writes the preposition m (in, from, out of).
Moving to the left, at center panel we note two low oblique strokes descending to the right and a low dot, or stroke. Here are the owl's tail feathers and--as the other hypocephali suggest--traces of the following sign). On Hedlock, just a glance takes in head and horns, back, tail, and feet of the owl. There follows a high horizontal stroke from which hang two small, leftward facing hooks conjoined to parallel diagonals descending to the left. These last match the right-hand portion of the sail hieroglyph on Wien AS 253 a/2. But what about the bold curving stroke just to the left? To a keen eye, there is no difficulty in assigning it to the left side of the very same sail. While these traces, at first blush, appear to be too extensive for a single hieroglyphic sign, that indeed is what we have.
The parallel hypocephali next show jw (or jw.t) m mw (who travels through water). Michael Tilgner, who says jw m mw occurs nowhere else, creatively chooses to read the signs as prj m nwn (who emerges from Nun, i.e., the cosmic Waters). Does Facsimile 2 also reflect the verbal phrase jw m mw? Other traces immediately follow on the left of the sail, near the edge of the panel. The Hedlock is the clearest. At top we see two small right descending strokes: the hieroglyph of walking legs, which signifies jw (to travel). Hedlock shows the strokes coming together at an apex: the reading is clear. A small slightly oblique stroke at mid-level, also descending to right, and a low dot probably are to be read, respectively, as a short vertical stroke that "fills in" the hieroglyphic constellation of walking or traveling and as a -t (a perhaps superfluous grammatical marker following the verb).
Panel 3 (fig. 14) yields only a long blank that ends in the hieroglyph of the sun (that is, Re), followed by j + w. A comparison of other known instances of the w-sign on the hypocephalus helps to confirm the reading. The signs reading j + w have two possible outcomes: they might either spell jw, a declarative particle marking the beginning of new sentences or even sections of discourse, or they might represent an alternative spelling for the preposition r (to or toward). Re also appears on Panel 3 of Wien AS 253 a/1 and BM 37908, and in both cases the name is followed by the preposition r (in its more common spelling).
We return now to the partially preserved noun phrase that provides the key for reading the whole. Panel 4 (fig. 15), at center and left, yields a determinative sign of a man with hand over mouth, followed by three marks of plurality and, underneath the last, the horned viper (the masculine possessive suffix -f = his). There is one more sign at the edge of the panel: the determinative of the seated god.
These last remnants on Panel 4 find a match in the beautifully written Leiden hypocephalus (Leiden AMS 62), where the same word is found written in full: staff + hand + bread loaf (the letter -t), followed by that man with his hand to his mouth, and then the horned viper. And an even closer match in spelling appears on BM 37908. (Wien AS 253 a/2, though also a match, has an abbreviated spelling.) And what is the word? Again, it's md.t, the word for word or words (earlier Egyptian writes the word as mdw, a plural form). And, following the rest of the line in Leiden et alia, we know whose word it is: Osiris' word.
Words must not be thought of, however, as an ordinary plural form, that is, one for which a singular form perforce exists. Plurality is built into the lexically frozen mdw (or mdw(.w)) or, later, md.t, or md(.w)t), whether specifically written with the determinative of plurality or not. It is the very notion of speech which requires plurality, whether specifically so marked or not: mdw=f, or md.t=f signifies not only his words but also his speech or his petition, a matter, necessarily, of many words (see the Woerterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache, Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar, and Antonio Loprieno's Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction [Cambridge, 1995]).
Nibley and Rhodes (One Eternal Round, 230ff) helpfully provide full discussion of Leiden AMS 62, though without reference to the fragmentary final line in the Abraham hypocephalus. The remaining hieroglyphs in panel four, however, had already been noted by several students. Dee Jay Nelson, although not formally trained in Egyptian, gives the phrase as mdw=f, "his words," in his Joseph Smith's Eye of Ra: a preliminary survey and first translation of facsimile no. 2 in the Book of Abraham (1968), 4, 28. Nelson also correctly reads the final sign at the end of the panel, just after mdw= or md.t=f, as a seated man, but gives no further interpretation for it. Nelson, in a hand-drawn copy of the hypocephalus (p. 4), for these right-hand panels, also tries to transcribe several traces: Panel 1: to the left of center, two reeds (which wrongly face rightwards); Panel 3: left of center, circle at top with vertical line underneath (he does not include a dot in the middle of the circle or the translation of sun or Re), followed by a reed (again, wrongly facing rightwards); Panel 4 center to left, he gives as mdw=f, followed by the seated man. In Rhodes, "Seventeen Years Later," we find the phrase cautiously transcribed as =f, "his;" Professor John Gee has also read these few signs as mdw=f. A few, then, have at least begun to guess correctly about what was originally written on the right panels of Facsimile 2. . . The restoration of the text is not philologically demanding, and it is surprising, given the evidence of the like documents, that no one thus far has read the traces--yet traces are tricky.
The entire petition, beginning at the top left hand panel in the Leiden hypocephalus, and as Leiden has it, reads:
O noble god (or, O Shepsi--a solar god),
who lives on air.
Come through (or on, or over, or out of) the water.
Re shall enter (i.e., go down) to hear his word (or his words, speech, or call).
Come to the Osiris Tayat, etc.
