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Essay history ...

Abraham in the Breathing Permit of Hôr
(pJS 1)

Edward H. Ashment


There, ... that is the signature of the patriarch Abraham.
—Joseph Smith

In the "Egyptian Alphabet" manuscript that he penned, Joseph Smith transcribed Egyptian characters from the text of Papyrus JS 1 (pJS 1)—the Breathing Permit of Hôr—and, for many of them, recorded his transliterations and interpretations. Smith associated disparate hieroglyphic and hieratic characters with the name Abraham.

Papyrus JS 1.1

From line 2 of pJS 1.1 Smith transcribed the two hieroglyphic characters, , into his "Egyptian Alphabet" manuscript as . He identified the left-hand character as "Ah broam—ah-brah oam Ki Abrah oam." Subsequently, in the "Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language" (GAEL, p. 3), was transcribed as , and divided into its constituent elements. The element from Smith’s original was represented as the lexeme, or linguistic unit, "Kiahbroam." In its various "degrees," a method of interpretation also introduced by Smith, its purported interpretations were:

[Fifth Degree] Kiahbrahoam. Coming down from the beginning—right by birth—and also by blessing, and by promise—promises made; a father of many nations; a prince of peace; one who keeps the commandment of God; a patriarch; a rightful heir; a high priest [GAEL, p. 3].

[Fourth Degree] Kiahbroam, Change from the first; by coming from the beginning by right, of birth, or lineage [GAEL, p. 9].

[Third Degree] Kiahbroam: First reckoned in chronol=ogy = coming down from the beginning First born right or blessings [GAEL, p. 13].

[Second Degree] Kiahbroam, = Coming down from the beginning. To some place or fixed period The first in lineage, or right in lineage [GAEL, p. 16].

[First Degree] KiAhbroam: That which goes before, until an other time, or a change by appointment, The first, faithful, or father, or fathers [GAEL, p. 20].

The obvious question is whether or not Smith's interpretations can be Egyptologically corroborated. They cannot. They are unique to him. is simply a man's name, , and means "Osiris is great." The characters have no phonetic or semantic connection to Smith's "Ki Abrah oam" or to "Zub-sool-oan."

Papyrus JS 1.2

From the beginning of column 1 line 1 of pJS 1.2, Smith transcribed the (now badly damaged) hieratic characters, , as , he then crossed them out, . Directly underneath, he again wrote the first character, , and under that the second, . Smith identified as "Ah-bra-oam." He crossed that out and replaced it with the caretted "Ah-broam." Smith wrote that the sign, Ah-broam, "Signifies father of the faithful The first right—The elder." All but "The elder" was crossed out, and on the back of the page the sign and a more elaborate explanation (according to the "degree" system) was recorded in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery:

In the first degree Ah-broam—signifies The father of the faithful, the first right, the elder—second degree—same sound—A follower of sig righteousness—Third degree—same sound—one who possesses great knowledge—Fourth degree—same sound—A follower of righteousness, a possessor of greater knowledge. Fifth degree—Ah-bra-oam. The father of many nations, a prince of peace, one who keeps the command=ments of God, a patriarch, a rightful heir, a high priest.

The "Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language," also organized into sections by "degree," beginning with the "Fifth Degree," interprets as:

[Fifth Degree] Ah brah-oam—a father of many nations a prince of peace, One who keeps the commandments of God. A patriarch a rightful heir, a highpriest [GAEL, p. 2].

[Fourth Degree] Ahbroam: a follower of righteousness a possessor of greater knowledge— [GAEL, p. 9].

[Third Degree] Ah-broam. One who possesses great knowl[e]dge [GAEL, p. 13].

[Second Degree] Ah=brah hoam—Ah broam—a follower of righteousness [GAEL, p. 16].

[First Degree] Ah=brah hoam—The Father of the faithful. The first right—The elder [GAEL, p. 20].

The association of with the word Abraham persisted in BoAbr Ms. 2, where it refers specifically to "Abraham." Moreover, there are many reports by those who saw the papyri of Smith pointing out Abraham's "handwriting" and "signature."

