Introduction to Revelations and Translations: Volume 4
Book
of Abraham and Related Manuscripts
Since the 1830s and 1840s, Latter-day Saints have viewed the Book of
Abraham as the translation of an ancient text containing the
writings of the biblical patriarch Abraham. Approximately 3,500
words long, the work presents a narrative of Abraham’s journey from
Ur to Egypt, a description of his activities in Egypt, an account of
the creation of the world, and doctrinal teachings on topics such as
the eternal nature and premortal existence of spirits and the plan
for a Savior for humankind. Like the Book of
Mormon and the Bible
revision, both of
which were dictated by Joseph Smith early
in his ministry, the Book of Abraham was understood by early as important evidence of Joseph Smith’s
prophetic role.
Even before the Book of Abraham was published in 1842, Joseph Smith and other early
Latter-day Saints described it as a divinely inspired translation of
Egyptian papyri acquired by Smith and others in 1835.
, a member of the
, stated
in 1842 that “the Lord is Blessing Joseph with Power to reveal the
mysteries of the kingdom of God; to translate through the Ancient records & Hyeroglyphics as
old as Abraham or Adam, which causes our hearts to burn within us
while we behold their glorious truths opened unto us.” Woodruff and other Latter-day Saints
viewed the Book of Abraham text as resulting from a revelatory
process rather than a scholarly one. Throughout this volume, the
editors have used words such as translation,
decipherment, and transliteration to
discuss the work of Joseph Smith and his associates on the study of
the Egyptian language and the creation of the Book of Abraham. This
terminology is intended to reflect the early Saints’ understanding
of their own work, rather than to indicate that their work comports
with modern scholarly understanding of Egyptian documents.
This volume of The Joseph Smith Papers
presents three sets of documents: (1) the extant fragments of the
papyri purchased by Joseph Smith and his
associates;
(2) the documents that collectively constitute the
“Egyptian-language documents,” which are associated with the attempt
by Joseph Smith and his associates to decipher hieroglyphic and
hieratic characters from the papyri; and (3) the
manuscripts and first publication of the Book of Abraham.
The entire collection of documents is reproduced here for the first
time in photographic and, when possible, typographic facsimiles.
The Joseph Smith Papers include documents that
were created by Joseph Smith—whether written or dictated by him or
created by others under his direction—or that were owned by Smith
(that is, received by him and kept in his office). All of these
documents meet one or both of these criteria for inclusion.
The papyrus fragments published in the
Joseph Smith Papers constitute the only known, surviving portions of
the two papyrus rolls and various papyrus fragments purchased by
Joseph Smith and his associates;
only a fraction of that original collection survives today. Modern Egyptologists have identified these
fragments as portions of ancient Egyptian funerary texts created for
individuals who died sometime in the third or second centuries bc.
The extant papyri are: (1) two fragments of the Book of Breathing
for Horos;
(2) four fragments and several scraps of the Book of the Dead for
Semminis;
and (3) a fragment from the Book of
the Dead for Nefer-ir-nebu, which includes a vignette, or
illustration.
The Egyptian-language documents published
in the Joseph Smith Papers consist of the following:
(1) several manuscripts on which associates of Joseph Smith copied Egyptian
characters;
(2) three manuscripts containing attempts to decipher the Egyptian
writing system, called the Egyptian Alphabet documents;
(3) a document associated with the Egyptian Alphabet documents,
called the Egyptian Counting document, that contains a
system of counting;
and (4) a manufactured book of ruled paper into which early
Latter-day Saint scribes
and inscribed a “Grammar
and A[l]phabet” of the Egyptian language.
The Egyptian-language documents are textually interdependent. The
Egyptian Alphabet documents contain non-Roman characters—many of which were copied from
the papyri—with accompanying transliterations and definitions.
Characters, transliterations, and definitions from the Egyptian
Alphabet documents were later copied into the Grammar and Alphabet
volume. The extent of Joseph Smith’s involvement in the creation of
these manuscripts is unknown. His handwriting appears in two of
these documents, and his journal references working on some of them
on a few occasions.