Is this not, with a slight variation in the first phrase, the very text that was once found, before erasures, on the Abraham hypocephalus?
Again, what we see on Facsimile 2, fig. 13 (= Panel 3), is Re, followed by the flowering reed (j) and then what appears to be a w. That's the end of the panel, but the succeeding panel (fig. 14) is blank until we come to the broken md.t=f, followed by the sign of a seated god. At very least we can posit that the blank space of Panel 4 includes a sentence about coming to hear Osiris: r sDm md.t=f ("to hear his word"); at most, we would hope to find in panels 3 or 4 the name of the invoked god (Re) and a verb of motion: 'q (enter), jw (walk toward), or the like.
That the seated god should immediately follow the noun phrase md.t=f (his petition) shows something is missing. The possessive pronoun his must somehow relate to that out-of-place hieroglyph--it must then represent Osiris as petitioner--yet no clear syntactical element connects it with the preceding noun phrase. Comparison to the Leiden hypocephalus resolves the matter. After md.t=f, Leiden begins a new sentence: mj n Wsjr (Come to Osiris), followed by the name of the deceased, that is, Osiris Tanetirt. We are so to understand the stand-alone sign on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus: Come to the Osiris Shoshenq! Come and rescue him! That is the theme of the right-hand panels of Facsimile 2.
A single sign suffices to prompt a legomenon. Scribes may abbreviate things as they will; the formula would have remained clear to any Theban priest. There are various ways to write the name Osiris, and the seated god here suffices. The meaning of the sign is clear: it represents Osiris and his call. And who is his help? It is the sun god, who descends at night to rescue him from the tomb. In other texts a drowning, floating Osiris calls out, and Thoth, the heavenly messenger, comes. The Metternich Stela (Spell 5) states: "Cause Thoth to come to me at my voice (xrw=j)" (see Val H. Sederholm, Papyrus British Museum 10808 and Its Cultural and Religious Setting [Leiden, 2006], 100). The Leiden text is very specific: Re answers the call by coming through the waters and literally entering into ('q) the tomb.
Let's recap. Does the correct reading of a new word in the Joseph Smith hypocephalus make any difference? And could yet more words now missing from our hypocephalus be identified by comparing our document against others? For one, the single word md.t clinches the case for the Joseph Smith hypocephalus belonging, like Leiden, to that class which represent prayers. And perhaps the best translation for md.t is, after all, prayer. (For the two classes of hypocephali, prayers and answers, see One Eternal Round, 230ff.)
The inscription on the right side of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus thus matches, with some differences of spelling, the left side of Leiden and also the right sides of both Wien AS 253 a/2 (though partly erased) and BM 37908. (There is one sign on Wien difficult to read: just before Re we see something like a crest over a bird's head: could these traces spell 'q?)
The placement of the traces on Facsimile 2 lines up neatly with hieroglyphs found on BM 37908, and attention to such matters of mise-en-page unlocks the reading. The text of BM 37908 reads:
j nTr pf '3
'nx m T3w
jw/m mw
'q r'/"nTr"-sign + r sDm md.t=f
O god (or greatest god),
who lives off air,
and travels in water (or comes on the water):
May Re descend in order to hear Osiris' prayer!
How is the petition to be understood? The first part, the invocation proper, at once refers to both Re and Osiris, or, to be specific, the petition invokes the figure found at the center of the hypocephalus, the transcendent Amun-Re, Amun-Re/Osiris, or even Shu-Amun. Amun (the hidden one) stands "preeminent among deities, and combines in a single figure all the characteristics of the creator and sustainer of the world," including both Re, the god who empowers the solar globe, and Shu, god of the air, or rather, "of the space between earth and sky and of the light that fills that space," which again recalls figure 4 of Facsimile 2 (E. Hornung, The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, 274-5, 283).
Complicated? The whole matter works itself out as mystery, paradox, and an opposition in all things. Re and Osiris make up the complete cycle of the sun god through sky and netherworld--air and water--while Amun-Re describes his hidden yet transcendent nature. The demonstrative pronoun pfy may mark a distancing of sorts (that, not this). David Klotz's comments on a Hibis Temple hymn also shed light on the theme of breathing in our prayer: "Amun enables birth [resuscitation, rebirth] by 'providing the breath of life,' which is precisely the role of the 'Ba of Shu.' In this sense, it is through Amun's manifestation of pneuma (= Ba of Shu) that the Royal Ka [the power to rule] is passed from generation to generation," or from Horus to Horus (David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 36). Water, and the successful navigation of waters, also bespeaks renewal and rebirth.
We now consider the second portion of the petition, which is the pronouncement of the blessing; for the supreme though paradoxical god once invoked, blessing now follows. The blessing reads: "May Re enter to hear his prayer." Here is something wonderful. Just as the invocation mingles the nature of Re and Osiris, sky and watery netherworld, at once within water and rising from water, at once awaiting saving air and carrying that air into the darkness; so the subsequent blessing separates the two gods just long enough to describe the moment of rescue prior to resurrection. As Hugh Nibley, commenting on the Leiden hypocephalus, etc., points out, it is the prayer of Abraham on his lion couch, of Osiris on his.
Has the text of the right hand panel of Facsimile 2 been recovered? Yes! The result, in standard computer transcription--and in just 15 words--reads:
j nTr pfy 'A
'nx m TAw
jw m mw:
'q r' jw [or, r] sDm md.t=f.
