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Lion Couch Altar Of Human Sacrifice
Mayan Jaguar Couches
Jacob’s Vision Of Heavenly Stairway
Skeptics claim Figure 4 is “a ‘lion couch’ — simply a funeral bier.” They claim it couldn’t possibly represent an “altar for sacrifice” because “human sacrifice was never practiced in Egypt” and human sacrifice “would have been unknown to Egyptians.”
Lion Couch Altar Of Human Sacrifice
Human Sacrifice In Egypt – This is false. Plentiful evidence has been found of “funerary” human sacrifice both in Egypt and where Abraham lived in Mesopotamia at the time of Abraham. Critics shift the issue to human sacrifice in Egypt, but the events described in the Book of Abraham occurred in Babylon (probably the city of Marad), not Egypt. Historians agree “human sacrifice can be traced throughout” Mesopotamia. Even if Egyptians hadn’t practiced it they would have obviously been aware of a practice that was widespread just next-door to them. But archaeology has uncovered clear evidence for this “funeral” human sacrifice in Egypt as well: “An intact assemblage from the Middle Kingdom fortress of Mirgissa contained the body of an executed man buried in a shallow pit along with a number of broken red clay vessels and several limestone and clay figurines of prisoners and associated images. The deposit appears to reveal the conjunction of three events: (1) a ritual called ‘breaking the red vessels,’ well attested in representations of Egyptian funerary practice; (2) an execration ritual in which certain individuals, both Egyptian and foreign, are ritually damned; (3) finally, the actual execution of a human.” (Tutankhamun’s Armies: Battle and Conquest During Ancient Egypt’s Late…)
Egypt ended the practice of human sacrifice during Abraham’s lifetime, which suggests Abraham indeed could have had something to do with it: “Something fundamentally changed in relation to man’s attitude toward human sacrifice, together with the elaboration of the notion that it could be replaced by animal sacrifice; just when and why this change took place cannot be answered satisfactorily in Egypt or elsewhere. Our strongest textual evidence that something had indeed changed in Egypt dates to the Middle Kingdom (beginning c. 2055 BC).” (Egypt, Trunk of the Tree, Vol. I)
Other Ancient Sources Verify – After Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham in 1835, a multitude of ancient documents were found by archaeologists and religious scholars that told the same story of attempted human sacrifice. There is nothing in the Bible to indicate human sacrifice, so where did Joseph Smith get this story if he were just making it up? Joseph Smith’s details of young Abraham being sacrificed on an altar match a long list of recently discovered ancient sources, indicating it was a widespread story in ancient times. Joseph Smith could not have known about any of these texts or details:
- Targum Jonathan: “It came to pass, when Nimrod cast Abram into the furnace of fire because he would not worship his idol, the fire had no power to burn him.”
- Genesis Rabban: “He (Terah) took him (Abraham) and gave him over to Nimrod. (Nimrod) said to him: Let us worship the fire!… I shall therefore cast you in it, and let your God to whom you bow come and save you from it!”
- Book of Jashar: “And they brought them both, Abram and Haran his brother, to cast them into the fire; and all the inhabitants of the land and the king’s servants and princes and all the women and little ones were there, standing that day over them. And the king’s servants took Abram and his brother, and they stripped them of all their clothes excepting their lower garments which were upon them. And they bound their hands and feet with linen cords, and the servants of the king lifted them up and cast them both into the furnace. And the Lord loved Abram and he had compassion over him, and the Lord came down and delivered Abram from the fire and he was not burned. But all the cords with which they bound him were burned, while Abram remained and walked about in the fire.” (Figure 2 in Facsimile 2 shows Abraham stripped down to his lower garments.)
- The Story of Abraham our Father from What Happened to Him with Nimrod says king Nimrod attempted to kill Abraham several times, and finally catapulted him into the fire. (See pp. 164-174)
- Venerable Bede: Abraham was thrown in the fire for refusing to worship idols but was rescued by the Lord. “…among the Hebrews, truly, Ur means fire. They tell that he would have been consumed in the fire of the Chaldeans because it seemed that when Abraham, knowing the true God more than his brother, he refused to worship the fire, which they worship; and therefore both were cast into the fire by the Chaldeans…”
- Jerome: “Abraham was sent to the fire because he did not want to worship the fire that the Chaldeans worshiped, and being rescued by the help of God, escaped the fire of idolatry.”
- Al-Nisaburi: “When he was in the securely in the midst of the fire, the King, may He be exalted, made the fire cool for him.”
- Christian Chronicle: “And Nemrod threw Abraham into a fiery furnace because he did not approve the worship of idols, but the flame of the furnace was changed into pleasant dew.”
- Rabanus Maurus: “..from when he was rescued from the fire of the Chaldeans into the which was cast to burn because he did not want to worship the fire.”
- Catena Severi: “Abraham took fire in his zeal and burnt that famous temple of Qainan, the graven image of the Chaldeans… When the Chaldeans realized what Abraham had done, they were compelling Terah to hand over his son Abraham to them to death. …he began his flight then with all his household, and they left Ur of the Chaldeans…” (Joseph Smith labeled the priest attempting to sacrifice Abraham the “priest of Elkanah”, or El-Kanah. Kanah was a Babylonian region along the road to Haran, and “Kanah” could be the same root as the name Qainan mentioned in this source.)
