Meditations on Vogel, Appendix F: Valuable Discovery

Oliver Cowdery and W.W. Phelps, who produced the Valuable Discovery notebooks, evince a certain playfulness and excitement over what Joseph Smith had told them. They were drawing pictures, telling stories and producing riddles.

The Valuable Discovery notebook is a little gem. There's more going on there than meets the eye.

Our first clue is that Joseph or his scribe wrote out some Egyptian characters (Page 2, col. 2, left column, reading from right to left) and then wrote underneath them, "The above were taken from beneath the figures of two persons - one the appearance of a male, the other female."

Then, to the right of the first characters, some more characters are drawn (col. 1). And below them is written: "The above was taken from beneath figures like the first, standing a little to the left, and a little below."

The problem is that today we can identify where the characters in the left column came from - they are from the Book of the Dead chapter 45 and chapter 46. And there were indeed figures above the characters, but those figures would have been Anubis and a mummy (chapter 45) and underneath would have been a drawing of the owner of the papyrus (chapter 46).

Robert Ritner tries to explain this by saying Joseph probably misunderstood.

But are we to believe that Joseph Smith thought calling a jackal figure and a mummy simply a male and a female was a fair description? Why would Joseph take the time to point them out and describe them if he was just going to offer a misleading description?

Then supposedly Joseph goes on to say that another set of characters was taken from "beneath figures like the first?" So, a second vignette of Anubis and a mummy?

Or, could there be something else going on?

Two pages later, the notebook offers this explanation regarding Onitas and Katumin.

The scribe draws the name Osiris backwards

And also draws the divine determinative for Osiris backwards.

This had to be intentional. The way we know it was intentional is because on another page we can see where they got the character for Osiris from, as it is copied with a number of other characters, and it was written forward. So they intentionally drew it backwards. Why? To highlight it.

If Joseph was not permitted to speak openly about Osiris and Egyptian mythology, in English, that does not mean he could not allow his scribes to draw attention to the name Osiris... in Egyptian.

So, they wrote Osiris backwards.

And that is only the beginning.

When we go back two pages, we land at that page where Ritner's only recourse was to claim that Joseph mistook Anubis and a mummy for simply a male and female.

Let's set aside Ritner's poor explanation and replace it with what would at first seem like an even worse explanation until we play it out and confirm that it actually works.

What if these blocks of characters are merely stand-ins for the characters written backwards?

Let's play it out.

"The above were taken from beneath the figures of two persons"

The characters do appear beneath the figures of two persons.

"one the appearance of a male"

One does have the appearance of being a male, by being called a King.

"the other female."

The other has the appearance of being female. (Princess)

"The above was taken from beneath figures like the first"

It is in fact beneath the same figures as the first.

"standing a little to the left"

It does stand a little to the left.

"and a little below."

It does stand a little below.

And this is where X marks the spot: the name Osiris which was already highlighted by having been written intentionally backwards, is now highlighted through their playful game.