[Mj n] Wsjr.
What do the words mean? As set forth above, the officiator, calling upon that special, particular, transcendent god, who lives by breathing, who negotiates the waters, pleads from the depths:
May Re descend to hear Osiris' words!
Come to Shoshenq, who is dead!
The Psalmist so pleads:
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
(Psalm 130:1-2).
Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth.
(Psalm 71:20).
The prayer on the hypocephalus has a biblical ring!
Hugh Nibley, who anticipates so many things, also anticipated this new reading; in One Eternal Round we find two pages of translation and commentary (230-1) on this very petition in its Leiden version! (Note the positive comments on reconstructing all missing portions of Facsimile 2 on the basis of other hypocephali, ps. 325-6.)
We now turn to the left-hand panels, where the prayer for rescue blossoms into resurrection (and, again, in a mere 15 or 16 words, depending on whether we take zp-tpj to be a sole word):
j nTr Sps m zp tpj
nb p.t, tA, dA.t, mw, [Dw.w]:
s'nx bA wsjr SS[n]q
O noble god in the First Time,
lord of heaven, earth, duat, waters, [and mountains]:
s'nx the b3 of Osiris Sheshonq.
The reading "noble god," nTr Sps, is that of Professor Robert Ritner; "waters and mountains," instead of "his great waters," as Michael Rhodes reads, derives from formulaic parallels that always include "mountains," as I noted in 2010, and as has also been noted by both Robert Ritner and John Gee. The reading s'nx, the causative form of the verb 'nx, (to cause to live), was, as I thought, my sole contribution to reading the lowest panel; I now see Professor Ritner also suggests the same reading (or, alternatively, mj, "give"). (For Ritner's readings see his Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri [published, 2012], 222, and 222 notes 36 and 37.) Here's a bit more. Given the space available on Hedlock, and since this is the wording to be found on Hypocephalus Cairo CG 9448 (which Ritner takes as being very close to our own document), I further suggest that "mountains" be followed by "djet" (D.t, eternity, that is, r D.t, forever). My own reconstruction, then, would read:
O noble god at the moment of creation--
Lord of heaven, earth, netherworld, waters, mountains, even forever--
Enliven the Ba of Osiris Sheshonq! (Cause the Ba of Osiris to attain to Eternal Life.)
To the attentive reader, the balanced prayers on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus bear striking resemblance to the poetic, and very Egyptian, language describing the four theophanies of the Book of Abraham. Hugh Nibley's ear was ever attentive to the echoes and cadences that obtain between the story of Abraham's rescue from the altar and the theme of prayer and divine response, as found on 48 hypocephali and in the Book of the Dead (One Eternal Round, 224ff., 233).
Abraham rejoices:
Thy servant has sought thee earnestly;
now I have found thee;
Thou didst send thine angel to deliver me. . .
and I will do well to hearken unto thy voice [r sDm md.t=k]
(Abraham 2:12-3).
The found God of Abraham (a leading theme in New Kingdom piety texts) reveals himself as the Lord of heaven, earth, sea, fire, wind, and the mountains:
I dwell in heaven;
the earth is my footstool;
I stretch my hand over the sea, and it obeys my voice;
I cause the wind and fire to be my chariot;
I say to the mountains--Depart hence
(Abraham 2:7).
And in answer to Abraham's pleas from the altar or lion couch (pictured on Fac. 2, fig. 15), he responds:
Behold, I lifted up my voice [xrw; mdw] unto the Lord my God,
and the Lord hearkened and heard [sDm]. . .
and the angel of his presence stood by me,
and immediately unloosed my bands [mummy wrappings = Abraham as Osiris]. . .
Abraham, Abraham,
behold, my name is Jehovah,
and I have heard [sDm] thee,
and have come down [mj; 'q] to deliver thee [nHm, deliver ~ nHm.t, nHb, the lotus, as symbol of Abraham's deliverance]
(Abraham 1:16).
The descent only mirrors that of primordial times (m zp tpy):
I came down in the beginning in the midst of all the intelligences [Eg. Akh = 3x = spirits of light]
(Abraham 3:21).
No wonder the Prophet Joseph places the hypocephalus immediately after Facsimile 1: its panels describe the very same rescue as that depicted in the scene representing Osiris' lion-couch bier, which is, at once, Abraham's altar.
It is not a difficult matter to picture the Book of Abraham written in hieroglyphs on an Egyptian papyrus; the hypocephalus alone has things covered.
Notes
Images consulted: New and startlingly clear images of the Church Historian's copy of Facsimile 2 (along with the other so-called Kirtland Egyptian Papers) were made in 2009, and are housed in the Church History Library. I was given permission to examine this sole image at the library. [Note: The Joseph Smith Papers Web site now features the same.] The Reuben Hedlock print of Facsimile 2, taken from his original woodcut, appears in all editions of the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. A larger print, which reflects the size of the original hypocephalus, may be found in the Times and Seasons, March 1842. The hypocephalus has been lost; both the Church Historian's copy and Hedlock show some things not found on the other copy.