Death By Fire Or Knife? – The big difference between these accounts and Joseph Smith’s Book of Abraham, of course, is that the sacrifice was to be by fire rather than stabbing with a knife. But the Book of Abraham text doesn’t actually describe what the method of killing was. We only have Facsimile 1 to go by, and all evidence indicates that Facsimile 1 was a later derivative of an earlier Sed Festival ritual. Joseph Smith was discerning the earlier lion couch ritual scene that the Book of Breathings vignette was based on, so it is very possible that Abraham’s experience differed slightly from what we see in Facsimile 1. In fact, there are important differences between the descriptions in the Book of Abraham text and what we see in Facsimile 1. So the fire vs. knife issue could be just another difference.
Fire as the method of sacrifice would actually make more sense than by knife, considering symbolism in the Sed Festival ritual. The fire extinguishes the darkness, like how the sun extinguishes the night as the New Years sunrise is observed at the sun temple. Though knives were often used for the sacrifices both in Egypt and throughout Mesopotamia, it therefore would have been entirely appropriate for the Eye of Horus sacrifice to be consumed by fire, considering it was performed at the sun temple and engaged solar symbolism. The reason Facsimile 1 shows a knife instead of a fiery furnace may be because it was a later derivative of the scene, drawn for a different context.
Sed Festival Sacrifice – The Egyptian lion couch scene derived from the Sed-festival, in which the king ritually “died” and was “resurrected” to reclaim his kingship. Was Abraham one of these substitute sacrifices? Skeptics dismiss the idea that the lion couch scene could be a derivative of an earlier ritual, but the Sed Festival matches the same events Abraham described. The Sed-festival was “the more ancient ritual of killing the king who became unable to continue his reign effectively because of ageing. The rituals represented a symbolic burial of the old king” and his rebirth. Researchers have discovered that animals and humans were sacrificed as substitutes for the king’s ritual “death.” In early Sed-festivals, “a human substitute was chosen for the king.” “…these Seth sacrifices were burned at the New Year’s annual fertility celebration. Initially, the king himself was burned alive as the earthly incarnation of Seth. Next, in the late Old Kingdom, a human substitute was chosen for the king. On such occasions as the Sed Festival, which was a fertility rite, Seth sacrifices would take place.” (The Role of Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, Alberto Ravinell Whitney Green)
Egyptologists have found other temple reliefs which show “the sed-festival celebrated by Osorkon II,” showing how “the king entered his tomb” and “a priest holding a knife” conducted the sacrifice. Eric Uphill compares this relief illustration to a cenotaph of Seti I showing the king “stretched out prone on a lion couch attired in a robe.” Above Seti is the single glyph commanding him to “wake.” The king received a renewal of life from the lion diety: “These concluding ceremonies repeat the coronation of the king and include a ritual in which the ruler is shown receiving life, years, and Sed Festivals from Bast, a feline headed goddess important at Bubastis, where Osorkon’s temple was located.” (Jane Sellers) “In most of the temples of Egypt, of all periods, pictures set forth for us the principal scenes of a solemn festival called ‘festival of the tail,’ the Sed festival. It consisted essentially in a representation of the ritual death of the king followed by his rebirth. In this case the king is identified with Osiris, the god who in historical times is the hero of the sacred drama of humanity, he who guides us through the three stages of life, death, and rebirth in the other world. Hence, clad in the funeral costume of Osiris, which the tight-fitting garment clinging to him like a shroud, Pharoah is conducted to the tomb; and from it he returns rejuvenated and reborn like Osiris emerging from the dead. How was this fiction carried out? how was this miracle performed? By the sacrifice of human or animal victims.” ( M. Alexandre Moret via James Frazer)
Niuserre Temple Revivification Bed – King Niuserre’s tomb shows these Sed Festival “secret rites in the tomb,” with “King Niuserre in a chamber that contains a bed ornamented with lion heads. It also has lion legs and paws.” The lion couch was indeed “frequently used as a funerary bier” as skeptics of the Book of Abraham say, but also was also used in these Sed Festival ritual on behalf of the living king to die and revive. Joseph Smith discerned from a later Book of Breathings vignette the early Sed Festival ritual which Abraham experienced. “The lion bed was also used in the depiction of the mystical stages of Osiris’ death, disintegration, reconstitution, revitalization, and resurrection that are found on the walls of temples such as the temple of Seti I at Abydos, Hathor’s temple at Denderah and Isis’s temple at Philae… The image portrays the union of Osiris with Isis (in the form of a kite hovering above him) on the lion bed, leading to the conception of Horus. It is events such as this, therefore, that are symbolically associated with the lion bed, not simply funerary rites.” (Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts…, Jeremy Naydler)
We see in Figure 1 a bird hovering as Horus. The Egyptian funeral couch, Figure 4, is the couch of Hathor. She was the god who knew the birth and death of every person, so it was appropriate to use her couch in sacrifice and resurrection. The purpose of the lion couch scenes were to show “the birth of a god…. re-membering of the dismembered Osiris,” says Jeremy Naydler. The ritual starts with the king ritualistically being overcome by his enemies and violently torn apart limb from limb. The priests and gods then tried to help him restore to life and regain his throne. The sacrificial “phase in the rites was the supreme moment of the Sed festival,” when the king or his proxy was “dressed in a shroudlike garment, such as was used by the king during his entombment in the Sed festival, stretched out on a lion bed.”
The Hathor couch was also used for funerals. It was used to carry the body of King Tutankhamen to his burial chamber. Now, that particular couch had three heads: Hathor (representing exaltation), hippopotamus (representing final judgement), and lion (representing the king’s access to heaven.) But in Facsimile 1 we only see the head of a lion on the couch, the king’s access to heaven. This illustrates a passage from the Book of the Dead:
“May I be granted power over the waters… I am the Lion of Re, I am the Slayer.”
