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.
Though Facsimile 1 makes no mention of Abraham, the same scene shows up in a variety of different contexts. My theory is that Facsimile 1 derives from the Egyptian Sed Festival, and that this original context was what Joseph Smith discerned.
The entire Antimormon narrative against the Book of Abraham rests upon the assumption that it can only be an embalming diagram for the Book of Breathings, which has “nothing to do with the biblical Abraham.” It’s a funeral scene–the end. But this Egyptian lion couch scene has actually been found in a variety of different contexts, which allows for the possibility that Joseph Smith explained an earlier version. One of these other contexts that archaeologists have discovered even mentions Abraham by name, proving that this scene was indeed historically associated with Abraham. It is unclear exactly what Abraham had to do with the Facsimile in this particular instance, due to missing parts of the scroll, but we can get some idea by investigating what this papyrus was about. This discovered papyrus substantiates several key claims for the validity of the Book of Abraham:
- Facsimile 1 was used in different contexts – We find that this was not a Book of Breathings scroll and had nothing to do with embalming deceased people. It was a love spell. The lion couch scene could very well have been used for still other contexts, and one of these other contexts could have been what Joseph Smith discerned.
- Facsimile 1 involved Abraham – Abraham is clearly placed into the context of the lion couch vignette, increasing the possibility that other contexts involved Abraham as well.
- Abraham took Osiris’ place – Love spells frequently placed Abraham in the same context as Osiris. Each of Joseph Smith’s explanations for the Facsimiles places Abraham in the place of Osiris as well. This is a consistent replacement in both the Book of Abraham and the love spell papyri.
- Facsimile 1 involved fiery sacrifice – The love spell talks about “inflaming” its victim in a way eerily similar to the sacrifice ritual Joseph Smith described.
I would not consider this discovered papyrus a smoking gun, but it goes a long way toward proving the validity of Facsimile 1. It proves that multiple contexts for Facsimile 1 existed, that other contexts involved Abraham, and that other contexts are in other ways similar to what Joseph Smith described. It effectively debunks the skeptic narrative and delivers compelling evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Abraham and Joseph Smith’s explanations.
Love Spell vs. Book Of The Dead
Same Basis – The love spell papyrus, known as Leiden I 384, was produced just two centuries after the Book of Breathings and in the same part of Egypt, Thebes. These demotic papyri “consist mainly of directions for divination processes involving numerous invocations,” based on ancient Egyptian literature, such as “the pyramid texts and other texts found in the tombs, including most of the Book of the Dead.” Joseph Smith’s papyri collection included multiple copies of the Book of the Dead, and the Book of Breathings itself was a simplified version of the Book of the Dead. Thus, Leiden I 384 and Facsimile 1 were derived loosely from the same source: the Book of the Dead. This is the common basis.
Yet Leiden I 384 is not a book having to do with the dead. Rather, it retains some of the Sed-festival context from which the Book of the Dead had derived. Some of it goes back in history to before the Book of the Dead. The magician performing the ritual was instructed to write down invocations and the Facsimile 1 vignette onto a papyrus. He was to heat up and boil the papyrus in a “bath,” and the papyrus would become a proxy object for the intended victim. The papyrus would “become a bath-woman and to inflame the beloved with the heat of the bath waters.” This voodoo-style use of proxy-objects goes all the way back to the Sed-festival, where an animal or human sacrifice victim was laid out on the altar and killed in place of the king, so that the king could die and be revived back to life and kingship. The Book of the Dead does not involve proxy sacrifice, but its predecessor Sed Festival does. Abraham served as proxy sacrifice for the king. The Abraham stories tell of Abraham being thrown into a fiery furnace, and flame is likewise the method of destruction use in the demotic love spells.
Proxy Sacrifice From Sed Festival – Facsimile 1 comes from a Book of Breathings text that carbon dates to the 1st century A.D. This, of course, is long after the time of Abraham, and it gives it plenty of time for it to have evolved and shifted contexts. “The last known depiction of the Sed festival dates to 690-664 B.C.,” writes Stephen E. Thompson, a full nine centuries before we get the love spell papyrus and seven centuries before what we see in Facsimile 1. Indeed, the Book of Abraham describes a scene different than what we actually see in Facsimile 1. “[The altar] stood before the gods of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Korash…” We see an altar above these idols, not in front of them. “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.” We see drawings of canopic jars, not hieroglyphic writing. The Book of Abraham makes no mention of anything else in the diagram, but we see plenty of other figures–the priest, the angel, the river, Abraham on the altar, etc. From all these discrepancies, it is likely that the Book of Abraham is describing something that looked fairly different than what we actually see in Facsimile 1. It may be that Joseph Smith came across Facsimile 1 in the Book of Breathings, saw that the similarity to what Abraham described, and was able to discern the original context. Perhaps if he had come across Leiden I 384 he could have likewise discerned the original sacrifice ritual that Abraham was involved in. If Joseph Smith had truly based his explanation on Facsimile 1 as we see it in the Book of Breathings fragment, this description in the Book of Abraham would have been very different.