According to the catalogue for the "Treasures of the Collection: Presidents of the Church" exhibit at the Church History Library (April 2013), Reuben Hedlock first prepared woodcuts of the three facsimiles of the Book of Abraham for its publication in the Times and Seasons, 1842; from these woodcuts, printing plates were then made. "All three of the Hedlock woodcuts were subsequently reproduced and have been used since the 1981 printing of the Pearl of Great Price." The lead printing plates have been exhibited at least twice in the Church History Library.
The Joseph Smith (or Abraham) Hypocephalus:
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr/fac-2?lang=eng
For other hypocephali, I also give the following links:
Leiden AMS 62, Hypocephalus of Tanetirt at Leiden's Rijksmuseum van Oudheden
http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?object=AMS+62
Wien AS 253 a/1, Hypocephalus of Aset-weret at Vienna's Kunsthistoriches Museum
http://bilddatenbank.khm.at/viewArtefact?id=316439
Note: Nibley and Rhodes, One Eternal Round, list the same hypocephalus as AS 253 a/2
BM EA 37908, Hypocephalus of Herikheb at the British Museum
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?assetId=232640&objectId=166743&partId=1
Ashmolean 1982.1095, Hypocephalus of Tasheritenkhonsu at the Ashmolean Museum
http://www.ashmoleanprints.com/image/453787/amuletic-disk-hypocephalus-made-for-tasheritenkhonsu
Revision of work published in October 2010
I cull the foregoing remarks about the right panels from a longer article that examines the entire text found on the Joseph Smith Hypocephalus ("Book of Abraham Facsimile 2: A New Reading," published and copyrighted on 5 October 2010). I extracted the piece on the right panels from the longer article, added a paragraph or two, and reworked some of its sentences, so that the explanations of both hieroglyphs and traces of hieroglyphs on the panels might be understood and assessed more directly.
After appreciatively reviewing Professor Robert Ritner's suggested transcriptions of the hypocephalus, I have made one correction in my reading of the left-hand panel invocation: "O noble god," now reading Sps (noble) instead of sDr (Robert Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition, "Hypocephalus of Sheshonq," 215-226 (published 2011; 2nd ed., 2013). For discussion of the significance of the new reading, see my post of 20 April 2012, "Book of Abraham Facsimile 2: The August God and the 'Noble and Great Ones." I was surprised to see Professor Ritner's book, though I had read a prior article of his on the other Joseph Smith papyri, the Book of Breathings.
All translations of the right-hand panels are my own and depend upon the work of no other person, except as clearly stated here. It is Hugh Nibley who first emphasized the Leiden hypocephalus as fundamental to our understanding of Facsimile 2. There have been and yet will be other attempts at interpretation of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus; the privilege belongs to everyone.
Professor Robert Ritner, whose book on the Joseph Smith Papyri came out in 2011, does not attempt a reconstruction of these right-hand panels, and certainly not one based on similar hypocephali. "The traces are too inexact for secure translation, and the following bits are only suggestions" (p. 223):
(1) [. . .] y n
(2) [. . .] n rd.wy . . .
(3) [. . .] R' i
(4) [. . .].w=f
(1) . . .
(2) [. . .] on the feet . . .
(3) [. . .] Re. O
(4) [. . .] his (divine) [words(?)]."
Ritner's suggestions confirm several of my own.
Panel 1: For the two reeds, we both see y; the following horizontal, which I read as '3, can just as easily be taken for an n.
Panel 2 represents the only significant difference in transcription.
Panel 3: We both duly note the sign for R', followed by the reed, j.
Panel 4: "The signs indicate a plural number of entities determined by a man-with-hand-to-mouth and the sign for god" (223 note 4).
The Due Time of the Lord
Only the living Prophet and President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has the right, in the due time of the Lord, to interpret, in the fullest sense of the word, the writings and representations found on the hypocephalus and, by so doing, complete the Prophet Joseph Smith's Explanation of Facsimile 2.
Reuben Hedlock's woodcut facsimile of the original hypocephalus, as reflected in the extant printer's plate for the Times and Seasons periodical (1842), adds hieratic characters, taken from the Book of Breathings as filler, to the blank spaces of the right panels and the right-side of the rim, and to a smaller degree, to a blank patch in the left panels. Such mixing of hieratic with the few extant hieroglyphic traces on those "blank spaces" precludes a ready reading.
Why are there blank spaces on the right side? A piece of the original hypocephalus has been torn away; other writing has, in part, been rubbed off. Here an undated pen-and-ink copy of the hypocephalus showing a few remaining hieroglyphs and traces of others becomes essential, for these few are enough to match up with what appears on other hypocephali. Hugh Nibley calls the pen-and-ink copy, which is housed in the Church's historical archives, the Church Historian's copy.
The key to reconstructing the text of these four panels lies in the traces of the noun phrase md.t=f (his word) in figure 15 (that is, right-hand panel 4), followed by the determinative sign of a seated god or seated man. Because that same noun phrase, in the company of a specific prayer for divine aid, is also found in the side panels of at least three other hypocephali (Hesikheb = BM 37908 = BS.8445f, panel 2 only; Wien AS 253 a/1, on right side, panels 1, and part of 2 and of 3 only, panel 4, nearly all torn away; Leiden AMS 62, on left side), we can confidently move forward. The task will not be difficult if extant traces show the way, though wording and spelling on the several hypocephali may vary.