As is the case with , the obvious question is whether or not Smith's interpretation of can be corroborated Egyptologically. As with , it cannot. It, also, is unique to Smith.

A parallel Breathing Permit reveals that the characters originally were part of a three-character group: . Unfortunately, when Smith worked on his "Egyptian Alphabet," the third character in the grouping from the first line of the first column of pJS 1.2 was already missing in a lacuna. However near the end of line three of the papyrus the same sign group appears in its entirety: .

Restored Egyptologically, line 1 reads as follows:

In BoAbr Ms. 2 this line (albeit with Smith's hypothetically "restored" characters for what is missing in the lacuna) was "translated" into more than 870 words, as Abraham 1:1-19. Egyptologically however, the line is transliterated as

and translated into a mere 10 words: "Osiris shall be hauled into the great pool of Khonsu."

Worse yet, the sign that Smith identified with Abraham, , is nothing more than the hieratic version of —a in Egyptian. It has no phonetic or semantic relationship to his "Ah–broam."

It is therefore no wonder that apologists for Joseph Smith as a translator are so anxious to divorce him from

  1. the "Egyptian Alphabet" manuscripts—a futile attempt, since one is in his own handwriting, and the remainder followed his lead; and

  2. BoAbr Mss. 1a, 1b, and 2—which simply were scribal copies of his dictated "translation."

(Essay content copyright © 2001 Edward H. Ashment. All rights reserved.)

(hAcKed & rEndeReD by bReNt LeE mEtcALfe! Copyright © 2000–2003 Brent Lee Metcalfe for Mormon Scripture Studies: An E-Journal of Critical Thought. All rights reserved.)

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[Bio] Edward H. Ashment began graduate work in ancient studies at Brigham Young University where he taught courses as a graduate instructor on the BoAbr, BoMor, and Old Testament. After entering a Ph.D. program (major in Egyptian philology; minor in Hebrew) at the University of Chicago in 1974, he was admitted to candidacy for a Ph.D. in 1978. Presently he has revived his dissertation, a stemmatological study of ancient Egyptian netherworld books from the New Kingdom. While working as Supervisor of Scripture Translation Research for the LDS Church, Ed developed exegetical translator's guides and a lexicon for the Mormon cannon. His essays on scriptural historicity appear in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Sunstone, and elsewhere.

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Joseph Smith, attribution in The Quincy Whig (17 October 1840).







Essay history ...

  • 12.26.01—Added new hypernote 13, renumbering subsequent hypernotes accordingly, with comments by University of Chicago Egyptologist Robert K. Ritner; revised hypernote 14 (formerly hypernote 13) with additional comments by Ritner.

  • 01.19.01—Original posting.

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Four "Egyptian Alphabet" manuscripts survive:

  • EA JS, written by Joseph Smith, with additions by Oliver Cowdery and Warren Parrish

  • EA OC, written by Oliver Cowdery, with an entry by Warren Parrish

  • EA WWP, written by W. W. Phelps, with an entry by Warren Parrish

  • GAEL ("Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language"), written by W. W. Phelps, with additions by Warren Parrish

EA JS, EA OC, and EA WWP were evidently written at the same time. Each manuscript contains slight differences, indicating how they relate to each other.

For example, EA JS originally lacks "Zub-sool-oan" (in addition to lexemes for four other characters), unlike EA OC and EA WWP. (Cowdery added those lexemes to Smith's manuscript, and Phelps' entry was the corrected, final version.) Likewise, EA JS lacks an interpretation for the penultimate character in the manuscript, while both of the other manuscripts have it. Conversely, EA OC lacks the interpretation for the last character transcribed into all three EA manuscripts, , while EA JS and EA WWP both include it, although largely crossed out, with Cowdery entering a more elaborate interpretation on the back of the last page of EA JS.

Thus, evidence indicates that Smith's EA was the original, which means that it was Smith who established the methodology for decipherment in the Egyptian Alphabet documents. Cowdery added final touches to Smith's manuscript, while not finishing his own. Phelps's manuscript did not include the more elaborate interpretation of the last character. Except for the entry by Parrish, Cowdery apparently was the last to write on the EA manuscripts.

