Was the Book of Abraham Too Long for its Papyrus?

While the saints were in Kirtland, Joseph Smith acquired some Egyptian mummies and papyri from a traveling showman. Having examined the papyri, he said that they contained the writings of Abraham and Joseph of Egypt. The Book of Abraham, now in the Pearl of Great Price is the product of Joseph's translation work. Because the outermost portions of the scrolls of papyri were fragile, they were separated from the rolls and mounted on paper. Following Joseph's death, the papyri were divided up and some of them ended up at a museum in Chicago, where they were apparently destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871. However, at least some of the mounted fragments of papyri eventually made their way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 1918, and were later given to the Church in 1967. One of the fragments of papyri is immediately recognizable as Facsimile 1 in the Book of Abraham.

The re-discovery of the papyri was exciting because it offered an opportunity to check Joseph's translation against that of modern scholars. It quickly became apparent that the surviving fragments did not contain the Book of Abraham. At first glance it appeared that Joseph Smith was proven wrong. However, although one might expect the writing surrounding the vignette that became Facsimile 1 to be the Book of Abraham, defenders have noted that the Egyptians often placed vignettes next to unrelated text. It is therefore possible that the text of the Book of Abraham came from another portion of the papyrus. But how much papyrus was there?

Joseph originally had at least five different documents, with only three of them represented by surviving fragments of papyri. Facsimile 1 comes from a document called the Book of Breathings made by Isis and was owned by a man named Hor. Facsimile 3 also comes from this scroll, but it was destroyed in the fire with the rest of the scroll. Facsimile 2 was an independent document. Given that the Hor scroll contains (or contained) Facsimiles 1 and 3, it is natural to assume that this scroll was the source of the Book of Abraham. This assumption is strengthened by the book itself, which says:

12. And it came to pass that the priests laid violence upon me, that they might slay me also, as they did those virgins upon this altar; and that you may have a knowledge of this altar, I will refer you to the representation at the commencement of this record.

13. It was made after the form of a bedstead, such as was had among the Chaldeans, and it stood before the gods of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Korash, and also a god like unto that of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

14. That you may have an understanding of these gods, I have given you the fashion of them in the figures at the beginning, which manner of figures is called by the Chaldeans Rahleenos, which signifies hieroglyphics. [Abraham 1:12-14]

So how long was the Hor scroll? The surviving portions of this scroll apparently come from the outer end, as mentioned above. Although its original length is unknown, one can take a couple of approaches to estimating. One way is to compare to similar scrolls of the same period. You can also take a mathematical approach to the question because when the scroll was wrapped up, the outermost portion of the scroll contained the rest within it. With an idea of the winding length and the thickness of the papyri, one can estimate the maximum length of the scroll. (Imagine taking a roll of toilet paper and using a marker to draw a line from the cardboard tube to the outer edge--but just on one side so that the line roughly represents the radius. When unrolled, you would see a repeating pattern of marks at one of the edges. The distance between marks would be the winding length, which shortens as you progress toward the original center.)

LDS Egyptologist (and FARMS associate) John Gee originally went with a generic estimate of 320 cm (10.5 ft). However, after applying a published mathematical formula, he updated his estimate to 1250.5 cm (41 ft).

So far so good.

In the Winter 2010 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, independent researchers Andrew W. Cook and Christopher C. Smith published a paper, "The Original Length of the Scroll of Hôr," that took another look at the question [1]. They wrote:

Gee reported 9.7 and 9.5 cm as the lengths of the first and seventh windings, respectively, but offered no details regarding identification of winding locations. When we attempted to replicate Gee’s results, we found that his measurements did not seem to be accurate, and in fact required that the papyrus be impossibly thin.

In the rest of their paper, Cook and Smith described in detail how they attacked the question. Briefly, they traced the original papyri (because they were not permitted to photograph them) and then digitized their tracings to convert them into a grid of measurements. To determine winding locations (i.e. repeating patterns of damage to the upper and lower edges), they used a mathematical autocorrelation formula in order to reduce subjectivity. Let's look at an example. First we have a tracing of the papyri overlaid onto an independently obtained photograph.

Next, the upper portion of the of the tracing has been digitized into a coordinate system that matches the contour of the of papyri (though it is a little vertically stretched). The dotted lines show the same tracing shifted 10.42 cm to the right. Note the general agreement in contour.

Here is the output of the correlation function, which has a peak at 10.42 cm. This is the winding length, and was used in the last figure to determine the winding location.

Cook and Smith applied this method to the top and bottom of each fragment from the Hor roll. A cursory examination of the paper reveals lots of mathematical formulas and figures. The authors wrote:

Our choices are based on a desire to provide all details necessary for others to verify our work and duplicate our results.

In endnote 39 they add:

We are happy to make our data available to anyone interested in verifying our results.

I'm not going to pretend that I fully understand their method. Math is not a strength of mine. But those who do understand should be able to replicate their results.

When it's all put together, Cook and Smith estimate that the Hor scroll was approximately 150 cm (4.9 ft). Their estimate is within 3 cm of that of Klaus Baer (Hugh Nibley's Egyptology tutor). Based on the width of the surviving columns of text, and how it correlates to English translation, Cook and Smith estimate that the Book of Abraham would have required at least 511 cm (16.8 ft). Therefore, they argue that the Hor scroll is too short to have contained the Book of Abraham.

I don't know whether they are right or not, but it's a fun and interesting exercise. Their concluding paragraphs will be important later, so I quote them in full.

In recognition of the unlikelihood that there ever was a Book of Abraham source text on the inner section of the Hôr scroll, several alternative theories have been put forth to the effect that: (1) the Document of Breathing served as a mnemonic device for the Book of Abraham, (2) the Breathing text served as a catalyst (rather than source text) for the Book of Abraham, (3) the Document of Breathing is a corrupted version of the Book of Abraham, which Smith restored to its pristine state, or (4) the Book of Abraham is simply an imaginative mistranslation of the hieratic script. The ultimate success of any existing or future theory will depend on its ability to account for all of the evidence, including the fact that there was simply no room on the papyrus for anything besides the Breathing text.

Irrespective of Joseph’s method of translation, it is clear that he sensed in the Hôr scroll a richness of symbolic and religious potential that contemporary scholars could not see. To the experts who viewed Chandler’s collection in New York and Philadelphia, the Hôr scroll was a cryptic relic of a dead religion from a dusty tomb. Joseph, however, breathed fresh meaning into the crumbling little scroll, giving it new life as powerful scripture for the latter days. Perhaps the Egyptian vision of the afterlife, described in Hôr’s Document of Breathing, is not so far-fetched after all.

In my next post we will look at the FARMS response.

Notes:

1. Cook is a physicist and Smith is a graduate student in religious studies. Smith is not LDS; I don't know about Cook.

Further Reading:
A Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri by John Gee

Eyewitness, Hearsay, and Physical Evidence of the Joseph Smith Papyri by John Gee

Some Puzzles from the Joseph Smith Papyri by John Gee

I Have a Question: Why doesn’t the translation of the Egyptian papyri found in 1967 match the text of the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price? by Michael D. Rhodes

Criticisms of Joseph Smith and the Book of Abraham, by W. V. Smith

FAIR Wiki: Book of Abraham Papyri

---