On Reformed Egyptian

[russianwolfe]

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that there as found a device, quite old, that had characters on it that resembled the ones on the Anthon transcript. I recall that someone did a study of these characters and found many correlations with the characters on the Anthon transcript. Can anyone provide a link to the article about this? This has been bugging me for quite some time and I just want to read the article again.

 

Marvin

 

[cdowis]

Here is an older discussion on this topic.

 

http://www.mormon*****.***/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&p=501526

Edited August 28, 2014 by cdowis

[ksfisher]

Here is an older discussion on this topic.

 

http://www.mormon*****.***/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&p=501526

I can't make your link work. It acting like text, not a link.

[Nevo]

.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Nevo

[Robert F. Smith]

I can't make your link work. It acting like text, not a link.

That is because he entered it as text instead of hyperlink.  You can copy it and use it as a URL, even though it will not answer the ultimate OP question.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that there as found a device, quite old, that had characters on it that resembled the ones on the Anthon transcript. I recall that someone did a study of these characters and found many correlations with the characters on the Anthon transcript. Can anyone provide a link to the article about this? This has been bugging me for quite some time and I just want to read the article again.

 

Marvin

You may be referring to an article in JBMS (probably by then editor John Sorenson)

"New Light: ‘Anthon Transcript’ Writing Found?" Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 8/1 (1999):68–70, 79.  Online at http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/8/1/S00000-501ad6810b52dJBMS%208-1%20Entire%20Issue%201-1.pdf .

I don't know about the "device" you may have had in mind, but the article I have cited here does note strong similarities in the Tlatilco Seal in the Carl Hugh Jones article cited by Nevo above.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Robert F. Smith

[AndyDnom]

if this actually existed, it would be a smoking gun on behalfl of the BOM and we would hear about it all day evverday

[Kevin Christensen]

if this actually existed, it would be a smoking gun on behalfl of the BOM and we would hear about it all day evverday

It is just this kind of logic that explains why so much evidence supporting the historicity of the Book of Mormon gets ignored.

It's a good example of what N. R. Hansen was talking about when he said that "All data are theory-laden." Hard evidence can be ignored if the theory has no place for it. Arbitrary assumptions about what people or evidence would or would not do can provide grounds for ignoring or dismissing information, evidence, and explanations that exist. I remember one LDS student, several years ago, dismissing Margaret Barker's work without serious examination on grounds that "no one I know takes her seriously." In light of the Archbishop of Canterbury awarding her a DD for Temple Themes in Early Christianity, I can assume that the grad student was not an intimate of the archbishop. It's like a commitment to social conformity to a select social group replaces any personal curiosity or capacity to explore and think for one's self.

I've known about the cylinder seals for many years, ever since FARMS issued a reprint of essay, in the mid 80s. I remain very impressed. Yet I've never seen a critic so much as acknowledge their existence, or deal with the obvious and clear and consistent similarities with the Anthon characters. It's far easier to ignore it than explain it. To imagine a Book of Mormon with no supporting evidence, than to actually wrestle with the implications of what does exist, or to consider trends in discovery and reconciliation.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

Edited August 28, 2014 by Kevin Christensen

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

I missed this the first time it was talked about. Interesting, I can see why critics ignore this. There does seem to be some strong evidence for the authenticity of the "Caractors"

[cdowis]

if this actually existed, it would be a smoking gun on behalfl of the BOM and we would hear about it all day evverday

 

Yeah, and who would be talking about it?

 

TIME magazine on the front cover,

the newspapers on the front page above the fold,

Michael Coe on Meet the Press

Obama in a news conference "We promise to get to the bottom of this".

Edited August 28, 2014 by cdowis

[cinepro]

This is an interesting look at the Anthon Transcript from the perspective of a "code breaker" trying to figure out where they come from or what they mean:

 

http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2009/06/01/the-anthon-transcript

[cinepro]

It would also be interesting to compare the markings on the Kinderhook Plates to the seals in the article.  It would serve as a "control group" on how difficult it is to create similar characters purely from scratch:

 

[cdowis]

But there is a bigger issue.  Do we have the real transcript?  There is evidence both pro and con.  For example,

 

 

 

Both Mormon apologists and critics, however, claim that it is not certain that the document is the original, since Anthon had mentioned that the characters on the slip he saw were arranged in vertical columns and ended in a "rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Aztec calendar given by Humboldt," (1834) or "a rude representation of the Mexican zodiac" (1841)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthon_Transcript

[Tiki]

You may be referring to an article in JBMS (probably by then editor John Sorenson)

"New Light: ‘Anthon Transcript’ Writing Found?" Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 8/1 (1999):68–70, 79. Online at http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/8/1/S00000-501ad6810b52dJBMS%208-1%20Entire%20Issue%201-1.pdf .

I don't know about the "device" you may have had in mind, but the article I have cited here does note strong similarities in the Tlatilco Seal in the Carl Hugh Jones article cited by Nevo above.

It's interesting your link leads to a .pdf of Izapa Stela 5 - which depicts ancient Maya with their drug addiction - which is smoking the resin of the copal tree.

