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.
| Anti-Mormons dismiss Facsimile 1 as a common “funerary scene” that has nothing to do with Abraham. We can agree it is an Egyptian ritual scene. Joseph Smith’s interpretation was a different context from the Egyptian context. But even though it does not mention Abraham explicitly or anything about him, Joseph Smith was correct to make it about Abraham. |  |
The Egyptian lion couch scene derives from an old ritual called the Sed-festival. The king ritually “died” on the New Years festival and was “resurrected” to reclaim his kingship upon a lion couch. Researchers have discovered animals and even humans were sacrificed as substitutes for the king’s ritual “death.” Abraham was one of these substitute sacrifices, which is how he figures into Facsimile 1. This was the same sacrificial ritual that Abraham talked about in the Book of Abraham.
Reviving Osiris
| The lion couch scene in Facsimile 1 is not a funeral. There are plenty of lion couch scenes that are funeral, yes, but not this one. There are lion couch scenes of a child being born, of the king holding his royal scepter as if sitting on a throne, of the king turning around, of the king kicking upwards and moving his hands–all kinds of lion couch scenes! They show different steps in the resurrection of the king as the god Osiris. First he dies, a horrible violent death. Then he is buried. Then he is revived, and reborn. |  |
Egyptians portrayed their king “as a god from the lion bed” in the typical lion couch scene, says expert Jeremy Naydler. The purpose of the lion couch scenes were to show “the birth of a god…. re-membering of the dismembered Osiris.” It starts with the king being overcome by his enemies and being violently torn apart limb from limb. The priests and gods then try to help him restore to life and regain his throne. The figures under the lion bed symbolized by canopic jars, says Naydler, pay “homage to the newborn god-man.” They aid in the “healing and revivification of Osiris.”
Naydler says it goes back to the Sed festivel ritual on New Years day. This lion couch “phase in the rites was the supreme moment of the Sed fevistal.” The king 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.” It was all about re-establishing the king’s rulership: “The Sed festival… was a true renewal of the kingly potency, a rejuvenation of ruler ship.”
The lion couch was typically an altar formed as a stone lion bed. 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.”
Was it Osiris on the altar or the Egyptian king?
Osiris in the lion couch scene symbolized the Egyptian king.
In Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts, Jeremy Naydler explains:
“Within Egyptology, the standard funerary interpretation of the relationship between Osiris and Horus is that the two gods correspond to two different kings: the deceased king and his successor, the living king who occupies the throne… one and the same king… The king is going to enter the realm of death, he himself going to experience death. But although he is to journey into the realm of the dead, it is explicitly stated that he journeys into it alive. The death, then, is a ‘voluntary death.'”
| King Tutankhamen’s tomb included lion couches for this ritual to take place in the afterlife. Alexandre Piankoff (via John Anthony West) explained: “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.” These “rites of rebirth” were shown in vignettes from the Book of the Dead, one of which is Facsimile 1 in the Book of Abraham. Interestingly, Facsimile 1 is the only lion couch scene in Egyptian literature–and there are a lot of them–that shows the watery expanse of the sky and pillars of heaven, below a sacrificial lotus offering table. Clearly, the Facsimile illustrated the ritual of exaltation and sacrifice. |  |
Ritual Substitute Killing
In order to regain his kingdom and be exalted in heaven, Egypt’s king needed to merit this glory by overcoming his enemies. Similarly to the LDS temple drama, the king took part in the premortal struggle between God and Lucifer. The Egyptian God Osiris gained exaltation by killing the Egyptian version of the devil, Set, which was often illustrated by the sun’s (Re) overcoming the darkness of night. E.A. Wallis Budge explained:
“The ‘smiting’ of the statue is one of the most important acts of this ceremony, which was intended to commemorate the murder of Osiris by Set and his companions… the smiting of the statue symbolized the smiting of the body of the god, and also the smiting of the mummy of the deceased, whereby each was made a divine victim.”
The Book of Beginnings told of the sun’s (Re) battle with Seth (aka Apophis the serpent):
“For the dead spirits or gods are described as swarming through the horizon in crowds. They gather for the battle of the Sun and the Apophis… ‘I am the sun coming forth from the horizon against my enemies. My enemies have not made me to fall… strangle ye the enemies of the sun. I put forth blows against the Apophis… The sun is that great god, the greatest of smiters, the most powerful of terrifiers; he washes in your blood, he dips in your gore.” (Massey)
The Sed ritual played out this victory within the king’s own self. The evil nature needed to die. M. Alexandre Moret explained (via James Frazer) that Egyptians made human sacrifices in the ritual
“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.”
In the “mysteries of the rebirth of Osiris” we know several “cows are sacrificed.” But not just cows. Alberto Ravinell Green says it started out with the king as the sacrificial victim, and then moved on to substitute victims:
“…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.”
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.”