The final group of documents contains Book of Abraham
material. Joseph Smith dictated the text of
the Book of Abraham during two periods of time: in the weeks and
months after he purchased the papyri in summer 1835, and in early
1842, shortly before the publication of the text in , Illinois.
This volume, therefore, includes the following: (1) the three
manuscripts of the Book of Abraham created in , Ohio, in 1835;
(2) the two manuscripts of the Book of Abraham created in Nauvoo in
1842;
(3) the two installments of the Book of Abraham text as published in
the church newspaper Times and Seasons in 1842; (4)
three facsimiles of vignettes, or illustrations, found on the
papyri, which were also published in the Times and
Seasons in 1842; and (5) explanations of the various
figures in the facsimiles, which were published alongside them.
The Kirtland-era manuscripts contain the first portion of what would
later be published as the Book of Abraham, along with Egyptian
characters copied in the left margin. Most of these characters were
copied from the papyri, but few of them are found in the Egyptian
Alphabet documents or in the Grammar and Alphabet volume. The
Nauvoo-era Book of Abraham manuscripts include a copy of a
Kirtland-era manuscript and a partially extant portion of text that
was produced in 1842. This volume also presents photographs of the
printing plates used to publish the facsimiles in the Times
and Seasons.
This introduction examines two converging narratives that
contextualize the Book of Abraham and the Egyptian-language
manuscripts in the early history of the and of the
Latter-day Saint faith. The first is the explosion of interest in
ancient Egypt that occurred in early nineteenth-century America, as
well as Joseph Smith’s interest in Egypt
and other ancient cultures. The second is Smith’s previous dictation
of sacred texts—including the Book of Mormon, the Bible revision,
and his revelations. Understanding these themes informs the study of
these documents and Smith’s interaction with them.
The Rediscovery of Ancient
Egypt
Joseph Smith dictated the Book of
Abraham at a time when Western culture was enthralled with the
discovery and excavation of ancient Egyptian artifacts. But even before such
discoveries, scholars, philosophers, and theologians had studied and
written about ancient Egypt for centuries. According to many of
these writers, ancient Egyptian documents and artifacts—such as
monuments, mummies, and papyri—held universal truths waiting to be
revealed. Joseph Smith too believed that spiritual wisdom and
historical knowledge were hidden in ancient cultures and languages.
To understand the production and publication of the documents in
this volume, it is crucial to examine both ’s fascination with
ancient Egypt and Joseph Smith’s own search for truth in
antiquity.
Western interest in the Egyptian writing system began with the
ancient Greeks and continued throughout the nineteenth century and
beyond. Attempts at
deciphering the language during the Renaissance and the eighteenth
century resulted in differing theories about the grammar, meaning,
and history of the language and its relationship to other languages,
but they yielded little progress in the quest to actually read
Egyptian characters. This failure to decipher the language
encouraged individuals to posit new hypotheses. Some saw a
relationship between the Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and Egyptian cultures
and languages. Some assigned
multiple meanings to each Egyptian hieroglyph. The
seventeenth-century German scholar Athanasius Kircher published an
ambitious three-volume dictionary of Egyptian hieroglyphs,
synthesizing many of these ideas and adding his own. Kircher’s
dictionary explored the symbolic nature of the hieroglyphs,
projecting his own Neoplatonic philosophy onto them. His
volumes illustrate that much of the scholarship on the Egyptian
language was a mixture of supposition and reliance upon erroneous,
centuries-old assumptions.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt in 1798
dramatically increased interest in ancient Egyptian artifacts and
eventually led to the deciphering of the language. A variety of
scholars accompanied the French army to document the remnants of
ancient Egyptian culture. Their inquiry and publications resulted in
a rush of European scholars and collectors to study the antiquities
the French scholars brought back to Europe. Among the artifacts
discovered by Bonaparte’s forces was the Rosetta Stone, which was
used by the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion
in the 1820s in his effort to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Champollion’s work would ultimately upend previous notions about the
Egyptian language. His work revealed that Egyptian characters, both
hieroglyphic and hieratic,
represented both sounds (as with Roman letters) and ideas. Even after Champollion’s groundbreaking
discoveries, though, some continued to assert competing theories
about Egyptian hieroglyphs, whether because they rejected
Champollion’s findings or were ignorant of them.