"In addition a hypothesis is offered with preliminary supporting evidence that copal smoke may have been employed for trance induction by shamans."http://www.utexas.edu/courses/stross/papers/copal.htm

"Hey Shaman Maya Man, this part of the forest is full of copal trees! Let's carve a marker in this rock to remind us where the forest is or we may forget when us Maya Shamans are driving under the influence!"

Some here may believe Izapa Stela 5 is a representation of Lehi's Dream. But Lehi was no yellow-bellied sap smoker.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Tiki

[Robert F. Smith]

Yeah, and who would be talking about it?

 

TIME magazine on the front cover,

the newspapers on the front page above the fold,

Michael Coe on Meet the Press

Obama in a news conference "We promise to get to the bottom of this".

You crack me up, cdowis.    

[Robert F. Smith]

It's interesting your link leads to a .pdf of Izapa Stela 5 - which depicts ancient Maya with their drug addiction - which is smoking the resin of the copal tree.

..............................................................................   

Yeh, Stela 5 is the cover story, but I gave the page numbers for the article of interest.  Hope you didn't get waylaid by the copal.

[Robert F. Smith]

But there is a bigger issue.  Do we have the real transcript?  There is evidence both pro and con.  For example,

 

 

Both Mormon apologists and critics, however, claim that it is not certain that the document is the original, since Anthon had mentioned that the characters on the slip he saw were arranged in vertical columns and ended in a "rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Aztec calendar given by Humboldt," (1834) or "a rude representation of the Mexican zodiac" (1841)  http://en.wikipedia....thon_Transcript

The scholars I know consider the document a memento given by Joseph to Oliver and not the original Anthon Transcript.  Indeed, the forger Mark Hofmann was careful to follow the description of Anthon when creating his own version of the Anthon Transcript.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

This is an interesting look at the Anthon Transcript from the perspective of a "code breaker" trying to figure out where they come from or what they mean:

 

http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2009/06/01/the-anthon-transcript

Thanks for that, cinepro.

Now, do I have the citation right?

Nick Pelling, “The Anthon Transcript,” Cipher Mysteries, June 1, 2009, online at http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2009/06/01/the-anthon-transcript ,

* * * * 

“I have to say that I am at a loss to see any conceivable connection with hieroglyphics (or even with Demotic, for that matter).”

 

I don't know what the basis is for Nick Pelling's comment here (has he in fact studied ancient Egyptian?), but I can say that two non-Mormon Egyptologists took a careful look at the so-called "Anthon Transcript," and reached very different conclusions:

 

William C. Hayes and Richard A. Parker (both now deceased) made some very specific and positive comments on the Egypticity of the “Caractors” Memento to LDS scholars Stanley B. Kimball and Richard L. Bushman, respectively.  William C. Hayes suggested to Stanley Kimball on Monday, February 6, 1956, that the "Caractors" Memento begins with a date formula, as found at the beginning of so many inscriptions and papyri, e.g., the Canopus Decree and Rosetta Stone.  Egyptologist Hayes (then with the Metropolitan Museum of Art) made notes of his proposed transcription of the first Egyptian hieratic characters of that formula as  ḥ3t sp 6, 3bd 4, 3ḫt, sw, which would mean "Regnal year 6, month 4, of the Inundation, day ?." He there and then provided those notes to Stanley B. Kimball, a graduate student at Columbia University, and Kimball eventually sent a copy of those notes (along with his journal entry for that day) to FARMS.

Hayes wrote a letter to Paul M. Hanson of the RLDS Church later that year (June 8, 1956) saying that the Memento Transcript “could conceivably have been an inaccurate copy of an Egyptian account or something of the sort written in hieratic script.  With some imagination the beginning of the inscription could be taken as a date, and many of the other groups look like hieratic numerals” – quoted in Hanson, “The Transcript from the Plates of the Book of Mormon,” Saints’ Herald, (Nov 12, 1956), 6 (Hanson included negative comments on the Memento from Egyptologists John A. Wilson and Alan H. Gardiner).  Later, while a visiting scholar at Brown University, Richard Bushman spoke with R. A. Parker about the Memento - Parker commenting that it appeared to be a copy of a real document in Egyptian script, but possibly in an unknown language such as Meroitic (Indeed, Hugh Nibley thought many names in the Book of Mormon not only sounded like Meroitic, but that the writing on the Memento Transcript itself looked "most like Meroitic" - Since Cumorah, CWHN VII:170-171).   In a letter to Marvin W. Cowan, March 22, 1966, R. A. Parker stated that “the signs purportedly from the Book of Mormon . . . could well be the latest form of the written language – demotic characters.” 

 

[Tiki]

Yeh, Stela 5 is the cover story, but I gave the page numbers for the article of interest. Hope you didn't get waylaid by the copal.

Apparently, you F.A.R.M.S. workers did at one time. But you know, the general consensus became less general.

But Nephites are still running around with parrot feathers in their hair and Maya glyphs look just like reformed Egyptian.

Comparing the images on pages 67 & 68 is solid proof.

If you smoke enough copal, the two images will eventually look identical.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Tiki