Among other things, GAEL incorporated the more elaborate interpretation of as part of its original text, indicating that it was written later than the EA manuscripts. As is the case with the EA manuscripts, Parrish's entries in GAEL were added later. See Edward H. Ashment, "Reducing Dissonance: The Book of Abraham as a Case Study," The Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture, ed. Dan Vogel (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990), 232n23.

(Note: The Joseph Smith Egyptian papers, BoAbr manuscripts, and papyri discussed in this essay are located in the LDS Church Archive, Salt Lake City, UT.)







Nibley's fragments I, XI, and X. Instead of Nibley’s arbitrary enumeration of the various papyrus fragments (see Improvement Era [February 1968], 40–40i), a more accurate system has been adopted here:

  • Papyrus JS 1, Breathing Permit of Hôr, comprised of Nibley's originally-designated fragments I (now pJS 1.1), XI (now pJS 1.2), X (now pJS 1.3), pieces from fragment IV (now pJS 2.6), and BoAbr Facsimile 3 (the original of which is now missing)

  • Papyrus JS 2, Book of the Dead of Ta-sherit-Min, comprised of Nibley's originally-designated fragments IX (now pJS 2.1), VII (now pJS 2.2), VIII (now pJS 2.3), V (now pJS 2.4), VI (now pJS 2.5), IV (now pJS 2.6), and II (now pJS 2.7)

  • Papyrus JS 3, Book of the Dead 125 vignette of Nefer-ir-nebu, comprised of Nibley's originally-designated fragment III

  • Papyrus JS 4, fragments of the Book of the Dead of Amunhotep, son of Nai-neb, now lost, with only 19th-century facsimiles remaining

  • Hypocephalus JS, a hypocephalus for Shishak, now lost, with only a 19th-century facsimile remaining.







Smith's "Ah broam—ah-brah oam Ki Abrah oam" were crossed out and, in Oliver Cowdery's handwriting, were replaced by "Ki-Ah-bram, Ki-ah-bra-oam—Zub-sool-oan." (In EA WWP, Phelps spelled the last word as "Zub zool oan.") GAEL (p. 3) indicates that the right-hand character, , was left untransliterated.







Joseph Smith himself introduced the "degree" system of interpretation in his own "Egyptian Alphabet" manuscript (EA JS), by dividing the characters into groups, which he called "parts" of the "first degree." This system was followed in the other EA manuscripts.

The "degree" system enabled Smith to interpret "verbs, particip=les—prepositions, conjunctions, and adverbs" into a given character in one level, or "degree," and then do it all over again in another "degree" until "the full sense of the writer is ... conveyed." Thus, up to "625" possible "significations" per character could be created. (See GAEL, p. 1ff.)







Klaus Baer, "The Breathing Permit of Hôr: A Translation of the Apparent Source of the Book of Abraham," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 3 (Autumn 1968): 117. See Marc Coenen, "The Dating of the Papyri Joseph Smith I, X and XI and Min Who Massacres His Enemies," Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years, Part II, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, vol. 85 (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies, 1998), 1103-1115. Coenen notes that "[t]he latest possible dating for P. Joseph Smith I, X and XI [i.e., fragments from pJS 1] is in our opinion the first half of the 2nd century BCE. Therefore this text is the oldest Book of Breathings that can be dated" (1111). See also M. Coenen and J. Quaegegbeur, Het Boek van het Ademen van Isis of De Papyrus Denon in het Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum, Den Haag, Monografieën van het Boek, no. 5 (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1995), 36-44.







See Hermann Ranke, Die ägyptischen Personennamen, vol. 1 (Glückstadt: Verlag von J. J. Augustin, 1935), 84.23; Erich Lüddeckens et al., Demotisches Namenbuch,vol. 1, fasc. 2 (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1981), 124; W. Erichsen, Demotisches Glossar (Kopenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1954), 100.