Indeed, in in the 1830s and
1840s, Champollion’s findings were available only to a small group
of scholars who either read them in French or gleaned them from a
limited number of English translations or summaries.
There is no evidence that Joseph Smith or his associates had
read contemporary works of French or English Egyptological
scholarship, but they nevertheless seemed to approach the papyri
with many assumptions that were espoused by scholars who wrote
before Champollion. The documents created by
Smith and his associates, for example, suggest they assumed that the
Egyptian language contained a series of complex systems and symbols,
each of which held multiple meanings; they believed the meaning of
each character was shaped by its position in a language hierarchy
made of five tiers (which they called “parts” or “degrees”), and
they thought marks such as underlining could be added to a character
to change its meaning. In the language system found in the Grammar
and Alphabet volume, each character contained five different degrees
of meaning, and the definition of the character in each successive
degree was more complex or detailed than in the previous
degree.
Scholars have yet to explain comprehensively the ways in which
earlier concepts regarding the Egyptian language—such as the notion
that each character represented multiple ideas—may have been
inherited, used, or understood by Joseph Smith.
By 1835, when Joseph Smith and
others purchased four mummies and some papyri, antiquities were
flowing into to satisfy the
growing interest of collectors, museums, exhibitioners, and
spectators. The enthusiasm Americans showed for mummies exhibited
throughout the country influenced journalism, scholarship, poetry,
and architecture. Some considered
mummies educational: one newspaper encouraged teachers “to take
their classes to the exhibition [of mummies], as much useful
information may by this means, in a few moments, be indelibly
impressed upon the youthful mind!”
For others, mummies inspired reflection upon ideas of time,
mortality, and religion. One viewer reported being confronted with
questions about the materiality of the soul while looking at the
mummies: “Look again at this ancient remnant of mortality. What was
it once? The residence of an immortal soul. What is it now? A
senseless lump of clay; and
such, in a short period, reader, shall we be.” Early Latter-day Saint leader offered similar reflections after he
observed the four mummies that Joseph Smith and others had
purchased. Cowdery wrote in a letter that the “mummies themselves
are a curiosity and an astonishment, well calculated to arouse the
mind to a reflection of past ages, when men strove, as at this day,
to immortalize their names.” Cowdery, however, placed even greater
value on “those records which were deposited with them [the
mummies].” For Cowdery and for Joseph
Smith himself, the most potent connection with the past offered by
the recently acquired antiquities lay in the papyri.
The journey of the mummies and papyri from
Egypt to
can be traced to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
when and vied for control of ancient Egyptian artifacts in
the wake of French discoveries under Bonaparte. At the time,
England’s consul-general Henry Salt and
France’s consul-general Bernardino Drovetti
oversaw the collection of antiquities by their respective nations.
Both Salt and Drovetti employed agents in Egypt to hire workers and
supervise digging projects.
One of Drovetti’s agents was the Italian-born French national
Antonio Lebolo. Between 1817 and 1822,
Drovetti and his agents disinterred mummies, papyri, and other
Egyptian artifacts primarily from tombs in
Luxor, Egypt, the site of the ancient
city of Thebes. In addition to supplying
material for Drovetti, Lebolo obtained a small collection of
artifacts for himself. Many of these
artifacts ended up in museums throughout
Europe. Before Lebolo died in 1830,
Drovetti assigned him to sell some of the antiquities to individuals
or institutions in . While the
mummies were not mentioned in either Lebolo’s last will and
testament or the lengthy inventory of his belongings made after his
death, a power of attorney drafted after his death listed eleven
mummies. By 1831, the guardian of Lebolo’s younger
children authorized the sale of the mummies.
