Facsimile 3, figure 5

 

Dr. Jayson, PhD 

@JS_StrngstSldr

On to Figure 5 of Facsimile 3. Joseph Smith interprets this as: "Fig. 5. Shulem, one of the king’s principal waiters, as represented by the characters above his hand." Blatantly Anti-Mormon and extremely biased Egyptologist Ritner interprets this as: "Wsjr jrj mꜣꜥ-ḫrw r ḏ.t" “The Osiris Hor, justified forever.” LDS Egyptologist Rhodes gets something similar: "Wsjr jrj mꜣꜥ-ḫrw r ḏ.t" Osiris Hor, justified forever. We will start with the Osiris glyphs here, primarily the eye. 1. The eye sign (D4) will use Kurth's alternate sound vale of "R." Shulem is a blatant semitic name, the scribe who redacted and transmitted the Book of Abraham papyri and Facsimiles has so far spelled out Semitic names and obscured them via anagram. 2. The throne sign (Q1) is next and we will use the alternate sound value of "S." Throne is spelled st, and usually the premier consonant is also an alternate sound value. In Ptolemaic enigmatic writing, foreign/Semitic names are often spelled out with Egyptian signs, and sibilant ambiguity (s/š) allows the "S" to be the sh sound, Š. 3. The next sign is the cultic flag/god sign (R8). Kurth provides the alternate sound value as n. I wondered if there was some consonantal confusion and another person who also studies Ptolemaic writing provided the following. To quote Serge Rosmorduc: "During the whole history of the Egyptian language, many consonants, originally distinct, are more or less merged. We all know that the ṯ/t distinction was more or less lost as early as Middle Egyptian. Late Egyptian helps a lot here, because many of the “confusions” in Ptolemaic already occur in this stage of the language...Note that the word confusion is a bit misleading. The confusions of signs with similar shapes is probably not a mistake of the hierogrammates. The word plays and etymologies we find in the glosses of religious texts show that they understood similarities as meaningful. Hence, those “confusions” were probably often a deliberate choice." He then lists n to m as a common merged consonant. We'll then go with "M." 4. Falcon (G5) — there were 5 different alternate sound values to choose from. We are looking for something related to chief/principal or servant/butler/attendant. Both of these appear as options via the sounds value. The 3rd Century BC author of the papyri is named Hor, and chief in Egyptian just happens to be ḥry. We'll us that. 5. Duck in Flight (G40) — There were 9 different sound values here and servant shows up, bꜣ, or wbꜣ, meaning servant/butler/chamberlain. 6. Feather (H6) — the name of this glyph is spelled out šwt, this same vocalization also means "word/utterance." A possible alternative sound value also stood for the word "throwing stick." This is important because in Ancient Egyptian art the throwing stick represented the person was a Western Asiatic, which Shulem was. 7. Oar (P8) — The alternate sound value for this can be mdw, meaning speech. The word value here phonetically is similar to the word "embrace." Voice and hand were other matches. Big temple themes. 8. Mouth(D21) — The typical alternate sound values for the mouth glyph are r, rꜣ, phr, and jw. We will choose rꜣ "mouth." 9. Serpent/Cobra (I10) — The possible sound values for the serpent are "f, r, s, t, t, d, d3, ḏ, ḏḏ, ḏt." We will choose .f meaning "his." 10. Bread Loaf(X1) — These are the possible sound values, j, t, ṯ, d, ḏ. We will choose j, meaning I (first personal pronoun). 11. Land/Earth(N16) — These are the possible sound values discovered by Egyptologists Fairman, Drioton, and Kurth, "j, t, tjw, ṯ, d, ḏ, t3." We will choose tjw, meaning answer/praise/response. If we put this together we get: "ŠRM, ḥry wbꜣ, šwt-mdw rꜣ=f tjw j" "Shulem, chief chamberlain, when he (Pharaoh) speaks, I answer [Here am I]" In the context of the facsimile if the Pharaoh and Prince are in the picture, then the chamberlain must be at their service. I added "Here am I," but thematically it makes sense.

Facsimile 3 - Final figure

 