The relative chronology of the BoAbr manuscripts has been established:

  • BoAbr Ms. 1a, in the handwriting of Frederick G. Williams (BoAbr Folder 2)

  • BoAbr Ms. 1b, in the handwriting of Warren Parrish (BoAbr Folder 3)

  • BoAbr Ms. 2, begun by W. W. Phelps and completed (incorporating the corrections from Ms. 1b) by Warren Parrish (BoAbr Folder 1)

  • BoAbr Ms. 3, the printer's manuscript in the handwriting of Willard Richards (BoAbr Folder 4)

In "Reducing Dissonance: The Book of Abraham as a Case Study" (in The Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture, ed. Dan Vogel [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990], 221-35) I had accepted Dean C. Jessee's identification of William W. Phelps as the scribe for BoAbr Ms. 1a. However, see now my essay "The Forgotten Scribe: Frederick G. Williams and the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers" (privately circulated, 2001) for evidence that Frederick G. Williams was Smith's amanuensis for Ms. 1a.







See Edward H. Ashment, "'Some Ancient Records That Have Fallen into Our Hands'" (forthcoming on Mormon Scripture Studies: An E-Journal of Critical Thought), s.v. "Interim" and "Nauvoo Period."







P.-J. de Horrack, "Le livre de respirations," Bibliothèque Égyptologique, vol. 17 (1907): plate 11, §14b, line 1.







Hypothetical characters were supplied for the lacuna in the BoAbr manuscripts. See Edward H. Ashment, "'A Record in the Language of My Father': Evidence of Ancient Egyptian and Hebrew in the Book of Mormon," New Approaches to the Book of Mormon: Explorations in Critical Methodology, ed. Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993), 335ff. The first character (on the right-hand side) of Figure 4 in that essay is Smith's "Ki Abrah oam" () from pJS 1.1, line 2. It was used—out of context—in BoAbr Ms. 2 as a "restored" character to help fill the lacuna in pJS 1.2, column 1, line 1. "Translated," it became part of Smith's BoAbr as chapter 1, vv. 2-3. Note that the "translation" closely resembles the interpretations in EA JS and GAEL, provided above.







Klaus Baer, "The Breathing Permit of Hôr: A Translation of the Apparent Source of the Book of Abraham," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 3 (Autumn 1968): 129.







See P.-J. de Horrack, "Le livre de respirations," Bibliothèque Égyptologique, vol. 17 (1907): plate 11, §14b, lines 1–2.







Following pLouvre 3284. University of Chicago Egyptologist Robert K. Ritner notes that the dot after in pJS 1.2 line 1 can be "a common late 'n'" and reads the compound preposition accordingly as , "into" (private communication). See in Janet H. Johnson, ed., The Demotic Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2001), s.v. .







Written as . The second character (Gardiner Sign List, Z4) is a write-over in darker ink, as is the case with other characters on pJS 1, and only traces of the original sign remain. It seems unlikely that the original was an ; although, in pLouvre 3284 the word is written as . Robert K. Ritner observes that is a rather common Ptolemaic variant of ; hence, he understands as , "this"—an emendation that preserves the (private communication).







Literally, "They shall haul Osiris ..." See Klaus Baer, "The Breathing Permit of Hôr: A Translation of the Apparent Source of the Book of Abraham," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 3 (Autumn 1968): 119. See also Edward H. Ashment, "Reducing Dissonance: The Book of Abraham as a Case Study," The Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture, ed. Dan Vogel (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990), 221-35. For discussions of the Third Future, see Friedrich Junge, Neuägyptisch: Einführung in de Grammatik (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1996), 131; Jarosalv Cerny and Sarah Israelit Groll, A Late Egyptian Grammar, 4th ed., Studia Pohl: Series Maior, vol. 4 (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1993), 248-64. For as see Gardiner’s Sign List, Z9 (6); Wb 1:326; François Daumas, Valeurs phonétiques des signes hiéroglyphiques d'époque Greco-Romaine, vol. 4 (Montpellier: Publications de la recherche– Université de Montpellier, 1995), 829.







See Georg Möller, Hieratische Paläographie, vol. 3 (1936; reprint, Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1965), 18.200b.







See Edward H. Ashment, "Reducing Dissonance: The Book of Abraham as a Case Study," The Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture, ed. Dan Vogel (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990), 221-35.