The puzzling thing about these love spells is that they are all about the “acquisition of a lover,” and yet they achieve this by seeking “to disrupt the victim’s eating, sleeping,” and so forth. At first glance, they would appear to create an inflammation of affections for the requester of the spell. But that is not the case. They invoke real, actual pain and torture. They work by “inflicting of fever or other heat relating ill-health in the target… not designed to make the victim feel ‘warm’ in the presence of the would-be lover, but rather to make her feel hot or inflamed, like a person coming down with fever in his absence.” (LiDonnici via Edward Love) It reminds me of the doll of Indiana Jones in Temple of Doom where that the high-voiced kid placed in flame to inflict pain upon him while he fights the big guy on the conveyor belt heading toward a rock crusher. Is that something a person would do to someone they are in love with? Why would someone inflict pain on someone they want to fall in love with them? Well, when we consider the sensibility behind the Sed-festival rituals it makes more sense. Researchers have discovered animals and even humans which were sacrificed as substitutes for the king’s ritual “death.” By demotic times, they were using dolls, papyrus rolls, and animals. But originally in Sed-festivals, “a human substitute was chosen for the king,” a human proxy sacrifice for the king’s death. The Anubis figure in the lion couch scene performs this ritual of substitute sacrifice (the priest holding the knife). The person speaking the magical words calls himself Anubis as well, which further proves that the Anubis figure is associated with the performance of destructive sacrifice. It was thought that the king must die and undergo pains in order to be reborn and bring glory to the kingdom. The principle of sacrifice demanded the willful giving of something in order to get something better–but the key fine print for this ritual was: it was alright to use an object or person as proxy sacrifice. Thus, the papyrus with the spell written on it could be inflamed to destroy the old heart, so that a new heart could grow, a heart which would be in love with the requester of the spell. The victim needed not experience anything more than a fever.
The idea of proxy sacrifice is not something found in the Book of Breathings facsimile as we see it. In fact, sacrifice is not something evident at all to the untrained eye. Yet Joseph Smith got it right on both counts. Joseph Smith did not know about any of the dozens of ancient sources that talk about Abraham being thrown into a fiery furnace as a youth–yet the Book of Abraham described it correctly. And here we find a magical spell thousands of years later making clear reference to this fiery sacrifice ritual with Abraham’s name attached. The fiery destruction of the proxy object for the sake of a ‘new heart’ is indeed eerily similar to Abraham’s Sed-festival experience, the king’s ritual death and rebirth.
Importance Of The Heart – A closer look at the lion couch’s Book of Breathings context reveals clear references to the heart as well. Egyptians considered the heart to be an engine that animated the body. The Book of the Dead addresses “my heart whereby I come into being.” The deceased boldly claims, “I know my heart, I have gotten the mastery over my heart,” and therefore: “I have gotten the mastery over my two hands and arms, I have gotten the mastery over my feet, and I have gained the power to do whatsoever my ka [spirit] pleaseth. My soul shall not be shut off from my body.” To master the heart is to master the human body, whether it’s your own heart or somebody else’s. But then in the Book of the Dead, trouble arises for the deceased king as he traverses the afterlife. In chapter 29, a “messenger of all the gods” arrives to “come to carry away this my heart which liveth.” A vignette shows “Ani standing, with both hands raised in prayer, before four gods who are seated on a pedestal in the form of Maat [justice]; before him is his heart set upon a pedestal.