Panel 1 (fig. 12) is the logical place to start, as we work our way down to md.t=f. Panel 1, reading from right to left, shows, on the left, traces of what I take to be two flowering reeds and a short mid-level horizontal stroke ending at left in a small knob. I reconstruct the second, leftmost reed from traces of two vertical strokes that nearly touch, the right stroke being a bit longer than the left. Though the signs find no match in the corresponding panel of BM 37908, Wien AS 253 a/1, or Leiden AMS 62, working from what I see on the top panel of yet another hypocephalus (Ashmolean Museum 1982.1095), that is, j nTr pfy '3, I transcribe the reeds and the horizontal stroke on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus as y and '3 (great) respectively, and thus as belonging to a partly erased pfy '3. The demonstrative pronoun pf(y), with its superfluous y tagged on, as is common in late texts, means "that"; '3 means "great" or "greatest": "O that great(est) god." We can leave such descriptive flourishes out when translating: no need to state the obvious about each god being the greatest of all. . . What we are left with, then, is simply the invocation of "that particular god" shown in figure 1 (Kolob; the Transcendent, Universal Amun) of the hypocephalus.
Moving to Panel 2 (fig. 13), both Hedlock and the Church Historian's copy show many traces (except at very right), including traces of the sail, or hieroglyph for air, as also found on our three presumably parallel hypocephali, where we read 'nx m T3w (the one who lives on air, that is, by breathing air). It is not easy to read the traces on the left half of Panel 2 on either the Hedlock or the Church Historian's copy. Still, the first few dots, or right descending oblique strokes, as the Hedlock cut particularly makes clear, outline the hieroglyph of the owl, which writes the preposition m (in, from, out of).
Moving to the left, at center panel we note two low oblique strokes descending to the right and a low dot, or stroke. Here are the owl's tail feathers and--as the other hypocephali suggest--traces of the following sign). On Hedlock, just a glance takes in head and horns, back, tail, and feet of the owl. There follows a high horizontal stroke from which hang two small, leftward facing hooks conjoined to parallel diagonals descending to the left. These last match the right-hand portion of the sail hieroglyph on Wien AS 253 a/2. But what about the bold curving stroke just to the left? To a keen eye, there is no difficulty in assigning it to the left side of the very same sail. While these traces, at first blush, appear to be too extensive for a single hieroglyphic sign, that indeed is what we have.
The parallel hypocephali next show jw (or jw.t) m mw (who travels through water). Michael Tilgner, who says jw m mw occurs nowhere else, creatively chooses to read the signs as prj m nwn (who emerges from Nun, i.e., the cosmic Waters). Does Facsimile 2 also reflect the verbal phrase jw m mw? Other traces immediately follow on the left of the sail, near the edge of the panel. The Hedlock is the clearest. At top we see two small right descending strokes: the hieroglyph of walking legs, which signifies jw (to travel). Hedlock shows the strokes coming together at an apex: the reading is clear. A small slightly oblique stroke at mid-level, also descending to right, and a low dot probably are to be read, respectively, as a short vertical stroke that "fills in" the hieroglyphic constellation of walking or traveling and as a -t (a perhaps superfluous grammatical marker following the verb).
Panel 3 (fig. 14) yields only a long blank that ends in the hieroglyph of the sun (that is, Re), followed by j + w. A comparison of other known instances of the w-sign on the hypocephalus helps to confirm the reading. The signs reading j + w have two possible outcomes: they might either spell jw, a declarative particle marking the beginning of new sentences or even sections of discourse, or they might represent an alternative spelling for the preposition r (to or toward). Re also appears on Panel 3 of Wien AS 253 a/1 and BM 37908, and in both cases the name is followed by the preposition r (in its more common spelling).
We return now to the partially preserved noun phrase that provides the key for reading the whole. Panel 4 (fig. 15), at center and left, yields a determinative sign of a man with hand over mouth, followed by three marks of plurality and, underneath the last, the horned viper (the masculine possessive suffix -f = his). There is one more sign at the edge of the panel: the determinative of the seated god.
These last remnants on Panel 4 find a match in the beautifully written Leiden hypocephalus (Leiden AMS 62), where the same word is found written in full: staff + hand + bread loaf (the letter -t), followed by that man with his hand to his mouth, and then the horned viper. And an even closer match in spelling appears on BM 37908. (Wien AS 253 a/2, though also a match, has an abbreviated spelling.) And what is the word? Again, it's md.t, the word for word or words (earlier Egyptian writes the word as mdw, a plural form). And, following the rest of the line in Leiden et alia, we know whose word it is: Osiris' word.
Words must not be thought of, however, as an ordinary plural form, that is, one for which a singular form perforce exists. Plurality is built into the lexically frozen mdw (or mdw(.w)) or, later, md.t, or md(.w)t), whether specifically written with the determinative of plurality or not. It is the very notion of speech which requires plurality, whether specifically so marked or not: mdw=f, or md.t=f signifies not only his words but also his speech or his petition, a matter, necessarily, of many words (see the Woerterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache, Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar, and Antonio Loprieno's Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction [Cambridge, 1995]).
