This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
Skeptics claim Figure 11 is a “palace facade, called a ‘serekh’” which is “a frequent decoration on funerary objects.” Is this true? Is this merely common decoration?
Only Lion Couch Scene To Show Serekh – Well, Figure 11 is a serekh palace facade, but it is not true that the serekh was common for scenes such as this. In fact, this is the only Egyptian lion couch scene to include a serekh. The reason they used it in a funeral scene was to identify royal identities, as the serekh was a royal crest honoring the name of the pharaoh. It definitely was not mere “decoration.” Skeptics ignore Figure 11’s meaning as a royal identifier.
Facsimile 1 Is One Giant Serekh – Serekh means “facade,” and it often “combined a view of a palace exterior and a plan of a royal courtyard” above. In a serekh, “the lower decorated section was the front elevation and the panelled facade of the building and the open area above was the plan of the inner courtyard.” (Hilary Wilson) But in Facsimile 1,the rest of Facsimile 1 is contained within the rectangle above–the courtyard. Does this mean Facsimile 1 is entirely a serekh? Is the whole Facsimile 1 a royal crest? Well, that’s certainly changes things doesn’t it? This isn’t something I have ever seen anyone talk about, but if you compare Facsimile 1 to other examples of the serekh that’s certainly how it looks like. The entire thing takes the form of a royal crest! Everything in Facsimile 1–thee lion couch, the wicked Anubis priest, the offering libation table, and the angel bird seems to be enclosed in the rectangular courtyard part of a serekh. This places it all within the realm of an identifier for the subject of the Book of Breathings scroll.
This actually makes more sense when you consider how the lion couch vignette was adapted in Hellenistic times, when Facsimile 1 was created. They took this very ancient Sed Festival scene and adapted it to different contexts. For example, Leiden I 384 papyrus was created around the same time, and it shows the lion couch scene with Abraham named directly below it. This was used in the context of a love spell, however, and we can see how the story of the human sacrifice of Abraham on the altar fits perfectly into that context. The lion couch scene was a logical imagery for the spell to invoke. Likewise, we can see why the Sed Festival lion couch scene would be adapted for the Book of Breathings funeral literature. Instead of a proxy sacrifice ritual for a living king, it became a funeral ritual for a non-royal figure. The hieroglyphic text next to Facsimile 1 in the Joseph Smith papyrus fragment states the name and titles of the deceased person for whom the papyrus was written: ”[The Osiris, God’s father,] priest of Amon-Re, king of the gods, priest of Min, who massacres his enemies, priest of Khonsu, who is powerful in Thebes… Hor, justified, the son of one of like titles, master of the secrets, god’s priest, Usirwer, justified, [born of the house wife, the musician of Amon-Re,] Taykhebyt…” (Translation of The Hor Book of Breathings, Michael D. Rhodes)
This was an identifier, like a person’s epithet engraved upon a tombstone. It makes perfect sense to draw a serekh next to a statement of the subject’s name and titles. We can see some of this description within the Facsimile’s figures as well, such as he “who massacres his enemies.” But ultimately what makes Facsimile 1 different from the other lion couch scenes in Egyptian literature is its role indicating who this person is. It’s not an illustration or guide for the embalming ritual. Rather, it is a tombstone. Joseph Smith discerned the elements that this serekh crest used and explained how they related to Abraham, through their original meaning in the ancient Sed Festival.
Ritual Function For Each Figure – So Joseph Smith was correct to call them “pillars.” But why did the serekh show this pillared facade? Figure 11 in Facsimile 1 provides important architectural structure to everything we see in Facsimile 1. A serekh facade served to subdivide “into compartments representing rooms,” like how a temple divided each part of worship with its own room. An architectural context gives ritual function to each element in the scene: ”Statues were created not for their decorative effect but to play a primary role in the cults of the gods, the king and the dead. They were designed as places where these beings could manifest themselves in order to be the recipients of ritual actions. Thus it made sense to show the statue looking ahead at what was happening in front of it, so that the living performer of the ritual could interact with the divine or deceased recipient…. Other statues were designed to be placed within an architectural setting, for instance in front of the monumental entrance gateways to temples known as ‘pylons’, or in pillard courts, where they would be placed against or between pillars: their frontality worked perfectly within the architectural context.” (The Art of Ancient Egypt, Gay Robins)
By the time Facsimile 1 was created, the serekh as a royal badge was replaced in Egypt by the cartouche. But it was still sometimes used “to demonstrate the antiquity of a particular motif or the long span of the worship of a particular divinity.” It was included in this papyrus as a very profound reference. What ancient motif or ritual was it referring to? The word serekh came to mean in ancient Hebrew “practice, orderly procedure, ritual.” Like a palace structure, the Hebrew “serekh” provided administrative order for people to follow. It is therefore appropriate for the Book of Breathings to begin with a giant Egyptian serekh and identify who the deceased person was and what he was about, in order to incorporate the ancient spiritual ways.