“Hail, ye who carry away hearts, ye who steal hearts!” the deceased calls, “take ye not away this heart of Osiris Ani in your grasp, this heart of Osiris… The heart of Osiris Ani is pleasant unto the gods; he is victorious, he hath gotten power over it… His heart obeyeth him, he is the lord thereof, it is in his body, and it shall never fall away therefrom.” The Book of the Dead then refers to the ritual battle in which the deceased was victorious: “I am the lord of hearts, the slayer of the heart… Let not my heart be taken away, let it not be wounded, and may no wounds or gashes be dealt upon me because it hath been taken away from me…. May naught rise up against me in judgement in the presence of the lord of the trial.” This refers to the final judgement when a person’s heart is weighed against their sins and determined admittance into heaven. Next, another vignette shows: “The decease holding his heart to his breast with his left hand, and kneeling before a monster with a knife in its hand.” It is a literal violent battle for the heart. In a similar Mayan ritual, the still-beating human heart is cut out of a sacrificial victim (again, reminding me of Temple of Doom) to bring prosperity to the land for the year.
In the love spell, the heart is what the magician seeks control over because the heart is what primarily controls a person’s body, and we all know that sexual lust is something wrought by the physical body. It makes perfect sense, then, for the spell to refer to this part of the Book of the Dead.
The Book of Abraham likewise makes reference to a battle over mastery of the heart when it talks about Abraham’s sacrifice ritual. Abraham described his apostate fathers: “For their hearts were set to do evil, and were wholly turned to the god of Elkenah, and the god of Libnah, and the god of Mahmackrah…” and the rest of each of the gods we see in Facsimile 1. The state of their hearts is therefore clearly associated with the Facsimile. Abraham’s imagery became even more violent when he talked about people in the days of Enoch: “And in those days Satan had great dominion among men, and raged in their hearts; and from thenceforth came wars and bloodshed; and a man’s hand was against his own brother, in administering death, because of secret works, seeking for power.” This sounds like a foreshadowing of Abraham’s experience, when his own father turned him into the king to be killed (according to some legends, because of the death of Abraham’s brother), in a ritual killing that was thought to replenish the powers and kingship of the king. In Abraham’s description of Jehovah, the heart is likewise described as a generator of behavior: “And there is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do but what he will do it.” To an ancient Egyptian, what this is saying is that God has complete mastery over his body. God is beyond all the gates and gods and has achieved a perfect state of holiness, and this is what enabled God to save Abraham from the hands of those wicked priests.
Abraham Synonymous With Osiris
Here are the contents of Leiden I 384, translated by Janet H. Johnson: “…you bring a sealed… of copper… this lion, this mummy, and this Anubis… while they seek… black scarab… put…: ‘…AIDIO ORICH THAMBITO, Abraham who at… PLANOIEGCHIBIOTH MOU ROU and the whole soul for her, NN [whom NN bore]… the female body of her, NN [whom NN bore], I conjure by the… [and] to inflame her, NN whom [NN bore].’ [Write these] words together with this picture on a new papyrus:” (The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, Vol. 1, Hans Dieter Betz
Michael Rhodes translates that second part as: “Abraham who upon…”, as the Greek for “at” and “upon” are interchangeable. He further notes: “the remainder of the sentence is damaged but could be something like ‘the couch.’” This gives us more clues about what reference to Abraham is being made here. Is he referred to as the figure lying on the couch? We don’t know for sure. I don’t think it is coincidence that the name Abraham falls directly under the lion couch facsimile, or that it is inside a cartouche which denotes royalty.
Well, there are other complete versions of the love spell. Though they don’t talk about Abraham, we can get some better idea by looking at these similar spells: “Spell of attraction over myrrh that is burning. While the myrrh is burning over the coals, recite the formula. Formula: You are Myrrha, the bitter, the difficult. You reconcile those who fight each other; you burn and force those who do not acknowledge Eros to fall in love. Everyone calls you Zmyrna, but I call you flesh-eater and heart-burner… settle down in her heart and burn her guts, her breast, her liver, her breath, her bones, her marrow, until she comes to me, NN, loving me and doing all my wishes. Because I adjure you, Zmyrna, by the three names ANOCHO ABRASAX TRO… As I burn you and [as] you are powerful, so you must burn the brain of the woman I love, NN. Inflame her guts and rip them out, shed her blood, drop by drop until she comes to me.” (from Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds…, Georg Luck
The spell is talking to the myrrh which is the object burning. This spell references the names ANOCHO ABRASAX TRO, which are described in other spells involving myrrh as angels who have power over demonic possession. “I exorcise thee, O myrrh, by the three names Anocho, Abrasax, Tro.” So, the object of burning evidently is correlated with the angels who are being summoned. In Leiden I 384, what is being burned is the papyrus. Abraham would logically be the divine being associated with the papyrus being burned as a proxy sacrifice. After all, he was the one meant to be burned in the Sed Festival ritual. The myrrh love spells invoke other archangels from the bible, such as Gabriel alongside these three. It would make sense to invoke Abraham for a spell that uses the lion couch scene as the object of proxy sacrifice.