King Tutankhamen’s tomb included lion couches for this ritual to take place in the afterlife. “Thus the dead one comes as Osiris into his tomb, where a cycle of transformation is going to begin: the dead god will be born again, Osiris will appear as a new Re, a new sun god… the birth of the sun god out of the watery abyss, and his exaltation and ascension into heaven.” (Alexandre Piankoff via John Anthony West) In Facsimile 1, we see how the lion couch literally stands over sky-waters (Figure 12), and we see Abraham indeed being granted the power of deliverance from death, like the Egyptian lion who delivered the sun through the waters of the night sky. We see the figure lying on the couch kick up, being granted the power of deliverance. Rather than being sacrificial proxy for the king, Abraham ended up being given access to heaven himself.
The lion couch as used in ritual was typically an altar formed as a stone lion bed. One example of the stone lion bed can be seen here. The word “‘Altar’ in Hebrew means ‘the lion of the God.’” The king went into the temple to be placed on this altar. The inner temple chamber was “the place where Osiris is begotten… where he dies to be reborn.” Hugh Nibley has suggested that the reason the original Facsimile 1 vignette showed the priest standing between Abraham and the lion bed is because the bed was actually a solid stone altar and his figure would have been mostly hidden if it were standing behind it.
At the Temple of the goddess Opet at Karnak, we see a lion couch scene very similar to Facsimile 1. But notice on the bottom left, just before the narrative of this chamber walls gets to the lion couch resurrection, we see hawk-headed Re, representing the sun, clubbing a little Seth figure, representing Apophis the devil. This violent killing was the sacrifice offering that expunged evil and allowed the king’s resurrection. Alexandre Moret explained: “A victim was sacrificed and its life taken, in order that this life escaping from the body of the victim might enter the body of Osiris.”
Death and rebirth were combined onto the same bed in Facsimile 1, for want of space. The Book of Breathings was a condensed volume, so it would make sense for them to compress long and complex Sed Festival imagery into a small, quick vignette. At the Niuserre Temple, there were multiple stone altars for the Sed Festival. The Narmer mace shows a typical Sed Festival scene with all the elements to be found in Facsimile 1 but in a more complex diagram. At first glance it doesn’t look like Facsimile 1, but consider each part of this scene. The four figures at the top right represent the Following of Horus at the beginning of the Sed festival, a parade procession where four people hold insignias on poles representing four gods–the same four gods as the canopic jars below the bed in Facsimile 1. At the bottom left are various things to be sacrificed, matching Figure 10. In the middle-left is the Following of Horus procession led by the Anubis priest–matching Figure 3. To the right of that is a seated child in a palaquin–or perhaps a lion couch? He faces the king sitting on his throne with a vulture bird above him–matching Figure 1.
An Egyptologist describes this scene: “The oldest illustration of the festival is on the mace of Narmer, which is believed to date from 5500 B.C. Here we see the king seated as Osiris in a shrine at the top of nine steps. Beside the shrine stand fan-bearers, and in front of it is a figure in a palaquin, which according to an inscription in another representation of the scene appears to be the royal child. A procession of standards is depicted beside the enclosure; it is headed by the standard of the jackal-god Up-uat, the “opener of ways” for the dead.” Similarly on a seal of King Zer, which is referred to 5300 B.C., the king appears as Osiris with the standard of the jackal-god before him. In front of him, too, is the ostrich feather on which “the dead king was supposed to ascend into heaven. Here, then, the king, identified with Osiris, king of the dead, has before him the jackal-god, who leads the dead, and the ostrich feather, which symbolizes his reception into the sky.”There are even grounds for thinking that in order to complete the mimic death of the king at the Sed festival an effigy of him clad in the costume of Osiris was solemnly buried in a cenotaph.” (“Adonis, Attis, Osiris”, Sir James George Frazer)
The child on the lion couch and the three figures to the left of it appear to be “the representation of a captive ruler brought before Nar-mer, and followed by his subjects who are compelled to perform a sacred dance.” Could these figures match Abraham and the three virgins of Onidah? An image of the Osorkon Sed-festival shows three women instead of two women holding the lotus flowers below the throned king: “…in the accompanying scene there are three women called ‘singers’ who are shown holding lotus flowers.” These scenes indicate sacred dances and singing accompanied the Sed-festival human sacrifice, and that in at least this case it was three women performing it. This may have been the role of the three daughters of Onitah in the Book of Abraham. Why three? The three virgins may correspond to the three years between every Sed-festival of a king’s reign. One sacrifice per year of the king’s reign.
Professor Flinders Petrie assumed the royal daughters were there to marry the successor to the throne, though there really isn’t evidence for that. But he clearly described the proxy human sacrifice involved: “…the conclusion may be drawn thus. In the savage age of prehistoric times, the Egyptians, like many other African and Indian peoples, killed their priest-king at stated intervals, in order that the ruler should, with unimpaired life and health, be enabled to maintain the kingdom in its highest condition. The royal daughters were present in order that they might be married to his successor. The jackal-god went before him, to open the way to the unseen world; and the ostrich feather received and bore away the king’s soul in the breeze that blew it out of sight. This was the celebration of the ‘end,’ of the sed feast. The king thus became the dead king, patron of all those who had died in his reign, who were his subjects here and hereafter. He was thus one with Osiris, the king of the dead. The fierce custom became changed as in other lands, by appointing a deputy king to die in his stead… After the death of the deputy, the real king renewed his life and reign.” (Researches in Sinai, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie & Charles Trick Currelly) by kairoinfo4u, creative commons license
At the Niuserre temple near the Great Pyramids, archaeologists have found Sed Festival “temple rituals and offerings in cycles of scenes that are best preserved in the Sun Temple of King Niusera.” The Hathor lion couch where the king “revived” is long gone, but the altar of sacrifice is still there to be found. It’s unique design which deserves some consideration. It is shaped as “a mandala depicting the four directions,” which matches the four directions depicted by the canopic jars below the lion couch in Facsimile 1. It stands before an obelisk on a sacred hill, which matches Abraham’s description of a sacred hill and sun temple near the sacrificial altar. The shape of the stones themselves represent Ra above a horizontal bed: “In the central courtyard there was an altar was composed of five large limestone blocks. The upper block is circular (possibly representing the hieroglyph representing the sun god Ra) and the lower four blocks are carved to represent the hieroglyphs forming the word “hotep” (which can be translated as “offering”, “satisfied” and “peace”)…” (Sun Temple of Nuiserre, Ancient Egypt Online)
The circular stone may relate to Facsimile 2, which represented the run (Eye of Ra) and was layed below the body of the deceased body, like how this circular stone lay below the body of the sacrificial victim. We can see wavy lines on the lower stones, which may match the watery hatch pattern below the lion bed in Facsimile 1.
