Meditations on Vogel, Appendix C: Anubis

I've always thought it curious that the lacunae (that big torn area of the papyrus) in the vignette for facsimile 1 seems to snip out where the snout of Anubis is alleged to have been drawn.

I realize the existence of Anubis in the vignette is supposed to be one of the undisputed, untouchable assumptions. After all, the skin of the figure is black (at least on the upper body) and the clothing is similar to what Anubis might wear.

But I'm going to challenge that assumption. If the scribe who drew the vignette was adapting it to the Book of Abraham, a more fitting figure would be one that could represent the idolatrous pharaoh - and thus fill the role of the priest of "Elkenah" who was also the priest of pharaoh.

Horus, the god most closely associated with pharaoh, would be the obvious choice. Joseph Smith already identifies Horus elsewhere in the vignette as the god of pharaoh. Indeed, Robert Ritner agrees that "Horus-Sobek was a god of Pharaoh."

I can't find any images of Anubis wearing clothes with the same style of dapple marks seen around the mid-section of the figure, but I can find an example of Horus wearing it. It's from another Book of Breathing Made By Isis, which is included in Quinten Barney's recent thesis. Also included is another relevant example from the Ptolemaic era, depicting Horus with dark skin and matching lines on the clothing of the figure.



As for ruling out Anubis, we have an interesting situation with that lacunae. You will notice that above the middle of the shoulder, more of the papyrus is extant. But there's no snout of Anubis.


In the cases where Anubis is standing straight in a lion-couch scene, it is usually not on papyrus.

In the cases where Anubis is actually on papyrus, standing straight, in a lion-couch scene, his snout is too low and extends too far forward for it to be able to hide in the lacunae.

In other words, if it is Anubis then Joseph Smith may have gotten the only papyrus in the world with a lion-couch scene where the snout of Anubis could hide if that particular lacunae is imposed onto it. (Again, the snout cannot hide in the vast majority of cases, because Anubis almost always leans forward in lion-couch scenes).




















































Do you know of a papyrus lion-couch scene which shows an Anubis that would fit? It seems to me that this would have to be an “atypical” lion-couch Anubis on papyrus, and then we would have to ask - what are the odds that Joseph Smith would get the one lion-couch scene on papyrus where this lacunae would leave no remaining snout? 

Moreover, I think we would have to assume that any potential non-extant snout would need to have been even higher up than the lacunae line, since it would be very strange for the lacunae to just happen to surgically remove the snout (unless any visible snout was intentionally torn out by Joseph or his contemporaries). 

Fairmormon has documented a number of unique features of this vignette. For example, the hands above the head of the figure on the lion-couch (even if only one hand was above the head, the fact that it is angled upward makes it one-of-a-kind, and if you grant both hands raised, then it is very unique). 

 The figure on the couch is in the position indicating prayer and supplication. This is no small thing, because it matches the fact that Abraham prayed for deliverance while on the altar, as described in Abraham 1:15. 

Also consider the crocodile - this is the only lion-couch scene to have a crocodile underneath. 

The figure on the couch being clothed, and the standing figure being positioned between the reclined figure and couch, are at least very rare. The arm of the standing figure also seems to extend far enough that the hand would intersect any alleged phallus. 

This scene is not ordinary.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meditations on Dan Vogel's Responses

Image
I want to thank Dan Vogel for offering a few initial responses to some of my meditations about his "Truth of the Book of Abraham"  video series . Thanks in part to Dan's responses, I have made a few modifications to my post, " Meditions on Vogel ," with a link near the top of the post, where people can still access the original version. If I become aware of more responses from Dan, I will post them as well, accompanied by any commentary I may decide to offer. Meditation on Dan's First Responses Below are Dan's set of initial responses, followed by my replies.  (click image to enlarge) --- Vogel Begins: (click image to enlarge) The way Dan phrases this sounds like he's pointing to one observation I made, which I called a "clue," and he is suggesting I held up that one clue as something which, by itself, could overturn the Egyptological assessment of Joseph Smith's relationship with the Egyptian language. I
Read more

Meditations on Vogel, Appendix A: How The Kinderhook Translation Relates

Image
The Kinderhook Plates explanation put forth by Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee makes sense, although I believe they overlooked some profound implications, and their conclusion is premature.  I do not believe Joseph Smith attempted a translation of the Kinderhook Plates. We have very good reason to believe William Clayton took something Joseph Smith said about the papyri and extrapolated it to the KP, based on Joseph telling Clayton about a character which Joseph had derived from the papyri which was similar to a prominent character on a Kinderhook Plate.  We actually have Bradley and Ashurst-McGee showing us that the translation referred to by Clayton was derived from the papyri, but they stop short of realizing that this creates a dependence of Clayton’s journal, on the papyrus. The translation not only was derived from but is a correct description of the content of a piece from the papyri collection.  The first thing we should do is familiarize ourselves with their theory.  
Read more

Meditation on Dan Vogel's Response of 5/15/2020

Image
Meditation on Dan Vogel's Response of May 15, 2020 Thank you, Dan, for your response. Below is a picture of your response, followed by my reply. First, I agree with you that Parrish and Williams usually were writing at the same time. But we need to account for the fact I drew attention to in my last meditation , that Williams did not write the word "was" and did not write the word "Egyptians," both of which Parrish did write, in the corresponding part of his text, and both of which Parrish had to cross out. Joseph Smith apparently dictated the words, then stopped and corrected them. I believe we agree up to that point. You propose that the reason Williams did not write down those words is that he may have been writing slower and thus he had fallen far enough behind that he did not get to that point until after the correction had been made and so he therefore knew not to write the words. However, the word "was" came just three syllables bef
Read more