We are therefore meant to see each Figure in Facsimile 1 in terms of its ritualistic function. Unfortunately, I have not seen archaeologists do this. I have not seen skeptics do this. I have not seen non-Latter-day Saint sources speak much of their functions–just their names out of context. “This is Horus. This is a crocodile splashing around in some water.” Or if they do, they speak of their embalming function, which is not what this is about. But Joseph Smith spoke all about their functions. He explained what the priest was doing in Abraham’s context, what the bird was doing, what the lion couch was for, etc. Their names aren’t what’s important. The functions are. The functions and basic ritual expressed in Facsimile 1 just happens to be the ritual which Abraham experienced and which Joseph Smith talks about in his explanations: the Sed Festival.
Serekh In The Sed Festival
Tombstone of Djet by Guillaume Blanchard/Wikipediaon flickr (creative commons license)
There are three parts to a typical serekh: first, the palace facade at the bottom–which matches our Figure 11. This indicated a temple ritual context. Then, above it was placed the courtyard rectangle containing emblems of the king as “a heavenly presence within the earthly palace–the magnificent predator.” This is a simplistic but accurate description of the scene’s original Sed Festival context. Above the serekh courtyard rectangle stands a falcon, which we see incorporated into the courtyard rectangle in Facsimile 1. It stand inside the courtyard rather than above it, but it still has the same meaning. The Horus falcon referenced how the king “manifested Horus” and was a “kind of policy statement.” The appearance of Horus gave him authority to administer whatever accompanied the serekh, and this authority was derived from the Sed Festival.
Some of the most early serekh examples were part of Sed Festival scenes. The serekh was plentifully found in original Sed Festival facsimiles, further suggesting Facsimile 1 is uniquely a lion couch scene derived from Sed Festival imagery. In one example it shows up in the corner. Usually, it was located behind the king who was sitting on his throne. A statuette of Pepy I locates the serekh on the rear face of the king sitting on the throne–the serekh is literally part of the throne, and the Horus falcon is perched above. But mostly the serekh appears on stelae which were used in the Sed Festival, along with other festivals. They the Djoser stelae at each cardinal directions of heb-sed court: “Wildung’s suggestion that stelae of this type came in pairs is worth attention. Furthermore, he believes that the Schlangensteine [stones of snakes] were instruments for the rejuvenation of the king during the Sed Festival.” (Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 80) The stelae containing a “serekh with the name of the king” in the middle is considered to be “probably the remains of the boundary stelae used to mark the royal cemetery.” Again, a tombstone. But not just some monumental decoration. Rather it was all about ritualistic function. “The role of these stelae as a boundary stele for the necropolis… came from the so-called ‘klein Festdarstellung,’ [festival presentation] a group of representations of the Sed-festival in Niuserre’s sun temple at Abu Ghurob.” (Lyla Pinch Brock)
Libation Offering – The arrangement of the serekh below the “expanse, or firmament over our heads”–as Joseph Smith explained Figure 12 (and which certainly is compatible with its Egyptian context)–is interesting because it forms the hieroglyph for “rain.” Joseph Smith explained the zig-zag lines in Figure 12 represent “expanse, or the firmament over our heads; but in this case, in relation to this subject, the Egyptians meant it to signify Shaumau, to be high, or the heavens.” The zig-zag lines indeed referenced waters of the sky in ancient Egyptian literature. Egyptologists agree Figure 12 shows: “Above the firmament were the waters, the ‘ocean of heaven’… The Babylonian name for this ocean was anum or anun, and in a still shorter form nun” The Egyptians saw it as a heavenly ocean: “If now we turn back again to Egypt we shall find that in the early pyramid texts there were three chief gods venerated: Nun, heaven’s ocean…” (Gerald Massey)
”It is always assumed that the flat slab of iron which formed the sky, and therefore the floor of the abode of the gods, was rectangular, and that each corner of it rested upon a pillar. That this is a very ancient view concerning the sky is proved by the hieroglyphic which is used in texts to determine the words for rain, storm, and the like; here we have a picture of the sky falling and being pierced by the four pillars of heaven.” (E.W. Budge)
The sacrificial Egyptian altar and the serekh thus assume the same form, and the libation offerings of water which are poured upon them are literally represented in the word for “rain.” Of course, in the Abraham stories it was “dew of heaven”, or “pleasant dew,” which extinguished the flames of the fiery furnace that would have consumed Abraham. The angel of Jehovah appeared like rain upon a fire to rescue him.