The mummies were entrusted to a man named
Albano Oblasser, who ensured that they were
transported to
perhaps as early as 1831. The mummies
appeared in by 1833. An Irish immigrant named claimed that
Lebolo was his uncle and had left the
artifacts to him, but in fact, Chandler
appears to have been an agent for a group of individuals in
Philadelphia who purchased the mummies and hired him to exhibit
them. He traveled through the with the
mummies in 1833 and 1834, visiting cities such as , ,
and and
selling the mummies as he went. In March 1835, the mummies
and papyri received much attention in , Ohio. After exhibiting his show in that city,
Chandler traveled east to . He arrived there in late June or early July
1835, hoping to sell his remaining wares: four mummies, two papyrus
scrolls, and additional papyrus fragments.
traveled to likely because he saw the Latter-day Saints as
potential buyers. According to one reminiscence, Chandler
established his exhibit in a hotel in Kirtland, and Joseph Smith visited him the next
morning.
Smith inspected the papyri, and he and Chandler discussed ancient
languages and Smith’s previous translating activities.
described the documents
as being “beautifully written in papyrus with black, and a small
part, red ink or paint, in perfect preservation.” Chandler allowed Cowdery to copy
“some four or five different sentences or separate pieces” from the
papyri.
Smith provided Chandler with a sample decipherment of these copied
Egyptian characters, and Chandler in return supplied Smith with a
certificate stating that his translation corresponded “in
the most minute matters” to other knowledge he had gleaned “in many
eminent cities . . . [from] the most learned.” Scholars, experts, and doctors in the
early nineteenth century often signed certificates authenticating
mummies and papyri; Chandler even had one such certificate in his
possession.
Chandler may have issued the certificate to ingratiate himself to
the Latter-day Saints and increase the likelihood of a sale. In
reality, though, modern Egyptological scholarship was so new that neither Chandler nor any
other American at that time would likely have been able to make such
an attestation authoritatively.
Shortly after produced
the certificate, Joseph Smith and others purchased
the mummies and papyri for $2,400. No contemporary receipt of sale
exists, but , who was tasked with making the
purchase, explained later that the cost was divided equally into
three parts of $800, which were paid by himself, “S. Andrews,” and
Joseph Smith “& Co.,” suggesting that a consortium of
individuals assisted in paying Smith’s share. While Coe and others believed
they overpaid for the mummies, it appears that $2,400 for four
mummies and a number of papyri was roughly market value in the
mid-1830s. For Smith, the real value was in the
papyri. He wanted to buy only the papyri, but Chandler demanded that
his four remaining mummies be included in the purchase.
Word quickly spread that the Mormons had acquired
ancient writings and that Joseph Smith could
translate the record. Like many of Smith’s endeavors, the purchase
and translation of the papyri elicited strong reactions from
surrounding communities and from church members. Latter-day Saints
were excited for the translation, while non-Mormons were incredulous
at Smith’s claims. Writing from to his parents in , church member stated, “Many of the Learned have been to
kirtland to examine the characters but none of them have been able
to tell but very little a bout them and yet Joseph without any of
the wisdom of this world can read them and know what they are.” The Cleveland Whig, on the
other hand, printed a brief editorial titled “Another Humbug” in
early August 1835: “We are credibly informed that the Mormons have
purchased of . . . the Mummies
which he recently exhibited in this village; and that the prophet
Joe has ascertained, by examining the papyrus through his
spectacles, that they are the bodies of Joseph, (the
son of Abraham,) and King
Abimeleck and his daughter.” The Whig worried that
Latter-day Saints would “no doubt gull multitudes into a belief of
its truth.”
Joseph Smith’s keen interest in
Egyptian writings may have stemmed in part from his belief that the
writing system on the from which he
translated the Book of Mormon had an Egyptian component. A passage
in the Book of Mormon explained that the writings on the plates were
“in the characters, which are called among us the reformed Egyptian,
being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of
speech.” Smith
mentioned “engravings, in Egyptian characters,” when describing the
plates in a later history and recalled that the language of the Book
of Mormon plates was the “same as the Hebrew language.”
compared the characters
“upon the writings of ”
and those “which were previously copied from the plates, containing
the history of the Nephites, or book of Mormon.”