The altar in the Book of Abraham must have been larger than depicted in Facsimile 1 if three virgins were sacrificed on it at one time (see Abraham 1:11) The altar at Niuserre is certainly big enough for three people, and fits Abraham’s description perfectly: It stoof by a hill, was located at the head of a plain, and was large enough to sacrifice three at once. If the Babylonian sun temple at Marad emulated the Egyptian Sed Festival in their attempted sacrifice of Abraham, it is very likely that they also emulated the the architecture of Egypt’s Sed Festival facilities at Niuserre.
Mayan Jaguar Couches
The connection between the lion couch and ritual sacrifice is even more pronounced in Mayan altars which have been found:
This jaguar throne at Chichen Itza was found inside the burial chamber of the king. It is a chair with paws for legs, four sides, tail at the back, circular stone at the top face, and jaguar face at the front–exactly the same design as the Egyptian lion couch. What are the chances that a totally isolated civilization in Central America would create the same exact altar design as the lion couch in Egypt? What are the chances that this isolated civilization would in many other ways resemble the Nephite civilization which the Book of Mormon claims originated from the Middle East and was documented in reformed Egyptian? Quite a coincidence. Of course, there were no lions in ancient America so the jaguar would be the next logical substitute.
This jaguar couch is blood-colored, exactly like the Egyptian lion couch of Sekhmet the lioness, who was frequently painted red, red like the sun. If Facsimile 1 were drawn in color it is likely that it would be red, as some lion couches were portrayed. Even the green eyes of the Mayan jaguar altar matches the green face of the lion god Sekhmet. Egyptians painted eyes green: “The use of green eye paint was particularly widespread in the old kingdom…” The piercing eyes of the jaguar altar match Sekhmet: “Sekhmet’s green eyes penetrate to the core of your being.”
The jaguar altar also stands prominantly in the front facade of the Temple of Jaguars at Chichen Itza.by 16:9clue, creative commons license
In the Aztec version of this jaguar altar, the circular top face became a stone vessel “used to hold the hearts of sacrificial victims” of religious ritual. The jaguar takes a crouching position and the face becomes much larger and more ornate. Usually, though, the ancient American altar took the form of the human god “Chacmool” who acted as intermediary between the physical and spiritual realm. It took the form of a rectangular stone table with a circular disk atop, like the Niuserre altar. And as the Nuiserre altar formed the shape of the ra-hotep hieroglyph, the Chacmool altar often included a vertical phalus shape with a flat horizontal shape below. Spanish explorers reported that they were used for human sacrifice. They included “aquartic symbols on the underside” like the hatch pattern at the base of the jaguar altar which “symbolized that they were floating on water, on the frontier between the physical world and the supernatural realm”–the same kind of symbolism as the bottom hatch pattern of Facsimile 1.
This next ancient American altar, altar 4 at La Venta also shows a jaguar forming the body of the stone altar, with the eyes, mouth, and face forming at the cornice. The water-sky hatch pattern is formed at the base and is even patterned with the same diagonal lines as Facsimile 1. An idol statue sits underneath, much like the canopic jars sitting under the couch in Facsimil1e. At the sacred Copan ballcourt, the jaguar altar shows four figures sitting in this location–matching the four canopic jars. Rather than being four gods, these are four successive dynasty rulers passing the “ruling sceptor” from one ruler to the next. This shows yet another similarity to the Sed Festival altar, which was all about renewing and asserting right to rulership.
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At the Spanish mission San Xavier de Bac in Tucson, Arizona, there is a curious looking lion altar sitting atop a banister and below a Madonna statue. The shape, position, and human head show a similarity to the ancient Mayan jaguar statue and may hold clues of the Native American beliefs regarding the ancient altar.
Jacob’s Vision Of Heavenly Stairway
Genesis chapter 28 tells of the patriarch Jacob’s vision of a heavenly “ladder.” His ensuing visions closely reflected those of Abraham, with the same covenants being given and the same blessings being received. It is no coincidence that Jacob’s stairway to heaven bears striking similarity with God’s rescue of Abraham as described in Facsimile 1, as those were Jacob’s initial vision and Abraham’s initial vision. Details of Jacob’s experience provide a stunning link between Facsimile 1, Abraham, and the Egyptian Sed Festival.