Dr. Jayson, PhD 

@JS_StrngstSldr

·

17h

The final figure in Facsimile 3. Joseph Smith interpreted this as "Olimlah, a slave belonging to the prince." Ritner says: "ḏd mdw jn Jnpw jr sꜣ ḫnty sḥnṯr(?) …" “Words spoken by Anubis, who makes protection, foremost of the embalming booth(?).” Rhodes: "Dd mdw in Inp ir sA nb p.t, xnty imnt.t" “Words spoken by Anubis who makes protection Lord of heaven, Foremost of the Westerners.” If you read the hieroglyphs in the common way you will get something like that. Again, we will use the Ptolemaic interpretation. Joseph is said not to be a prophet and that he couldn't read Ancient Egyptian. So far there are 4/5 of the interpretations on Facsimile 3 that lined up with what Joseph said. This degree of multi-layered semantic coherence across independent glyph clusters is not what one would expect from arbitrary guesswork, particularly given that the underlying decoding method was unknown in 1842. 1. Snake/Cobra (I10) — This hieroglyph usually means "recitation" or "said." Kurth gives a few alternative sound values. For Abraham's name this was used as "R" and I think it is fitting here too. The rationale is Olimlah is most likely a man from Nubia, a country that was at war with Egypt during this time. Kolob has the Qareb/Qereb connection where the L became an R. Ancient Egyptian lacks an native phoneme for L, so R was used to substitute for foreign names, like Shulem or Olimlah. 2. Staff(S43) - md, ḥp, ḫrw, ẖ, dp, mdw; we are going with the consonantal principle with the md and just using m. These are alternative sounds values according to Kurth and Fairman. 3. Reed Leaf(M17) - ꜣ, j, jw, ', w, n, r, ḏḥwtj. These are all alternative sound values according to Kurth's book. We will use R. This spells out RMR, (O)r(i)m(r)a or Olimlah. This could mean rmṯ rꜣ, or Man of Rꜣ. 4. Water(N35) - Ptolemaically, it would make sense that the next sound value would either be an M or an R. There are only m or n values to choose from. The reasoning is that RMR M is already a repetition of could values. This was common in the Ptolemaic period. I will be picking m here. These are attested on page 138 of Kurth's book. 5. Reed Leaf(M17) - Again, we will choose "r" here because in Ptolemaic writing repetition of sound values was common for an enigmatic reading. Putting these two together and understanding that rm(ṯ) (ḥ)m (by consonantal principle) would be man-slave. 6. Stool(Q3) - ', b, p, sꜣ, -- pg. 159 of Kurth's book. We will pick "p." This can be translated as the definite article, pꜣ. 7. seated jackal - pg 24 of Kurth's book, j, wpw3wt. I might pick either here because the next symbol is the cultic flag that always means either n or nṯr (god). I'll go with wpwꜣwt. 8. cultic flag (R8), alternative sound value is n the word value is nṯr. I will be picking n, this is on page 161 of Kurth's book. Wpwꜣwt nṯr would just mean jackal god or Anubis. We'll go with nṯr. 9. D21 is the mouth glyph. We are picking jr, because Olimlah originally had an Anubis mask and was a performer. jrj meaning perform. 10. The eye glyph. We are picking rmṯ because It can mean slave when paired with captive. This also does world play with RMR rm(t)...rmṯ... 11. the next is V17 on page 196 of Kurth's book. s, sꜣ, sjꜣw, we are picking sꜣw, it rhymes with si3w and with rmṯ, rmṯ+ sꜣw it is captive man or slave. 12. The scroll glyph is next Y1. This can be either mḏꜣt, dmḏ, or ḏd. In Ptolemaic writing it was common to drop the ending if it was a d or t. dmꜣ means bound to. --The next 6 signs were something I was stuck on. Nothing was really making sense. Then I remember that Amenemhat's throne name was Nubkaure and things started lining up. 13. The basket is the next sign V30. The possible sound values were n, nb, Ḥ, Ḥb, k, j. The normal sound for this is simple nb. This looked like the beginning of Nubkaure. Going with n falls in line with the consonantal principle for taking the strongest consonant. 14. The next sign is the stool. The sound values are ', b, p, sꜣw. The sound b shows up here. We'll go with that. The original value is usually p, but p and b commonly interchanged and related, like m and n, and d and t. Also this is attested by Kurth. 15. The next sign is bred (X1). The sound value here can be a vowel j. We'll go with that. 16. Heaven/sky is the next sign (N1). This has multiple values like pt (heaven) or Hr for hor/Horus. Another value is ḫ, like in Bach or Loch. This phonetically works with Nubkaure, it has a sound closer to a K sound. 17. The face/nose/cheek sign. Alternate sound values attested by Kurth are rtḥ, ḫnr, st. We'll go with "r" according to the consonantal principle. 18. Another bread sign (X1). We'll pick j. Nubkaure is usually spelled nbw-kꜣw-rꜥ, in Ptolemaic writing they would have alternate phonetic spellings that sounded close to the original but were encoded within the Ptolemaic writing style. nbw-kꜣw-rꜥ woudl be Newbukauray Nbjḫrj would be Newbykhary 19. This sign is two dashes. The word value is sn-nw which means "second" like 2nd. The last signs here appeared two other times in this facsimile and were always Amenemhat. We'll go with that again. "RMR, rm(t) (ḥ)m p wpwꜣwt nṯr jrj rmṯ sꜣw ḏmꜣ n-b-j-ḫ-r-j, sn-nw Imn-m-hꜣt" Olimlah, male-slave performer of the god Anubis, captive bound to Nubkaure, Amenemhat II." Was this cherry picking? No. At each step, the selected value is constrained by (1) attestation in Kurth, (2) semantic coherence with adjacent signs, and (3) thematic continuity with the surrounding figures, not by outcome preference. Joseph Smith possible told Hedlock to remove the Anubis mask. This interpretation is "Olimlah, a slave belonging to the prince." The method I used to get my interpretation was not around until the 20th century and accessible books on the subject did not come about until the 21st century. Joseph was not looking at the common translation, but however he translated the papyri, his divine gift of seership was looking into a very specific interpretation that fits the Ptolemaic era when the Book of Abraham was copied and compiled into the Papyri.