, Joseph’s mother,
recalled later in her life that Joseph Smith was given divine
instruction to make a copy of “the charecters composing the
alphabet[,] which were called reformed egyptian.”
Joseph Smith’s interest in the
Egyptian language dovetailed with his fascination with ancient
cultures. Smith and his followers identified many of the sacred
texts he dictated as rooted in Adamic, Abrahamic, Egyptian,
Enochian, Johannine, or ancient New World cultures.
These texts prompted an interest in ancient languages within the
early church and an anticipation that additional ancient texts would
be revealed. Early
Latter-day Saints believed that ancient cultures provided a conduit
to a purer language, perhaps inspired in part by the story from the
Book of Mormon of an ancient people who retained their language when
God cursed other languages at the Tower of Babel.
Shortly following the publication of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith—with his wife , , and others as scribes—began work on what they
came to understand as an inspired revision or “new translation” of
the Bible.
Members of the church would learn from Joseph Smith’s Bible revision
project that “a book of rememberance was kept” in ancient times,
written “in the Language of Adam.” The
Bible revision posited that Adam and Eve’s children “were taught to
read & write having a languag[e] which was pure &
undefiled.” Smith
perhaps felt it part of his prophetic responsibility to unlock this
pure language and that doing so would uncover ancient truths.
Shortly after Smith dictated the narrative of Adam and Eve’s pure
language, he created a
short document exploring “A Sample
of pure Language.” The surviving manuscript lists words
and their meanings in what Smith believed was the pure Adamic
language.
Joseph Smith looked to ancient
cultures in search not only of the language of the divine but also
of promised records. As Smith and translated the
Book of Mormon, Smith dictated a revelation promising that Cowdery would “Translate all
those ancient Records which have been hid up which are Sacred.” While working on the Bible revision, Smith
wrote about the prospect of recovering lost biblical writings in an
1833 letter to church leaders in : “We have not found the book of Jasher nor any
of the othe[r] lost books mentioned in the bible as yet nor wille we
obtain them at present,” he said.
Joseph Smith’s history briefly describes an anticipatory attitude
among Latter-day Saints: “Much conjecture and conversation
frequently occurred among the saints, concerning the books mentioned
and referred to, in various places in the old and new testaments,
which were now no where to be found.” He continued to
reference lost or hidden records after the purchase of the papyri,
dictating a revelation that anticipated that Book of
Abraham scribe would do
additional translation work. “He shall see much of my ancient
records,” the revelation said, “and shall know of hid[d]en things,
and shall be endowed with a knowledge of hid[d]en languages.” It is
little surprise, with such fervor for ancient languages and
cultures, that when four Egyptian mummies and papyri came into , they received rapt attention from Joseph Smith
and his followers.
Joseph Smith’s Revelations and
Translations
Joseph Smith used the term
translation to describe his work on the Book of
Abraham. His usage, however, did not correspond to the conventional
meaning of the word. The decipherment of the Egyptian language was
newly under way when Smith began to study the papyri, and there is
no evidence that he was acquainted with the progress that had been
made. He was certainly unequipped to translate the scrolls as a
scholar would. The translation of the Book of Abraham is perhaps
best understood by examining the way in which Smith produced other
scriptural works, namely the Book of Mormon, the Bible revision, and
his revelations.
Joseph Smith stated that he
translated the Book of Mormon by “the gift and power of God” but was
largely silent on the particulars of his methods. It
appears that Smith first created copies of characters from the
plates, and one of his associates, , consulted experts in
ancient languages, perhaps hoping to obtain aid in the translation
effort.
Following Harris’s unsuccessful trip, Smith used instruments he saw
as divinely appointed—namely, the “interpreters” found with the gold
plates and a “” already in his possession—to
aid in the translation of the Book of Mormon. While Joseph Smith
sometimes worked with the plates in front of him on a table,
witnesses said the plates were often covered. Indeed, accounts by his scribes
suggest that the plates were not always present and that Smith
typically looked directly at the interpreters or seer stone while he
dictated, reading words directly from whichever instrument he was
using.