Journey To Haran – Genesis 28 begins with Jacob conferring the blessings of Abraham upon his children: “And give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham.” This Abrahamic blessing would initiate the events that led to Jacob’s heavenly endowment. Jacob departed for the land of Haran, perhaps in an effort to emulate his grandfather Abraham. Abraham likewise journied from Ur to Haran, and during this journey he had his vision of the Lord. Jacob likewise had a journey during his travel to Haran and made the same covenants with God. The land of Kanah, the likely source of the priest El-kanah who officiated the Sed Festival sacrifice, and the city of Marad, the likely location of this event, lay along Abraham’s journey to Haran. It is therefore entirely appropriate for his grandson Jacob to meet the God of his grandfather Abraham along the road to Haran.
Awakening In The Morning – Genesis makes mention that Jacob “tarried there all night because the sun was set.” He exclaimed, “How dreadful is this place,” but then “rose up early in the morning” at the sunrise. The Book of Breathing text, which included the Facsimile 1 vignette, commanded the deceased: “May you awake every day so that you might see the ray[s of the sun. Amon has come to you bearing the brea]th of life… The Breath]ing Docu[ment of Thoth] has been made for you [as] your protection, so that you might breathe by means of it like Re, so that your eyes might see the rays of the sun disk, and so that you might be called ‘justified’.” (Ritner) Jacob’s experience thus reflects the Facsimile 1 Egyptian context. It also reflects the Sed Festival context from which the vignette derived. Egyptian Sed Festival rituals “symbolizes the sun god’s journey to the underworld.” Osiris’s battle with Seth and the king’s struggle for rebirth reflected the sun’s journey to the New Year’s dawn, which is why the Sed Festival celebrated the early dawn on New Years day. Facsimile 1 portrays an ordeal of darkness that indeed was “dreadful,” but ultimately resulted in a enlightenment like awakening from sleep. The Book of Abraham text describes a ritual that involved Abraham as being offered “unto the god of” the sun, “after the manner of the Egyptians.” The altar and obelisk were arranged at Sed Festival temples for sacrificing to Ra the sun god. At the Egyptian temple of Chephren stands an altar “area for preparing the sacrifice. Behind the altar is a tall truncated pyramid, serving as a base for the squat obelisk that is the sun god’s symbol… representations of the temple-founding ritual and the Sed festival. Just south of the temple a brick boat was built, a symbol of Re’s daily journey across the sky.” (John Ruffle)
Gate Of Heaven – Jacob calls it “the gate of heaven,” which is also the name of the palace gate which the Egyptian king entered to participate in the Sed Festival: “…at the beginning of the ‘Sed’ Festival of thirty years, before the great Temple of the Sun… the Temple of Osiris, which was described ‘as a noble place of eternity for Osiris with a wall that pierced to Heaven.'” (Canon Rawnsley)
[right img djed vs. lion couch]
Ladder – Jacob’s description of a “ladder” or staircase reflects the Egyptian conception of reaching heaven post-death by means of the Djed-pillar, an actual structure. The Djed pillar took the form of a reed or tree and extended from earth to heaven, with horizontal rungs that indeed looked like a ladder. Often, Isis and her sister Nephthys were shown on either side of the Djed pillar in the same format as the lion couch vignettes, in which Isis and Nephthys stood on either side of the deceased king. In funerals, Egyptian dead were often buried with an “Isis-Nephyths-Horus triad” amulet around their neck. The god Horus stands in the middle with his mother, Isis and Nephthys on either side: “these goddesses protected Horus until he was old enough to claim the throne of Egypt; through this image, the protection afforded would be transferred to the deceased at the critical time of transition to new life.” (Spurr, Reeves, Quirke) This is a classic Sed-festival symbol, where the deceased king comes to identify with Horus, who is also symbolized as a Djed pillar with human arms sticking out. The Djed pillar represented the “sacred tree”which grew around the body of Osiris and granted his rebirth. Sed-festival inscriptions showed this tree-pillar “flanked by two tjet signs, (meaning protection) Symbolizing also Osiris between Isis and Nephthys.” Another Djed pillar scene shows a mummy on a lion couch below the djed pillar and between Isis and Nephthys. The “Divine Ladder” was “a symbol most closely ossicated with Osiris” which “made possible the ascent of Osiris heavenward” to identify with Horus, which is exactly the same process we see in Facsimile 1. In Facsimile 1, Osiris on the lion couch comes to identify with Horus the bird to reach heaven. This passage to heaven was why the “Sed Festival featured the Djed, which was ceremonially raised as a symbol of the potency and langetivity of the pharaoh’s rule.”
Immediately after waking, Jacob took the stones upon which he had slept and “set it up for a pillar.” Jacob even annointed the pillar, which relates to the funerary Egyptian symbolism of preserving the “corpse everlasting, and Osiris, whether as tree, pillar, or mummy.” Jacob’s actions thus perfectly match the Sed Festival. At the sun temple, the king ritually dies upon a long stone bed before a sacred hill, but is “awakened” and rises to an upright position like the obelisk rising to the sky. The raising of the Djed pillar in the Sed Festival symbolized this process of awakening. Jacob lay upon a long stone (it must have been long, otherwise how could he lift it to a pillar?), awakened, and then then lifted the stone to a pillar.
