One of the most pressing questions concerning the Book of Abraham has to do with its very origin. What was the source of Joseph’s translation? This question became more important when the Metropolitan Museum of New York revealed that it had obtained some of the papyri Joseph Smith had owned, including Facsimile 1. They gave these papyri—known as the Joseph Smith Papyri—to the Church, and fervor over the Book of Abraham ensued. The texts on these papyrus fragments were translated as versions of common Egyptian funerary texts. The text adjacent to Facsimile 1 was a copy of the Book of Breathings, a composition which was designed to help the deceased reach his desired goals in the afterlife.
Once the existence of the papyri had been made public, the immediate assumption was that text adjacent to Facsimile 1 must have been the text from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham. The idea that the text adjacent to Facsimile 1 was the source of the Book of Abraham was a tantalizing supposition. Because we now have the ability to translate such texts, this idea appealed to Mormon and non-Mormon alike; the former group anxious to have some palpable proof of the prophet’s inspiration and the latter wanting evidence against his revelatory ability. Although many in both groups are still unaware of it, their hopes were based on an assumption, and a problematic assumption at that. While at first glance it seems reasonable to assume that the text adjoining Facsimile 1 would be the place to look for the source of the Book of Abraham, there are many reasons to discard this assumption. The six most salient follow:
- Even with modern publication software and technology, we often are not able to place an illustration right next to the text with which it is associated. Hence when textbooks say “see figure 3.2,” that figure is often on a different page. Even with the sophisticated electronic layout abilities we have developed, when I ask my students how many of them have textbooks in which this is the case, almost every hand goes up. This dissonance between text and picture is even more pronounced with ancient papyri; it is common to find the picture (on Egyptian papyri we call them vignettes) some distance from the text. <a href="Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[7]</a> Such incongruity was especially endemic to the Ptolemaic era, the time period during which the Joseph Smith Papyri were created, <a href="Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[8]</a> and to the type of text we find next to Facsimile 1. <a href="Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[9]</a> In this case, the Joseph Smith Papyri turns out to be exactly like most papyri of its day.
- Furthermore, during the time period in which the Joseph Smith Papyri were created, it was common not only for the text and its accompanying picture to be separated from each other, but also for the wrong vignette to be associated with a text, or for vignettes and texts to be completely misaligned on a long scroll. <a href="Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[10]</a> The content of a vignette and the content of the text frequently lack any apparent connection. <a href="Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[11]</a> This is particularly common in Books of Breathing, the type of text which is adjacent to Facsimile 1 on the Joseph Smith Papyri. <a href="Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[12]</a>
- There is no known case of any vignette remotely like Facsimile 1 that is associated with the type of text that is adjacent to it. No other copies of the Book of Breathings contain anything similar. Based on ancient parallels to the Book of Breathings, the most likely conclusion is that the picture next to the text was not associated with the text.
- The Book of Abraham itself says that the fashion (or drawing) of the idolatrous gods is “at the beginning” (Abraham 1:14), presumably of the record or papyrus on which the text is recorded. This statement seems to indicate that the vignette depicting the altar and idols is not adjacent to the text, but some distance from it—at the beginning. We do not know whether it was Abraham or a later scribe who created the drawing and inserted the statement. Furthermore, in the oldest Book of Abraham manuscripts we have, this phrase was inserted after the rest of the text was written, meaning that Joseph or his scribes likely inserted it as they were preparing to publish the text. We cannot tell who wrote this line.
- A few accounts indicate that the source of the Book of Abraham had some Hebrew characters on it. <a href="Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[13]</a> None of the fragments we have today contain any Hebrew characters. Thus we must conclude that the eyewitnesses were describing texts other than those we now possess.
- Finally, eyewitness accounts from Joseph Smith’s day agree that the Book of Abraham was on the long roll. Through museum documents we can corroborate that the long roll was sold to the Chicago museum. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by fire in 1871. <a href="Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[14]</a> The small portion on the outside of that roll seems to have been cut off and mounted for its protection (it is always the outermost edge of a scroll that is damaged the most, and Joseph must have felt that this damaged piece needed preservation efforts). Because this part of the scroll was glued to paper that dates back to the Kirtland period, <a href="Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[15]</a> and eyewitness accounts agree that the Book of Abraham was translated from the large roll after the fragments had been cut off, <a href="Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[16]</a> eyewitnesses of the papyri during the Nauvoo period did not think that the fragments we have today contained the Book of Abraham. Again, we are forced to conclude from the historical evidence at hand that the fragments we now have are not the source of the Book of Abraham.
Given the problems with the assumption that the text surrounding Facsimile 1 was the source of the Book of Abraham and the fact that we possess only a small percentage of the original papyrus roll on which Facsimile 1 was drawn (perhaps about 5 percent), we must conclude that it is most unlikely and foolhardy to insist that the text adjoining Facsimile 1 must be the text of the Book of Abraham. Yet critics insist on this faulty assumption.
This brings up the question of how much papyri Joseph Smith had, and especially how long the papyrus with Facsimile 1 might have been. The fragments we have today (which contain Facsimile 1 and the adjacent text) consist of less than two feet when pieced together. But how long was the scroll originally, and did it contain the source of the Book of Abraham?
We know from eyewitnesses that Joseph had “two papyrus rolls, besides some other ancient Egyptian writings.” <a href="
Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[17]</a> From the surviving papyri, we can identify five different ancient owners, indicating that there were at least five different sets of papyri. A variety of accounts establish that at least two of these were sizable scrolls. Other contemporary witnesses describe a number of fragments of papyrus contained under glass, <a href="
Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[18]</a> a “long roll” reportedly containing the Book of Abraham, <a href="
Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[19]</a> as well as “another roll.” <a href="
Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[20]</a>Thus our available historical evidence establishes the existence of a fair-sized scroll, another longer scroll, and several other pieces of papyri. The bulk of the writing must have been on the two rolls of papyrus.
As to size, we can no longer be certain of the rolls’ length. Various methods have been attempted to ascertain their length, but the most accurate likely comes from John Gee’s application of a mathematical formula (which has been used by other Egyptologists) <a href="
Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[21]</a> in which the circumference of the roll and how tightly it was wound can be used to calculate its original length. Employing this mathematical formula, Gee has estimated that the scroll anciently owned by Seminis (the shorter roll) would have been about twenty to twenty-four feet long. <a href="
Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[22]</a> The longer scroll (which contained Facsimile 1) was anciently owned by a priest named Horus. It is estimated to have been over forty-two feet long. <a href="
Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[23]</a> This combined evidence paints a convincing picture that Joseph Smith had a large quantity of papyrus in his possession. Because it is very common for a papyrus roll to have writing on both sides, a conservative estimate approximates over eighty feet of text on the roll that contained Facsimile 1. These findings indicate that we have only about 2.5 percent of what Joseph originally had. Clearly there was room for the Book of Breathings, the Book of Abraham, and a host of other texts on the long roll. During that time, it was not uncommon to have multiple texts on a single papyrus.<a href="
Question: What is the Book of Abraham "Missing Papyrus theory"?">[24]</a>