During the period when he was translating the Book of Mormon, Smith
dictated a revelation that described translation as
both an intellectual and a spiritual process. The revelation
explained to the process by which he
should have approached his own effort to translate—to first “study
it out in [his] mind” and then seek spiritual confirmation from
God.
According to contemporary accounts, Joseph Smith also accessed the
divine in a variety of ways when he dictated revelations: he and his
followers recorded that he used seer stones, experienced heavenly
visions, and received revelations by direct inspiration, without use
of any physical tool or artifact.
When revising the Bible, Smith worked with a copy of the King James
Version, apparently with no other instrument at hand. Some
revisions, like minor grammatical changes, may well have been
considered to be the result of human reason rather than divine
revelation. A subset of
the changes appears to be the result of an attempt to harmonize
differences among the gospels or other scriptures, and evidence also
suggests that Smith and his scribes consulted Adam Clarke’s biblical
commentary as they considered the text. All of these processes—both intellectual and
inspired—provided precedents that Joseph Smith could have drawn upon
while producing the Book of Abraham.
No known first-person account from Joseph Smith exists to explain the
translation of the Book of Abraham, and the scribes who worked on
the project and others who claimed knowledge of the process provided
only vague or general reminiscences. Smith’s journal suggests that
he and his clerks saw their study of the papyri as being divided
into two separate but related projects: their attempts to decipher
and systematize the Egyptian
language and their work on the Book of Abraham text.
The journal did not, however, specify the mechanics of either
project or how the two projects related to one another. , who worked with
some of the manuscripts, stated: “I have set by his [Joseph Smith’s]
side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks
as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration from Heaven.”
, another scribe, wrote a
lengthy letter giving a history and description of the papyri, but
he did not relay any detail of the translation process, stating
only, “When the translation of these valuable documents will be
completed, I am unable to say.” Cowdery did state, however, that
Smith had an understanding of the “comprehensiveness of the
language.”
, who is not known to have been involved in
the process but was close to all those who were, stated in his
history that “Joseph the Seer saw these Record[s] and by the
revelation of Jesus Christ could translate these records, which
gavee an account of our forefathers.”
A few sources state that Smith used “the Urim and
Thummim”—apparently his seer stone—during his -era work on
the Book of Abraham. Apostle wrote in his
journal in February 1842 that Smith was translating the Book of
Abraham “through the Urim & Thummim.”
, another member
of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, published an article in a few months later
reporting to the Saints there that the Book of Abraham was “in
course of translation by the means of the Urim and Thummim.”
In a reminiscence several years later, though, fellow apostle seemed to imply that Smith’s method for
translating the Book of Abraham was similar to his process for
creating the Bible revision and delivering his later
revelations—inspiration without the use of a seer stone. Orson Pratt
stated that he saw Smith’s “countenance lighted up as the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost rested upon him, dictating the great
and most precious revelations now printed for our guide. I saw him
translating, by inspiration, the Old and New Testaments, and the
inspired book of Abraham from Egyptian papyrus.”
Differences in these accounts suggest that if Smith used a seer
stone during the translation of the Book of Abraham, he did not use
it at all times.
The Egyptian-language manuscripts created by Smith and his associates while they
worked with the papyri from July through about November 1835 give
the only firsthand, contemporaneous evidence of how they understood the Egyptian
language. Textual evidence in the manuscripts indicates Smith and
his clerks closely scrutinized the papyri, copying characters from
the papyri into notebooks or onto loose sheets but adding little or
no commentary.
Other characters were copied into the Egyptian Alphabet documents
and then into the Grammar and Alphabet volume.
But like many similar efforts of the time to unravel the mysteries
of the Egyptian language, these attempts are considered by modern
Egyptologists—both Latter-day Saints and others—to be of no actual
value in understanding Egyptian.
It is unclear when in 1835 Joseph Smith began creating the
existing Book of Abraham manuscripts or what relationship the Book
of Abraham manuscripts have to the Egyptian-language documents.