Nibley and Rhodes (One Eternal Round, 230ff) helpfully provide full discussion of Leiden AMS 62, though without reference to the fragmentary final line in the Abraham hypocephalus. The remaining hieroglyphs in panel four, however, had already been noted by several students. Dee Jay Nelson, although not formally trained in Egyptian, gives the phrase as mdw=f, "his words," in his Joseph Smith's Eye of Ra: a preliminary survey and first translation of facsimile no. 2 in the Book of Abraham (1968), 4, 28. Nelson also correctly reads the final sign at the end of the panel, just after mdw= or md.t=f, as a seated man, but gives no further interpretation for it. Nelson, in a hand-drawn copy of the hypocephalus (p. 4), for these right-hand panels, also tries to transcribe several traces: Panel 1: to the left of center, two reeds (which wrongly face rightwards); Panel 3: left of center, circle at top with vertical line underneath (he does not include a dot in the middle of the circle or the translation of sun or Re), followed by a reed (again, wrongly facing rightwards); Panel 4 center to left, he gives as mdw=f, followed by the seated man. In Rhodes, "Seventeen Years Later," we find the phrase cautiously transcribed as =f, "his;" Professor John Gee has also read these few signs as mdw=f. A few, then, have at least begun to guess correctly about what was originally written on the right panels of Facsimile 2. . . The restoration of the text is not philologically demanding, and it is surprising, given the evidence of the like documents, that no one thus far has read the traces--yet traces are tricky.
The entire petition, beginning at the top left hand panel in the Leiden hypocephalus, and as Leiden has it, reads:
O noble god (or, O Shepsi--a solar god),
who lives on air.
Come through (or on, or over, or out of) the water.
Re shall enter (i.e., go down) to hear his word (or his words, speech, or call).
Come to the Osiris Tayat, etc.
Is this not, with a slight variation in the first phrase, the very text that was once found, before erasures, on the Abraham hypocephalus?
Again, what we see on Facsimile 2, fig. 13 (= Panel 3), is Re, followed by the flowering reed (j) and then what appears to be a w. That's the end of the panel, but the succeeding panel (fig. 14) is blank until we come to the broken md.t=f, followed by the sign of a seated god. At very least we can posit that the blank space of Panel 4 includes a sentence about coming to hear Osiris: r sDm md.t=f ("to hear his word"); at most, we would hope to find in panels 3 or 4 the name of the invoked god (Re) and a verb of motion: 'q (enter), jw (walk toward), or the like.
That the seated god should immediately follow the noun phrase md.t=f (his petition) shows something is missing. The possessive pronoun his must somehow relate to that out-of-place hieroglyph--it must then represent Osiris as petitioner--yet no clear syntactical element connects it with the preceding noun phrase. Comparison to the Leiden hypocephalus resolves the matter. After md.t=f, Leiden begins a new sentence: mj n Wsjr (Come to Osiris), followed by the name of the deceased, that is, Osiris Tanetirt. We are so to understand the stand-alone sign on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus: Come to the Osiris Shoshenq! Come and rescue him! That is the theme of the right-hand panels of Facsimile 2.
A single sign suffices to prompt a legomenon. Scribes may abbreviate things as they will; the formula would have remained clear to any Theban priest. There are various ways to write the name Osiris, and the seated god here suffices. The meaning of the sign is clear: it represents Osiris and his call. And who is his help? It is the sun god, who descends at night to rescue him from the tomb. In other texts a drowning, floating Osiris calls out, and Thoth, the heavenly messenger, comes. The Metternich Stela (Spell 5) states: "Cause Thoth to come to me at my voice (xrw=j)" (see Val H. Sederholm, Papyrus British Museum 10808 and Its Cultural and Religious Setting [Leiden, 2006], 100). The Leiden text is very specific: Re answers the call by coming through the waters and literally entering into ('q) the tomb.
Let's recap. Does the correct reading of a new word in the Joseph Smith hypocephalus make any difference? And could yet more words now missing from our hypocephalus be identified by comparing our document against others? For one, the single word md.t clinches the case for the Joseph Smith hypocephalus belonging, like Leiden, to that class which represent prayers. And perhaps the best translation for md.t is, after all, prayer. (For the two classes of hypocephali, prayers and answers, see One Eternal Round, 230ff.)
The inscription on the right side of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus thus matches, with some differences of spelling, the left side of Leiden and also the right sides of both Wien AS 253 a/2 (though partly erased) and BM 37908. (There is one sign on Wien difficult to read: just before Re we see something like a crest over a bird's head: could these traces spell 'q?)
The placement of the traces on Facsimile 2 lines up neatly with hieroglyphs found on BM 37908, and attention to such matters of mise-en-page unlocks the reading. The text of BM 37908 reads:
j nTr pf '3
'nx m T3w
jw/m mw
'q r'/"nTr"-sign + r sDm md.t=f
O god (or greatest god),
who lives off air,
and travels in water (or comes on the water):
May Re descend in order to hear Osiris' prayer!
How is the petition to be understood? The first part, the invocation proper, at once refers to both Re and Osiris, or, to be specific, the petition invokes the figure found at the center of the hypocephalus, the transcendent Amun-Re, Amun-Re/Osiris, or even Shu-Amun. Amun (the hidden one) stands "preeminent among deities, and combines in a single figure all the characteristics of the creator and sustainer of the world," including both Re, the god who empowers the solar globe, and Shu, god of the air, or rather, "of the space between earth and sky and of the light that fills that space," which again recalls figure 4 of Facsimile 2 (E. Hornung, The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, 274-5, 283).