The same imagery can be seen to an even larger degree with Abraham’s grandson Jacob. As Jacob contemplated the blessings of Abraham, he fell asleep upon the altar which Abraham had set up years before to make his covenants and witnessed the same vision of a hierarchy of stars which we read about in the Book of Abraham. Jacob’s vision is known as “Jacob’s ladder” or “stairway to heaven.” The Apocalypse of Abraham mentions dew falling upon fire during Abraham’s vision of the hierarchy of stars: “Consider the expanses which are under the firmament on which thou art (now) placed, and see how on no single expanse is there any other but He whom thou hast sought, or who hath loved thee.’ And while He was yet speaking (and) lo! the expanses opened, and beneath me the heavens. And I saw upon the seventh firmament upon which I stood a fire widely extended, and light, and dew, and a multitude of angels, and a power of invisible glory over the living creatures.” (The Apocalypse of Abraham, George Herbert Box)
Dew from heaven extinguished the attempted sacrifice on Abraham’s life on the altar; Abraham later saw heavenly “dew” in the glories of heaven. And then later Jacob received great strength and was anointed with “dew of resurrection” from heaven: “He had been divinely endowed with this supernatural strength upon leaving the Holy Land. God had cause the dew of the resurrection to drop down upon him, and his physical strength was so great that even in a combat with the angels he was victorious.” (The Legend of the Jews, Louis Ginzburg)
After this vision, Jacob anointed the altar upon which he lay in a formal ordinance and then lifted it into a pillar, like the “lifting of the djed column” ceremony in the Sed Festival. This explains why the libation altar is located in Facsimile 1 directly between the Horus bird and the palace facade: it incorporates the symbolism of the djed column.
Mayan Serekh
The Mayan sacrificial altar makes this part of Facsimile 1 a literal palace facade. The tree of life–which, again, references the libation altar Figure 10–extends down into this space, but in the center we see a central gateway and columns on either side. To the Mayans, this was a jaguar portal to the afterlife.
The temple at Palenque in Mexico places a serekh in the facade with a frieze above which matches up to Figure 12 in Facsimile 1. In Greek building design, this area was the triglyph and the metope was located below the freeze–basically the same arrangement of architecture. It is a universal design which seems to match the arrangement of Figures 11 and 12 in Facsimile 1, as the serekh becomes a literal palace facade.
Pillars Of Heaven – Joseph Smith explained Figure 11: “Designed to represent the pillars of heaven, as understood by the Egyptians.” He was careful to point out that in Abraham’s case the serekh did not literally lay below the lion couch or take this specific form. This was a very late derivative form. But we can certainly see how this Figure indeed was “pillars of heaven” in the Egyptian context. These are the pillars of the front palace facade, between which the elements of cult Egyptian worship were placed to serve their proper ritual functions. Joseph Smith got it right.
After the deceased individual is fully identified with his name and titles, take a look at the rest of the accompanying text in the Joseph Smith papyrus for Facsimile 1. Where is this palace facade? ”May your soul live in their midst. May you be buried at the head of the West… May you give to him beautiful and useful things on the west [of Thebes] like the mountains of Manu.” (Translation of The Hor Book of Breathings, Michael D. Rhodes)
The mountains of Manu refer to the “cosmic mountain” where Re the god of the sun sets. So, does this serekh refer to a “palace” here on earth or in the heavenly afterlife as Joseph Smith said? What do you think?