Mormon Masonic Patriarchs - Abraham (Intro - Part 1)

After touring around New England displaying his Egyptian mummies and curiosities, Michael Chandler had by March 1835 arrived in Ohio with four mummies. In Painesville Chandler allowed a phrenologist to examine the mummies who identified them as an eighty year old man with "mild passions", a sixty year old female full of "motherly goodness", a woman in her forties, and a twenty year old female with a misshapen head which approximated the "form of the Orang Outang" and whom was a "demon of society". (1) Found upon the breast of the male and two older females were Egyptian funeral papyri.

Chandler was destined to arrive in Kirtland where the small Mormon religious community was headquartered. In the 1820s the prophet of this community, Joseph Smith, had claimed to unearth an ancient golden record written in a language called "reformed egyptian" and Chandler believed the Mormon leader would be interested in viewing, and perhaps purchasing, the mummies and Egyptian papryi. Joseph Smith soon identified the mummies as a pharaoh and his family, but it was the papyri in which Joseph Smith was most interested. Joseph Smith identified the scroll on the oldest woman's chest as a record kept by Joseph during his sojourn in Egypt, while the roll discovered on the male's chest was the record of Abraham written by his own hand. The Mormons were indeed interested in the documents and agreed to purchase the four mummies, three papyri rolls, and a few scraps of papyri which remained in Chandler's collection for $2,400.

Figure 1- The Hor Book of Breathing text.

The opening portion of the Book of Abraham scroll which contains what today is called Facsimile 1 is pictured above and it was likely already damaged before reaching Kirtland. This portion of the scroll contains five vertical lines of text: three to the right of the vignette, one two the left of the vignette, and one column immediately above the arm of the person whom Joseph Smith identified as the "idolatrous priest of Elkenah". To the left of the vignette are egyptian hieratic characters written horizontally which are read right to left like Hebrew. Joseph Smith conceived of the vertical columns as a dictionary of hieroglyphs which when translated would aid in the translation of Abraham's record, which he conceptualized as being written in the horizontal text to the left of the vignette.

During early July the prophet worked in conjunction with his scribes W. W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery to produce an "Egyptian Alphabet" (EA) which contained a translation of a portion of the hieroglyphs contained in the vertical columns and in the later half of July an expanded version of the project was penned called the "Grammar and A[l]phabet of the Egyptian Language" (GAEL). Having created what amounted to a partial dictionary of the Egyptian language, Joseph Smith began translating the record of Abraham in late July. (2)

Why though was Joseph Smith so interested in ancient languages like Egyptian; and why did he believe that the prophets of old would write in Egyptian?

Bibliography
(1) Anonymous, "Mummies," Painesville Telegraph, 27 MAR 1835, 6(40).
(2) Marquardt, H. Michael, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers. (2009) Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Salt Lake City, Utah.