Complicated? The whole matter works itself out as mystery, paradox, and an opposition in all things. Re and Osiris make up the complete cycle of the sun god through sky and netherworld--air and water--while Amun-Re describes his hidden yet transcendent nature. The demonstrative pronoun pfy may mark a distancing of sorts (that, not this). David Klotz's comments on a Hibis Temple hymn also shed light on the theme of breathing in our prayer: "Amun enables birth [resuscitation, rebirth] by 'providing the breath of life,' which is precisely the role of the 'Ba of Shu.' In this sense, it is through Amun's manifestation of pneuma (= Ba of Shu) that the Royal Ka [the power to rule] is passed from generation to generation," or from Horus to Horus (David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 36). Water, and the successful navigation of waters, also bespeaks renewal and rebirth.
We now consider the second portion of the petition, which is the pronouncement of the blessing; for the supreme though paradoxical god once invoked, blessing now follows. The blessing reads: "May Re enter to hear his prayer." Here is something wonderful. Just as the invocation mingles the nature of Re and Osiris, sky and watery netherworld, at once within water and rising from water, at once awaiting saving air and carrying that air into the darkness; so the subsequent blessing separates the two gods just long enough to describe the moment of rescue prior to resurrection. As Hugh Nibley, commenting on the Leiden hypocephalus, etc., points out, it is the prayer of Abraham on his lion couch, of Osiris on his.
Has the text of the right hand panel of Facsimile 2 been recovered? Yes! The result, in standard computer transcription--and in just 15 words--reads:
j nTr pfy 'A
'nx m TAw
jw m mw:
'q r' jw [or, r] sDm md.t=f.
[Mj n] Wsjr.
What do the words mean? As set forth above, the officiator, calling upon that special, particular, transcendent god, who lives by breathing, who negotiates the waters, pleads from the depths:
May Re descend to hear Osiris' words!
Come to Shoshenq, who is dead!
The Psalmist so pleads:
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
(Psalm 130:1-2).
Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth.
(Psalm 71:20).
The prayer on the hypocephalus has a biblical ring!
Hugh Nibley, who anticipates so many things, also anticipated this new reading; in One Eternal Round we find two pages of translation and commentary (230-1) on this very petition in its Leiden version! (Note the positive comments on reconstructing all missing portions of Facsimile 2 on the basis of other hypocephali, ps. 325-6.)
We now turn to the left-hand panels, where the prayer for rescue blossoms into resurrection (and, again, in a mere 15 or 16 words, depending on whether we take zp-tpj to be a sole word):
j nTr Sps m zp tpj
nb p.t, tA, dA.t, mw, [Dw.w]:
s'nx bA wsjr SS[n]q
O noble god in the First Time,
lord of heaven, earth, duat, waters, [and mountains]:
s'nx the b3 of Osiris Sheshonq.
The reading "noble god," nTr Sps, is that of Professor Robert Ritner; "waters and mountains," instead of "his great waters," as Michael Rhodes reads, derives from formulaic parallels that always include "mountains," as I noted in 2010, and as has also been noted by both Robert Ritner and John Gee. The reading s'nx, the causative form of the verb 'nx, (to cause to live), was, as I thought, my sole contribution to reading the lowest panel; I now see Professor Ritner also suggests the same reading (or, alternatively, mj, "give"). (For Ritner's readings see his Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri [published, 2012], 222, and 222 notes 36 and 37.) Here's a bit more. Given the space available on Hedlock, and since this is the wording to be found on Hypocephalus Cairo CG 9448 (which Ritner takes as being very close to our own document), I further suggest that "mountains" be followed by "djet" (D.t, eternity, that is, r D.t, forever). My own reconstruction, then, would read:
O noble god at the moment of creation--
Lord of heaven, earth, netherworld, waters, mountains, even forever--
Enliven the Ba of Osiris Sheshonq! (Cause the Ba of Osiris to attain to Eternal Life.)
To the attentive reader, the balanced prayers on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus bear striking resemblance to the poetic, and very Egyptian, language describing the four theophanies of the Book of Abraham. Hugh Nibley's ear was ever attentive to the echoes and cadences that obtain between the story of Abraham's rescue from the altar and the theme of prayer and divine response, as found on 48 hypocephali and in the Book of the Dead (One Eternal Round, 224ff., 233).
Abraham rejoices:
Thy servant has sought thee earnestly;
now I have found thee;
Thou didst send thine angel to deliver me. . .
and I will do well to hearken unto thy voice [r sDm md.t=k]
(Abraham 2:12-3).
The found God of Abraham (a leading theme in New Kingdom piety texts) reveals himself as the Lord of heaven, earth, sea, fire, wind, and the mountains:
I dwell in heaven;
the earth is my footstool;
I stretch my hand over the sea, and it obeys my voice;
I cause the wind and fire to be my chariot;
I say to the mountains--Depart hence
(Abraham 2:7).
And in answer to Abraham's pleas from the altar or lion couch (pictured on Fac. 2, fig. 15), he responds:
Behold, I lifted up my voice [xrw; mdw] unto the Lord my God,
and the Lord hearkened and heard [sDm]. . .
and the angel of his presence stood by me,
and immediately unloosed my bands [mummy wrappings = Abraham as Osiris]. . .