Everlasting Stars – The Lord had shown Abraham all of the stars and blessed his seed to be plentiful like the stars of the sky, likewise a nighttime vision. But in the Book of Abraham we get more information about the Lord’s revelation–a hierarchy of stars of different glories and righteousness, like different levels on the ladder. Abraham is told that he is among the “noble and great ones,” which in Egyptian terms would be the never-setting polar stars. The Egyptians likewise thought of spirits as stars and considered some as greater than others. The Lord declared to Abraham that He is supreme to all other stars or spirits, and that Abraham’s deliverance from death reflects Jehovah coming down in the pre-existence in the midst of the stars or spirits and leading a victorious primordial battle against Lucifer. Jehovah battled Lucifer in the pre-existence like how Osiris battled Seth–and in fact Lucifer, king Nimrod, and Marad (the site of Abraham’s deliverance) all relate to the name “morning star.” When we consider the Sed-festival’s cosmic 30-year timing, the cycle of Jupiter’s revolution–largest of all stars–being 30 years (Egyptians considered the planets stars)–we find the same exact cosmic and theological symbolism in the Egyptian context. Jacob in his vision of the ladder likewise observed that the Lord “stood above” the ladder and all of the hierarchy of angels, meaning he was the greatest star.
In the Book of the Dead, we likewise get an explanation of the hierarchy of stars along this ladder to heaven, with the assertion that the king is among the unsetting polar stars: For Pepi: “Isis saith, ‘Happy are they who see the ‘father,’ and Nephthys saith, ‘They who see the father have rest,’ speaking unto the father of this Osiris Pepi when he cometh forth unto heaven among the stars and among the luminaries which never set. With the uraeus on his brow, and his book upon both his sides, and magic words at his feet, Pepi goeth forward unto his mother Nut [sky], and he entereth therein in his name Ladder.” For Unas: “Ra setteth upright the ladder for Osiris, and Horus raiseth up the ladder for his father Osiris, when Osiris goether to [find] his soul; one standeth on the one side, and the other standeth on the other, and Unas in betwixt them. Unas standeth up and is Horus, he sitteth down and is Set.” (The Book of the Dead…, E.A.W. Budge)
This imagery of Seth at the bottom of the ladder hierarchy and Horus at the top reflects the same symbolism Abraham gave of Lucifer below and Jehovah above, and Jacob’s vision of Jehovah at the top.
Like Abraham, Jacob received further visions from the Lord describing his posterity spreading across the earth. During one of his all-night visions of angels, Jacob “wrestled” with an angel “until the breaking of the day.” This suggests the receiving of a succession of heavenly endowments, much like Abraham’s experiences. Jacob returned to this same location where he had seen the heavenly ladder, which he called Bethel, to receive another vision in which the Lord told him he would be the father of many nations. Upon returning to the site, Jacob was commanded to make an altar for giving sacrifice. After that, it became a setting for sacrificial offerings. Thus, all elements of the Sed Festival and Facsimile 1 show up at Beth-el, including the altar of sacrifice. This second vision occurred thirty years after the first vision, which reflects the thiry year timespan of the Sed festival. Also, there was a 30 year time span between God’s covenant to multiply Abraham’s posterity as the stars and when Isaac was finally born. Isaac was 30 years old when Jacob was born–thus, Abraham and his posterity passed on the thirty year cycle unique to the Sed Festival. During that thirty year time between Jacob’s first vision and his second vision at Bethel, Jacob purged the idols of his kinsmen, a service Abraham also performed for his father (which was got Abraham into the the role of human sacrifice victim in the first place.)
Like Abraham, Jacob received a new name: Israel.
Deliver To Promised Land – In the initial vision with the heavenly ladder, Jehovah approached Jacob with similar language to Abraham’s initial vision: “I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed… and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.”
Compare that with what the Lord told Abraham at the altar of human sacrifice: “Abraham, Abraham, behold, my name is Jehovah, and I have heard thee, and have come down to deliver thee, and to take thee away from thy father’s house, and from all thy kinsfolk, into a strange land which thou knowest not of… Behold, I will lead thee by my hand, and I will take thee, to put upon thee my name, even the Priesthood of thy father, and my power shall be over thee. As it was with Noah so shall it be with thee; but through thy ministry my name shall be known in the earth forever, for I am thy God.”
The later visions likewise resembled Abraham’s.
Abraham’s Altar Of Sacrifice – Did Jacob lay on just one long stone or multiple stones? Verse 11 of Genesis 28 indicates multiple stones: “he took of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows.” But then verse 18 indicates just one stone: “…took the stone that he had put for his pillows.” How can one stone be multiple pillows? The Hebrew text of verse 18 indicates it was one stone “under his head.” But the grammar in verse 11 indicates multiple stones. The book “The Legend of the Jews” claims it was actually twelve stones that fused into one stone during Jacob’s sleep. And as for the “certain place” where he slept on the stones, guess what? It was the hill where Abraham attempted to sacrifice his son Isaac: “Jacob took twelve stones from the altar on which his father Isaac had lain bound as a sacrifice, and he said: ‘It was the purpose of God to let twelve tribes arise, but they have not been begotten by Abraham or Isaac. If, now, these twelve stones will unite into a single one, then shall I know for a certainty that I am destined to become the father of the twelve tribes.’ At this time the second miracle came to pass, the twelve stones joined themselves together and made one, which he put under his head, and at once it became soft and downy like a pillow. It was well that he had a comfortable couch…” (The Legend of the Jews, Louis Ginzburg)
Wow. When I came across this passage in researching for this blog post, I was struck by a powerful wave of emotion. When young Abraham who was just a kid, who arrogantly declared his society’s mode of worship to be worthless, who smashed his father’s fine works of art, who was betrayed by his own father to the authorities and was bound and taken by the king–as he lay upon the altar to be murdered before tens of thousands of cheering spectators, what was he thinking? What was going through his head? Could he possibly have imagined that one day he would take his own son, the son he had waited so long to conceive, and following the cosmological timing of the Sed Festival from the time God promised to multiply his postery, actually take his son to a hill of sacrifice and plunge a knife into his heart? And furthermore, following the Sed Festival cosmological timing, his grandson Jacob would travel to that same spot, willingly lay upon the same altar between the heaven and skies, and experience the same marvelous divine intervention?