While some of the documents are clearly textually dependent upon
others, there is also evidence of overlapping creation, false
starts, and building upon previous work. The sequence of the
creation of the -era Book of Abraham manuscripts and the various manuscripts of the Egyptian-language project
is unknown. Considerable overlap of themes exists between the Book
of Abraham and the Egyptian-language documents. Both have
information concerning Abraham, Egypt, the Creation, Adam and Eve,
Eden, astronomy, and Kolob and other stars, among other topics. Some
evidence indicates that material from the Grammar and Alphabet
volume was incorporated into at least one portion of the Book of
Abraham text in Kirtland. But most of the Book of Abraham is not
textually dependent on any of the extant Egyptian-language
documents. The inverse is also true: most of the content in the
Egyptian-language documents is independent of the Book of
Abraham.
Beyond the clues in the manuscripts themselves, little
evidence exists to provide a timeline for the -era work on the Egyptian-language documents or
translation of the Book of Abraham. A late July 1835 letter from
to his wife,
, confirms
that Joseph Smith connected the papyri
to the patriarch Abraham soon after first encountering them.
According to Phelps, Smith “soon knew what they were and said they,
the ‘rolls of papyrus,’ contained the sacred record kept of Joseph
in Pharaoh’s Court in Egypt, and the teachings of Father Abraham.”
Phelps further implied that Smith was planning to translate the
papyri, if he had not already begun to do so. Some years
later, wrote in Joseph
Smith’s history that Smith, Phelps, and “commenced Translation of some of the Characters”
presumably soon after the papyri and mummies were purchased. According to
Richards, the work of “translating an alphabet to the Book of
Abraham, and arrangeing a
grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients”
continued through the end of July. But the work
quickly dropped off. In mid-September, Phelps declared, “Nothing has
been doing in the translation of the Egyptian Record for a long
time, and probably will not for some time to come.”
By October, the efforts had recommenced. Joseph Smith’s second journal,
which began 22 September 1835, mentioned work on the decipherment of
the papyri seven times from October through November 1835. On 1
October, the journal recorded that Smith, , and “labored
on the Egyptian alphabet.” One week
later, the journal states that Smith had “recommenced translating
the ancient records.” Five
more times in late November, Smith and likely Phelps and were occupied either in
“translating” or in “transcribing Egyptian characters from the
papyrus.”
The work, however, seemed to end during winter 1835–1836 as other
activities apparently took precedence, including setting up a school
to study Hebrew.
While no evidence exists that Joseph Smith and his clerks worked
on either the Egyptian-language documents or the Book of Abraham
between late 1835 and early 1842, Smith showed the mummies and
papyri to visitors and preached to audiences on doctrine from the
Book of Abraham. Following the dedication of
the in in spring 1836, the papyri and mummies were
housed in the attic of that building.
Several attempts were made in Kirtland to publish “the Egyptian
records,” even though the Book of Abraham text was apparently not
yet complete.
In the wake of financial crisis, legal threats, and
internal dissent, Joseph Smith abruptly fled in early 1838, leaving the mummies, the papyri,
and the Egyptian language and Book of Abraham manuscripts in
Kirtland for others to transport to .
When the mummies and the documents arrived in Missouri a few months
later, Smith “was much pleased,” and a group of roughly ten people
then read aloud from the records for two hours. Despite
Smith’s apparent desire to continue the translation in Missouri, the
burden of developing a new church headquarters in , Missouri, while also establishing new Mormon
settlements in northwestern Missouri consumed most of his time in
spring and summer 1838. And by fall 1838, Smith and the Saints were
embroiled in a violent conflict with other Missourians. The conflict
ended with Joseph Smith’s arrest and the violent expulsion of
thousands of Latter-day Saints from Missouri. By the time of the
expulsion, each clerk who had assisted Smith in the translation of
the Book of Abraham and Egyptian-language project had either left
the church or been subject to church discipline. After
spending the winter of 1838–1839 in state custody, Smith arrived in
in early 1839.