The very next spell after that one is a spell of healing. Georg Luck notes: “For this magical operation, a cat must be ‘made into an Osiris,’ that is, killed. The euphemism originates from the belief that Osiris represents the dead Pharaoh and therefore, by extension, any dead creature.” This is quite a coincidence, because the figure lying on the lion couch in Facsimile 1 is identified with Osiris. The lion couch figure likewise is dead and brought back to life. Joseph Smith consistently identifies Abraham with Osiris in each of the three Facsimiles, which makes sense because of how similar the two are. Love spells often referred to Osiris in the place of where Leiden I 384 refers to Abraham, further cementing their interchangeable natures.
Another love spell turns out to be less about love and more about control. A woman named Sophia seeks control over another woman named Gorgonia by gaining access to her heart. This spell references “the couch of Persephone,” which refers to the underworld a person enters upon their death. This term certainly came from the Egyptian lion couch we see in Facsimile 1, as that was the classic imagery for a person dying and struggling to access the heavenly realms of the afterlife: “Constrain Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, to cast herself into the bath-house for the sake of Sophia, whom Isara bore. Drive Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, drive her, torment her body night and day, force her to rush forth from every house, loving Sophia, whom Isara bore, she, surrendered like a slave, giving herself and all her possessions to her, because this is the will and command of the great god… the couch of Persephone delights you, when you go to the longed bed, whether you be the immortal Sarapis, whom the inverse fears, whether you be Osiris, star of the land of Egypt; your messenger is the all-wise boy; yours is Anubis, the pious herald of the dead. Come hither, fulfill my wishes, because I summon you by these secret symbols… burn, set on fire, inflame the soul, the heart, the liver, the spirit of Gorgonia.” (Unchanging Witness: The Consistent Christian Teaching on Homosexuality in…, Donald Fortson, Rollin G. Gram, translation by Bernadette Brooten in Love Between Women
Sarapis is a god of resurrection, a syncretistic derivative of Osiris and Apis. Thus, we see the same elements as the spell in Leiden I 384, except instead of Abraham we see Osiris. In another love spell, we see the scarab beetle mentioned that was mentioned in Leiden I 384, and a bunch of names, with Osiris alongside Michael the archangel: “Take a scarab and boil it in a good unguent, and take the beetle and grind it together with the plant vetch, and place them in a glass cup and say the spell that follows twice: ‘Thombarrabau Michael Michael Osiris Phor Phorba Abriel Seseggenbarpharagges Iao Sabaoth Adonaie Lailam, compel her, NN, whom NN bore, to follow me should I touch her.” (The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, Vol. 1, Hans Dieter Betz, translated by E.N. O’Neil
Similar spells invoke Osiris clearly as the god being summoned by the object being burned: “I conjure you, lord Osiris, by your holy names… I give over to you, lord Osiris, and I deposit with you this matter.” Another spell clearly references Abraham: “I have received the power of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Other spells equate Osiris with the destructive flame that consumes the object, and thus Osiris is what consumes the heart and body of the victim: “Invoking instead the flame of a lamp, PGM LXII.1-24 invokes ‘the flame that is unquenchable’, qualified as ‘Osiris-Wennefer… when he was smitten with love for his own sister’ Isis-Nephthys, to ‘serve me, NN, against her, NN’ in order to ‘attract her down to me.” (Edward Love) Facsimile 1 is frequently drawn with Isis standing in place of Anubis, or on the opposite end of Anubis, as the person actuating the revival. Isis was both wife and sister to Osiris, like how Sarah is considered both wife and sister to Abraham. Isis rescued the body of Osiris and delivered it to be revived, like how Sarah delivered Abraham from the awaiting destruction of Abraham at the hand of Pharaoh when they sojourned in Egypt. The relationship between Osiris and Isis is very similar to the relationship of Abraham and Sarah. It is therefore very telling that the love spell appeals to this relationship: “The spell promises to make a woman love the client as devotedly as Isis loved Osiris.” In one spell from the Oslo Papyrus, the object of the magic is referred to as “mucus of Isis” and “power of Osiris.” Another Oslo Papyrus reads: ‘May this woman love me for all of her life as Isis loved Osiris, and may she stay as chaste for me.”