This Jewish legend even describes that altar as a “couch.” Like the lion “couch”? Well, look again the the Niuserre sun temple altar. How many sides does it have? Twelve. When looking at it from above, it is a star pattern with twelve sides. Where else have we seen this kind of star pattern? The Hebrew star of David. It is very likely that Abraham built his altar for sacrificing Isaac to resemble the altar upon which they tried to sacrifice him in his youth, which was built by the Chaldeans to resemble the altar of the Sed Festival temple in Egypt, and this may be where the Star of David originates. The Star of David is literally the Sed Festival altar of sacrifice, and at the same time it represents both Christ’s sacrifice for the atonement of mankind and Christ as the greatest “star” in the hierarchy of creation. Isaac, after confering the blessing of Abraham upon his children, decided to travel to Haran like his grandfather Abraham, and along the way encountered Abraham’s altar for Isaac. Did Abraham likewise encounter the Sed Festival altar of sacrifice from his youth as he traveled to Haran, and is that where he made his covenant with God?
by orientalizing, creative commons license
Jacob described the altar as “heaven’s gate.” Well, the Mayan jaguar altar at Ek Balam literally is a gate. The mouth of the jaguar extends out into a large platform (with the teeth of the mouth sticking up much like the Ra-Hotep hieroglyph imprinted on the Niuserre altar in Egypt), and a wonderful gateway stands in the place of the jaguar’s throat. You can see a relief sculture of the altar above this gate, and it rather does resemble a couch quite well. You can see circular imprints on this couch that resemble the green circles on the Chichen Itza altar. Two figures stand on either side of this couch (like Isis and Nephthys on either side of the lion couch). At the far left and far right are a total of four statue figures (like the four canopic jars in Facsimile 1). Below the couch on either side of the gateway are representations of the tree of life, which for Mayans represented the horizon between earth and heaven. The “water iconography,” a wave motif, represents water. Sometimes the jaguar altar was surrounded by a sea of water. And then below that is the wall facade. The “pillars of heaven” in Facsimile 1 were called a “serekh,” literally a palace faced. What an rich representation of heaven’s gate! And it so closely matches Facsimile 1.
Jacob also described the location as Bethel, or the “house of God.” This followed the typical ancient sensibility of finding divine spirits in stone. But as the “house of God,” these altar stones which fused into one monumental star stone, were thought by Jacob to confer divine rights and privileges. That’s why the Crusaders brought back to England what they thought was the Stone of Jacob and placed it at the seat of the monarch’s throne at Westminster Abbey. It was used at coronation ceremonies. It’s known as stone of scone or “stone of destiny.” The Stone of Jacob has always been believed to provide a right to kingship or rulership, which is exactly the purpose of the Egyptian Sed Festival. The mythology of the Stone of Scone indeed reflects the attempted Sacrifice of Abraham as described in Facsimile 1, but we can also see the continuation of Abraham’s blessings and divine deliverance to Jacob in the Stone of Scone mythology. “According to Bible legend, the Stone of Destiny will witness the coronation of every ruler of God’s blessed people until the Lord’s return… It is said that around 580 BC, during the sacking of Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah removed the stone from the holy temple in Jerusalem and fled with it to Egypt accompanied by Tea Tephi, the daughter of King Zedekiah of Jerusalem. Jeremiah then sailed to Ireland, where Tea Tephi was wedded to the Irish king, Eochaide the Heremon, thus preserving the ancient bloodline of David upon a world throne. From that time until the present, no British monarch could be seated on the British throne unless the Stone of Destiny was present at the coronation ceremony.” (The Legend of the Jews, Louis Ginzburg)
Well, it is true Zedekiah’s children escaped the sacking of Jerusalem and preserved the royal bloodline. But it wasn’t Ireland that they sailed to. It was the Americas. Were the inhabitants of Zarahemla in the Book of Mormon in possession of Jacob’s stone from the holy temple in Jerusalem? Was the temple of Zarahemla considered a “world throne?” This may explain why the jaguar altars of the Mayans so closely resemble the Egyptian lion couch and contain the same symbolism as the Sed Festival altar. There are jaguar thrones as well as altars throughout Central America, and they may have actually been interchangeable as altars and thrones: “These ‘altars’ may also have been thrones.” This would also explain why they carved scenes of kings passing down the scepter of rulership, clearly marking the jaguar throne/altar as a site of coronation. It is quite coincidental that the Mayans sat upon altars as their thrones in the same way British monarchy sat upon an altar stone for its throne, right? But the Stone of Scone is just a normal-looking piece of rectangular stone. The Mayan jaguar throne/altar appears to be a much more convincing contender for Jacob’s stone. Perhaps this is why the Nephites in Mormon 3:10 made an oath “by the heavens, and also by the throne of God” to cut off the Lamanites “from the the face of the land.” The Lamanites had just conquered the lands of Zarahemla and perhaps they had come into possession of the original Jacob’s stone, the throne or “house” of God.
Is that why King Benjamin considered Zarahemla the seat of their rulership? Is that why Zarahemla was made the site of the temple, over which Jesus appeared when he visited the America’s–because it possessed the original “house of God” stone?