Abraham, Abraham,
behold, my name is Jehovah,
and I have heard [sDm] thee,
and have come down [mj; 'q] to deliver thee [nHm, deliver ~ nHm.t, nHb, the lotus, as symbol of Abraham's deliverance]
(Abraham 1:16).
The descent only mirrors that of primordial times (m zp tpy):
I came down in the beginning in the midst of all the intelligences [Eg. Akh = 3x = spirits of light]
(Abraham 3:21).
No wonder the Prophet Joseph places the hypocephalus immediately after Facsimile 1: its panels describe the very same rescue as that depicted in the scene representing Osiris' lion-couch bier, which is, at once, Abraham's altar.
It is not a difficult matter to picture the Book of Abraham written in hieroglyphs on an Egyptian papyrus; the hypocephalus alone has things covered.
Notes
Images consulted: New and startlingly clear images of the Church Historian's copy of Facsimile 2 (along with the other so-called Kirtland Egyptian Papers) were made in 2009, and are housed in the Church History Library. I was given permission to examine this sole image at the library. [Note: The Joseph Smith Papers Web site now features the same.] The Reuben Hedlock print of Facsimile 2, taken from his original woodcut, appears in all editions of the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. A larger print, which reflects the size of the original hypocephalus, may be found in the Times and Seasons, March 1842. The hypocephalus has been lost; both the Church Historian's copy and Hedlock show some things not found on the other copy.
According to the catalogue for the "Treasures of the Collection: Presidents of the Church" exhibit at the Church History Library (April 2013), Reuben Hedlock first prepared woodcuts of the three facsimiles of the Book of Abraham for its publication in the Times and Seasons, 1842; from these woodcuts, printing plates were then made. "All three of the Hedlock woodcuts were subsequently reproduced and have been used since the 1981 printing of the Pearl of Great Price." The lead printing plates have been exhibited at least twice in the Church History Library.
The Joseph Smith (or Abraham) Hypocephalus:
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr/fac-2?lang=eng
For other hypocephali, I also give the following links:
Leiden AMS 62, Hypocephalus of Tanetirt at Leiden's Rijksmuseum van Oudheden
http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?object=AMS+62
Wien AS 253 a/1, Hypocephalus of Aset-weret at Vienna's Kunsthistoriches Museum
http://bilddatenbank.khm.at/viewArtefact?id=316439
Note: Nibley and Rhodes, One Eternal Round, list the same hypocephalus as AS 253 a/2
BM EA 37908, Hypocephalus of Herikheb at the British Museum
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?assetId=232640&objectId=166743&partId=1
Ashmolean 1982.1095, Hypocephalus of Tasheritenkhonsu at the Ashmolean Museum
http://www.ashmoleanprints.com/image/453787/amuletic-disk-hypocephalus-made-for-tasheritenkhonsu
Revision of work published in October 2010
I cull the foregoing remarks about the right panels from a longer article that examines the entire text found on the Joseph Smith Hypocephalus ("Book of Abraham Facsimile 2: A New Reading," published and copyrighted on 5 October 2010). I extracted the piece on the right panels from the longer article, added a paragraph or two, and reworked some of its sentences, so that the explanations of both hieroglyphs and traces of hieroglyphs on the panels might be understood and assessed more directly.
After appreciatively reviewing Professor Robert Ritner's suggested transcriptions of the hypocephalus, I have made one correction in my reading of the left-hand panel invocation: "O noble god," now reading Sps (noble) instead of sDr (Robert Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition, "Hypocephalus of Sheshonq," 215-226 (published 2011; 2nd ed., 2013). For discussion of the significance of the new reading, see my post of 20 April 2012, "Book of Abraham Facsimile 2: The August God and the 'Noble and Great Ones." I was surprised to see Professor Ritner's book, though I had read a prior article of his on the other Joseph Smith papyri, the Book of Breathings.
All translations of the right-hand panels are my own and depend upon the work of no other person, except as clearly stated here. It is Hugh Nibley who first emphasized the Leiden hypocephalus as fundamental to our understanding of Facsimile 2. There have been and yet will be other attempts at interpretation of the Joseph Smith hypocephalus; the privilege belongs to everyone.
Professor Robert Ritner, whose book on the Joseph Smith Papyri came out in 2011, does not attempt a reconstruction of these right-hand panels, and certainly not one based on similar hypocephali. "The traces are too inexact for secure translation, and the following bits are only suggestions" (p. 223):
(1) [. . .] y n
(2) [. . .] n rd.wy . . .
(3) [. . .] R' i
(4) [. . .].w=f
(1) . . .
(2) [. . .] on the feet . . .
(3) [. . .] Re. O
(4) [. . .] his (divine) [words(?)]."
Ritner's suggestions confirm several of my own.
Panel 1: For the two reeds, we both see y; the following horizontal, which I read as '3, can just as easily be taken for an n.
Panel 2 represents the only significant difference in transcription.
Panel 3: We both duly note the sign for R', followed by the reed, j.
Panel 4: "The signs indicate a plural number of entities determined by a man-with-hand-to-mouth and the sign for god" (223 note 4).
The Due Time of the Lord
Only the living Prophet and President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has the right, in the due time of the Lord, to interpret, in the fullest sense of the word, the writings and representations found on the hypocephalus and, by so doing, complete the Prophet Joseph Smith's Explanation of Facsimile 2.
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