After a year, he was actively seeking time to “engage, more
particularly, in the spiritual welfare of the Saints & also, to
the translating of the Egyptian Records.” By 1841, Smith had
still not realized his wish to continue the work and stated that the
“twelve should be called upon to stand in their place next to the
,” to conduct
business so that “he might attend to the business of
translating.” Though he apparently was not
translating, Smith welcomed visitors to view the papyri, the
mummies, and the associated manuscripts in .
Joseph Smith officially took over
the editorship of the church-owned newspaper Times and
Seasons starting with the 1 March 1842 issue, about the
same time that he resumed his translation of the Book of Abraham.
, who assisted in
the Times and
Seasons office, wrote in his journal in mid-February
1842, “Joseph has had these records in his possession for several
years, but has never presented them before the world in the english
language untill now. But he is now about to publish it to the world
or parts of it by publishing it in the Times & Seasons.” In a letter written in early March 1842, Smith stated, “I am
now very busily engaged in Translating, and therefore cannot give as
much time to Public matters as I could wish.” During this
period, created a copy of
one of the -era Book of Abraham manuscripts (what is now Abraham 1:1–2:18) and apparently acted as
scribe for the creation of an additional Book of Abraham manuscript
(the remainder of the extant text) and the extant explanations of
the vignettes that were published as Facsimiles 1, 2, and 3.
The Book of Abraham text was published in two issues of
the Times and Seasons (dated 1 March 1842 and 15
March 1842); those two issues and the 16 May 1842 issue also
contained facsimiles of the vignettes, or illustrations, found on
the papyri.
After those three issues, publication of the Book of Abraham ceased.
Almost a year later, the Times and Seasons noted that
Joseph Smith had promised “to
furnish us with further extracts from the Book of Abraham,” but no
more excerpts were published in the Times and Seasons
or elsewhere. Smith
and others also had conversations about finishing and printing the
Grammar and Alphabet volume, but it was never
published.
Latter-day Saints received the Book of Abraham eagerly. wrote to fellow
apostle in 1842,
declaring, “The Saints abroad manifest much interest in the Book of
Abraham in the T[imes] & Seasons[.] it will be continud as fast
as Joseph gets time to
translate.”
published
in the New York Herald an excerpt from the Book of
Abraham, which he wrote was “set down as a revelation among the
Mormons.” In addition to the excerpt, Bennett published a
wide-ranging commentary on the Book of Abraham and on Joseph Smith’s
prophetic claims. “While modern philosophy, which believes in
nothing but what you can touch, is overspreading the Atlantic
States,” Bennett wrote, “Joe Smith is creating a spiritual system,
combined also with morals and industry, that may change the destiny
of the race.”
After Joseph Smith’s death in 1844, the
mummies and most of the papyri remained with Smith’s mother, , while the majority
of the extant manuscripts of the Book of Abraham and the
Egyptian-language project remained with and the church he led to
Utah. Following Lucy Mack Smith’s death
in 1856, Joseph Smith’s widow sold the
mummies and papyri to Abel Combs, who divided
the collection. Some of the
artifacts went to the Chicago Museum (renamed Wood’s Museum in
1864), where they were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Other fragments made their way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
, which
transferred the papyrus fragments to The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints in 1967. In the 1930s,
Mormon collector Wilford C. Wood acquired several pages of a Book of
Abraham manuscript, which Wood later donated to the church, from the
son of Emma Smith’s second husband, Lewis C.
Bidamon. While the extant
manuscripts and fragments of papyrus are currently housed in the
Church History Library, it is certain that the majority of the
papyri originally purchased in 1835 are missing.
It is also clear that other manuscripts related to the Book of
Abraham and perhaps the study of the Egyptian language were created
by Smith or his associates but are no longer extant.
The Book of Abraham typifies Joseph Smith’s
experience as revelator and translator—Smith sought divine truth
from his own age and from ancient documents, recorded that truth in
a scriptural text, and imparted it to his people and the world.
Understanding his efforts to decipher the Egyptian language adds
nuance and detail to the complex story of the translation of the
Book of Abraham.