Lazarus’ Vision Of Judgement – There is another story in the scriptures similar to the Facsimile 1 story, where people die, ascend to heaven, and are re-awakened on earth: the story of Lazarus. Now, Lazarus is a story of judgement, where a poor man is judged to be righteous and go to heaven and the rich man is wicked and receives a lesser degree of glory. Scholars have noted the striking similarities in the Egyptian Setna II story and Abraham in the Lazarus story of the New Testament: “in the place Osiris would have occupied in an Egyptian context, Jesus instead mentions Abraham.” Apparently, the Lazarus story as very ancient origins and can be found in this Egyptian literature. Instead of standing by Abraham in the afterlife, the righteous man in the Egyptian version stands by Osiris in the Egyptian version. Abraham consistently corresponds with Osiris throughout the Facsimiles, and in fact, the name ‘Lazarus’ derives from ‘Osiris.’ Isis was both the sister and wife of Osiris, just as Sarai was both the sister and wife of Abraham. And her role, as explained right next to the Facsimile 1 vignette, allowed Osiris’ soul to live, “so that her brother Osiris may live” in exactly the same way as Abraham described. Sarai assumed the identity of Abraham’s sister when they traveled into Egypt to prevent Abraham from being killed. So is Abraham actually the original Lazarus story? In the New Testament Lazarus story, Mary of Bethany was the sister of Lazarus who was to be revived, and she was the one who requested Jesus to perform the revivification. The same three characters–Osiris, Isis is sister, and Horus his father–thus show up in both Abraham’s case and Lazarus’ case, performing the same roles.
According to “The Legend of the Jews,” Jacob’s vision at Bethel is similar to Lazarus’ experience, a judgement scene. But also notice the incredible similarity to the Book of Abraham text: “On the whole it was a night of marvels. He dreamed a dream in which the course of the world’s history was unfolded to him. On a ladder set up on the earth, with the top of it reaching to heaven, he beheld the the two angels who had been sent to Sodom… now they were ascending heavenward. When they arrived there, they heard him call the other angels, and say, ‘Come ye and see the countenance of the pious Jacob, whose likeness appears on the Divine throne, ye who yearned long to see it,’ and then he beheld the angels descend from heaven to gaze upon him. He also saw the angels of the four kingdoms ascending the ladder. The angel of Babylon mounted seventy rounds, the angel of Media, fifty-two, that of Greece, one hundred and eighty, and that of Edom mounted very high, saying, ‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High,’ and Jacob heard a voice remonstrating, ‘Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the uttermost parts of the pit.’ God Himself reproved Edom, saying, ‘Though thou mount on high as the eagle, and though thy nest be set among the stars, I will bring thee down from thence.’” (The Legend of the Jews, Louis Ginzburg)
We find the same story of the pre-existence battle as in the Book of Abraham, where Jehovah gained victory of Lucifer and became the highest “star.” We see the same hierarchy of glories. We even see Facsimile 1’s false gods represented by the jars under the lion couch: the angel of Babylon, the angel of Media, the angel of Greece, the angel of Edom. Four of them. The four jars in the Egyptian context are the four sons of Horus which represent the four directions of the earth, just like they represent kingdoms in four directions of the earth in Jacob’s dream. The vision in Genesis 28 makes this explicit: “thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south.” The same imagery as Facsimile 1. “The Legend of the Jews” makes it clear that each of these earthly kingdoms and four directions would be conquered by Israel’s posterity: “In this, the first prophetic dream dreamed by Jacob, God made him the promise that the land upon which he was lying would be given to him, but the land he lay upon was the whole of Palestine, which God had folded together and put under him. ‘And,’ the promise continued, ‘thy seed will be like unto the dust of the earth. As the earth survives all things, so thy children will survive all the nations of the earth. But as the earth is trodden upon by all, so thy children, when they commit tresspasses, will be trodden upon by the nations of the earth.’ And, furthermore, God promised that Jacob should spread out to the west and to the east, a greater promise than that given to his fathers Abraham and Isaac, to whom He had allotted a limited land. Jacob’s was an unbounded possession.” (The Legend of the Jews, Louis Ginzburg)
Here we get a sense of sacrifice and redemption. Jacob’s children would be trodden when they become sinful but be revived and blessed again when they are righteous. This is the same kind of blessing given at the Sed Festival: “Connected with the sed festival there was a slaughter of enemies.” But as for Jacob’s stone, “The Legend of the Jews” claims that it sank to the center of the earth and provides power over life and death: “He took the stone made out of the twelve, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it, which had flowed down from heaven for him, and God sank this anointed stone untoo the abyss, to serve as the centre of the earth, the same stone, the Eben Shetiyah, that forms the centre of the sanctuary, whereon the Ineffable Name is graven, the knowledge of which makes a man master over nature, and over life and death.” (The Legend of the Jews, Louis Ginzburg)
The angel of the Lord displayed mastery over nature when he “made the fire cool for” Abraham, according to Al-Nisaburi–when “the flame of the furnace was changed into pleasant dew,” according to Christian Chronicle. Abraham was given life rather than death. In the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Lord explains to Abraham about the hierarchy of spirits in the heavens, much like Jacob and in the Book of Abraham, but here he sees how fire transitions to dew along the length of the ladder: “”‘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)
The attempted sacrifice of Abraham was made from fire into “dew,” and Abraham saw heavenly “dew” in the glories of heaven–well, after his vision, 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)
This alludes to Jehovah’s victorious combat with Lucifer the fallen angel. But it is plainly called a “divine endowment” leading to further endowments of angels, and alludes to the “dew” of Abraham’s lion couch which in Egyptian belief was an attempt at resurrection. The symbolism all matches up. The altar of sacrifice is lifted to an altar of exaltation, as the cross of Jesus Christ was lifted to bring salvation to all who look. It is profound and rich symbolism that deepens our understanding of Jesus and our relationship to divinity, which is why I am very grateful Facsimile 1 was explained by Joseph Smith and provided in the scriptures.