Osiris Sacrificed On Altar – Another spell on this same papyrus instructs the magician to “make use of myrrh by throwing it on the flat part of an oven and, while it is being consumed, to recite a prayer enumerating the titles of nobility of the personified fruit… ‘you who are the battle companion of Horus, the protector of Anubis, and the leader of Isis, just as I throw you, Myrrha, on the turning platform of this oven so that you are consumed, so you too consume my woman…” Thus, Osiris is being burned sacrificially on a kind of couch in an oven in exactly the same way Abraham was sacrificed on a couch (in most legends they tried to burn Abraham in an oven). The sacrificial burning was considered the last resort and sure-fire way to make a spell effective: “…If these powers would refuse to help, the magician would put Busiris to the torch and burn Osiris.”
| See also: | Abraham & Osiris As Proxy Sacrifice |
One spell provides both the possibility of burning fire through Osiris or refreshing water to put out the fire, like how water put out the fires of the ovens in the legends of Abraham: “But if you bring Euphemia, to whom Dorothea gave birth, to me, Theon, to whom Proechia gave birth, I will give you Osiris Nophrioth [“Osiris the beautiful thing”], the brother of Isis, who brings cool water, and will give rest to your soul. But if you fail to do what I tell you, Eonebuoth will burn you up… I invoke you by the one who sits upon the four points of the winds.” (John G. Gager) Of course, Abraham’s lion couch sits upon the four Sons of Horus in Facsimile 1, who are the four cardinal directions or four winds of the earth.
Skeptic Rebuttal Is Hollow
I enjoy reading rebuttals from skeptics and Antimormons, because it gives me a chance to fix up anything I might have gotten wrong and clean up my ideas. I have no problem admitting when I am wrong, and I follow where-ever the evidence leads. I have no problem discarding an idea if it gets debunked. But I was disappointed by the Antimormon rebuttal to John Gee’s groundbreaking writings about Leiden I 384. It seeks to downplay the significance of Abraham’s name by pointing out that this is a very different context than what Joseph Smith’s Book of Abraham gives. The “alleged references occur within series of magical abracadabra words,” and the name Abraham could just be one of those random words. Well, first of all, the “magical abracadabra words” aren’t just random words. They relate very much to what is going on. Secondly, nobody is saying that this papyrus presents the same context as the Book of Abraham. I haven’t seen John Gee argue this. It’s a strawman argument. What we are saying is that there are very clear parallels which we can inductively relate to the Book of Abraham and a common origin point for both works.
Skeptics continue with the same “context” game that they’ve been playing all along. Leiden I 384 doesn’t contain the context portrayed in the Book of Abraham, therefore any mention of Abraham must be entirely coincidental. In fact, the name Abraham itself must be entirely coincidental, a simple construct of syllables having nothing to do with the person Abraham! “’Abra-‘ was a widely-used formative element in the magical texts that was combined with various other elements to produce abracadabra words.” Well, that is obviously nonsense, as Abraham’s name appears alongside Isaac and Jacob. It was very purposeful and full of meaning. It is telling the sad lengths Antimormons go to in order to make this whole thing into a coincidence. But if nothing else, Leiden I 384 proves that the Facsimile 1 lion couch was historically portrayed in varying contexts, and Joseph Smith therefore could have been talking about a different context than what is shown in the Book of Breathings. Furthermore, Facsimile 1 has elements that do not fit into a funeral context and are not seen in any other lion couch scenes that we know of. The legs kicking and the arms reaching, and the eyes open… does that look like a deceased person to you? The table of sacrifice on the right side of the couch… why isn’t that in any other lion couch scenes? Facsimile 1 itself seems to portray a lot more than what the accompanying text would indicate. Skeptics have yet to provide any kind of explanation for any of this, other than “that’s water for the crocodile to splash around in.” They know that they can’t allow any crack in their “context” argument because then the validity of Joseph Smith’s explanations would be plainly obvious.
So, essentially what we have here is a copy of Facsimile 1 that invokes Abraham as a royal figure and talks about burning or inflaming in a spell ritual. Coincidence? Well, consider also that Abraham is invoked in the place of Osiris, and that Osiris is invoked in a manner consistent with descriptions of Abraham. The spell itself is clearly a close derivative of the sacrifice ritual that Abraham experienced, and the strange sensibility of the spell makes sense when you consider the logic of that Sed Festival ritual.