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 sacrifice was often performed with a knife, as shown in Facsimile 1. But there is also evidence of sacrifice by fire, which we read of in similar Abraham sacrifice accounts. At the tomb of Amenhotep II, “three human bodies were found, but though there is no actual proof that these were the victims of sacrifice yet from their position it seems likely that they had been immolated in honour of the dead king.”
Spread To Mesopotamia
The human sacrifice in Egypt was brief and limited compared to Mesopotamia, where the Book of Abraham claims it took place.
Herodotus mentioned that the Scynthians in northern Iran performed “human sacrifice” to “all other gods.” Herodotus said “they used to offer human sacrifices” at a ritual “when their king died.” It sounds like this ritual served the same purpose as the Sed festival, of renewing the king’s ruler ship. These human sacrifices were literally made “on their kings’ tomb… an immense sacrifice (fifty people are strangled)… members of the king’s household.”
The Taurians, in modern-day Turkey, performed a similar “human sacrifice” where they would “strike the victim’s head with a club.” Herodotus recorded (via Linday De Pow) “the priestesses killed all men who landed in their territory and nailed their heads to crosses. At Heirapolis artificial trees in Artemis’s temple were hung with the corpses of her sacrificial victims.” But later on the ritual softened to only “drops of blood drawn from a man’s neck with a sword.”
Origins For Book Of Breathing Vignette
| The Book of Breathings adopted the lion couch scene from the Sed sacrifice ritual to affect the same exaltation for Egyptian elites. It was the same ritual adopted for the masses in later times. Looking at the Joseph Smith Papyri, it does not appear as if the figure in Facsimile 1 is drawn to be Abraham specifically… or maybe it was and that part is just missing from the papyrus fragment. It wouldn’t be surprising, considering the Leiden I 384 papyrus names Abraham in bold letters right below a similar lion couch scene. |  |
But the fragment from the Joseph Smith papyri we have does not name Abraham explicitly. That’s because it is not the original illustration that Abraham makes reference to in the Book of Abraham. There are some key differences between the Facsimiles and what Abraham describes:
- Facsimiles 2 is a Hypocephalus and that would never be in a Book of Breathings scroll, which is where Facsimile 1 can be found. So either each facsimile was also on the lost Amenhotep Scroll, or Joseph took the facsimiles from different scrolls.
- The Hypocephalus in Facsimile 2 mentions a guy named Sheshonq, and none of the four mummies had this name. This strengthens the conclusion that Joseph took the facsimiles from different sources.
- Fragments from all four rolls were placed under glass in the same collection as the Abraham sheets. Apparently they were important too, as they contained facsimiles that Joseph could use to explain derivative diagrams relating to Abraham.
- Test is much easier to reproduce than illustrations. If this scroll was passed down over many generations from the days of Abraham, it is likely that they gave up copying the facsimiles along the way, and this is why Joseph used images in the other scrolls to derive Abrahamic concepts, as these Egyptian images were based on Abrahamic diagrams.
- Only one facsimile was referenced in the Abraham text, yet Joseph produced three facsimiles. This strengthens the disassociation of the facsimiles with the Abraham text.”
- Text from the facsimiles received lengthy consideration in the Grammar and Alphabet booklet, yet no hieroglyphs in any of the scrolls’ text are to be found.
- The Abraham text describes the facsimile differently than the papyrus fragment shows it. Abraham describes the bedstead as standing “before” the idol gods. The facsimile shows the bed over the idols, but we don’t get a point of perspective whether they are in front of behind them. The priest’s foot is in front of the jars, so it looks to me like the jars are under the bed. Abraham’s text reads: “I have given you the fashion of them in the figures at the beginning, which manner of figures is… hieroglyphics.” There are no hieroglyphics in this Facsimile, and there is nothing to explain anything about this idols. If the author of the Abraham text had had this same facsimile in front of them, they would have described it to match how it actually showed. This indicates Joseph Smith did not write it and the facsimiles we have today are not what Abraham originally wrote in his book.
The most likely explanation is that the Amenhotep roll which contained the Book of Abraham did not contain any facsimiles at all, only contained text, and Joseph Smith took the Facsimiles from the other scrolls. It showed the same ritual event, with the same lion couch and four supporting idol gods, very similar to how Abraham described them.
Abraham 1:12-14 makes direct reference to one of the Facsimiles, but does that mean the Facsimile was actually drawn in that roll to reference? No. Ancient books omitted illustrations that were referenced in the text all the time. The Roman Ten Book on Architecture makes references to many illustrations, but none of those illustrations have survived over time, because the book has been transcribed many times. Text is much easier to transcribe than illustrations. It is likely that the Amenhotep roll contained a copy of the original Book of Abrhaam, not the actual document written by Abraham himself, and that the illustration had been long ago lost.
But that’s fine, because the lion couch scene from the Book of Breathings scroll was an illustration of the same ritual sacrifice that Abraham meant to describe.