The Sensen Papyrus Is The Egyptian Original: An Open, Abstract System Of An Ancient Egyptian

[DragonLancer]

I posted some of this on the other recent thread about the Anthon Transcript, but I thought a version of this post would also go well in this thread that I created a while back, because it goes along with this subject as well.

 

Not that it may be of much use for the Anthon Transcript script, but I find it an interesting observation that there were only 24 gold plates in the Jaredite plates made by Ether and found by the people of Limhi, that gave the full history from the creation of the world down to the end of the Jaredite civilization.  Only 24 plates (double sided pages?) containing characters.  But perhaps "reformed" Egyptian was similar.  The observation made by Hillel2 in the other thread about the Anthon transcript about pictographic systems and shorthand seems very important here where he says:

 

A short hand system would be better.

 

Yet many of the characters are extremely complex which is not typical of short-hand.

 

Of course, in considering the AM as a genuine document of some sorts, could the script actually be entirely "pictorgraphic?" The Aztec speakers of Nahuatl, for example, did not have a developed writing system like that of the Maya. Basically, they drew pictures of events and had a handful of symbols that contextualized them (in the past, sequential, e.g. "it came to pass" sorts of symbols) If the symbols are basically just pictures (albeit of a highly highly abstract nature) they would just suggest an event known to the readers yet read differently by every reader (as different people would verbalize differently a picture of a man walking down a staircase holding a briefcase). Now there is no need for an underlying language like Hebrew. Though the Nephites may have spoken some kind of Hebrew, the underlying system is essentially just memory. Non-Hebrew speaking Nephites would have understood the pictures in the same way because they knew the back ground of events. Outsiders who did not, would just see a bunch of highly abstract pictures and not know what they were referring to.  A system of understood, highly abstract pictograms could be a very economical way to get a lot of information onto a small surface but we have to know the events ahead of time to get to the meaning. Ordinary mortals can't extract the meaning from the pictures without knowledge of the events (too abstract) unless one posits the use of "seership" which Joseph Smith is believed to have had by those who have faith in what he said. The other thing is that, at this point, we have actually moved backwards in the development of writing (from logo-graphic-phonetic to pictographic) which, though possible under the restraints of Mormon's environment, would be very very unusual.

 

 

In my studies of the KEP it seems, a "shorthand" system mixed with a pictographic system is evident.  On one level, in other threads, I have mentioned the fact that it seems that the Sensen Characters in the KEP usage are pictographic, having themes from the Book of Abraham sections, as they are used for markers in the Book of Abraham manuscripts.  But the "shorthand" is in the packing of other themes into the same characters by way of an invention of a system of using pieces of each and every character like the wedjat eye, and assigning meaning to their sections.  So, by "dissection", one breaks apart the characters into their component parts, the characters become ligatures, or something similar to a monogram having multiple characters in one, overlaid sometimes, or the usage of the various strokes in a character as separate characters, etc.  Perhaps it was Joseph Smith's understanding of this "reformed" system of Egyptian in the Book of Mormon plates that led him to interpret the Sensen papyrus in this manner, rather than the standard Egyptological system.  Perhaps the Nephite usage of Egyptian was not entirely new to them, but had precedent both from Jaredite usage of pictographic elements in their language, as well as more ancient usage of pictographic languages from the time of Abraham.  Perhaps Abraham, being a Sumerian by nationality, knew a number of languages, and may have opted to write his book in pictographically in the first place.

 

http://egyptianalphabetandgrammar.blogspot.com/2013/12/lexemes-introduction-to-concept-of.html

 

In fact, Ryan Larsen has what I consider a number of important deductions on the Sensen Papyrus that actually harmonize with almost everything in my theory, and have some explanatory power that may actually explain some things better than my theory.  I am very open to Ryan's theory, and consider it an alternate explanation in harmony with the evidence that I have observed.  My criticisms of other theories in the first place have centered on the fact that they contradict what I consider to be "forensic" evidence of the translation process in the Sensen Papyrus and in the KEP.  Ryan's theory does not contradict these evidences, but is yet another theory that explains them well.  And for that reason, over time, I may actually abandon parts of my theory of a "Secondary Intent" by way of imposition of the intent on the document after the fact for what Ryan is proposing.  I am still in the process of digesting everything that Ryan has come up with.  But here is his blog article that has the theory that I'm talking about that Ryan has come up with that is in harmony with most of my theory:

 

http://mormonpuzzlepieces.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-book-of-abraham.html?m=1

 

And here are my articles reviewing Ryan's theory, and trying to digest some of what he has come up with, and trying to reason through some of its implications:

 

http://egyptianalphabetandgrammar.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-review-of-ryan-larsens-book-of.html

 

http://egyptianalphabetandgrammar.blogspot.com/2015/01/more-thoughts-on-theory-of-sensen.html

 

I don't claim to be representing Ryan's theory correctly in what I write here.  He can chime in if he is on here if he wishes to clarify anything that I'm misunderstanding.

However, as I said, it seems to work well with my theory.  The abstractions and everything in my theory still seem to work if Ryan's theory is true.

Ryan seems to be proposing that elements of the Book of Abraham were preserved, in corrupt form down through the ages, and this corrupt or accidental "redaction" of elements of the Book of Abraham are preserved in the Sensen Papyrus.  This is a very good explanation if we propose that the Book of Abraham was pictographic in the first place.  Because, this means that this would explain how pictographic elements came down from the time of Abraham, preserved in various forms, and have come down to us in a heavily changed-around form, and re-organized as the text of the Sensen Papyrus.  Perhaps the ordering of characters was different in the beginning, and were pictographic, but they came down to us now in this form.

 

I draw a comparison to this to my theory on Freemasonry that I have blogged about before, where I believe that Masonry contains a large number of original elements from ancient temple worship that have come down to us from the time of the ancient Christian or Jewish endowments, or even from previous apostasies, and have come together "accidentally" or randomly (actually by the hand of God) in a form that was serviceable to Joseph Smith to use in the restoration of the Endowment.  Perhaps the Sensen papyrus is similarly a corrupt, accidental redaction of elements from the Book of Abraham, brought together in this document by the hand of God.

 

So, if this theory is true, then something similar would have happened to a pictographic version of the Book of Abraham that happened to the first part of the Genesis text of the bible.  It was heavily redacted and changed and shifted around until its present structure was no longer what it started out to be, but the original elements are still in place for the most part, and still servicable.  For example, Joseph Smith stated:

 

I shall comment on the very first Hebrew word in the Bible. I will make a comment on the very first sentence of the history of creation in the Bible- Berosheit. I want to analyze the word. Baith–in, by, through, and everything else. Rosh–the head. Sheit–grammatical termination. When the inspired man wrote it, he did not put the Baith there. An old Jew, without any authority, added the word. He thought it too bad to begin to talk about the head! It read first, “The head one of the Gods brought forth the Gods.” That is the true meaning of the words. Baurau signifies to bring forth. If you do not believe it, you do not believe the learned man of God. Learned men can teach you no more than what I have told you. Thus, the head God brought forth the Gods in the grand council.

 

 

So, Joseph Smith is saying that the original intent of the sentence was not Beroshit bara Elohim ("In the beginning God created . . .") but rather, Rosheit bara Elohim ("Head called forth Elohim").  He is saying a Jew added the "baith" in the berosheit. So, for Joseph Smith, enough of the original was here, that he could see the original intent, even though "an old Jew" had redacted it to where it was different than its original intent.  Now, suppose that a whole bunch of hieroglyphic symbols were used by Abraham pictographically, and ancient Egyptians came upon the manuscript, or it was handed down to them.  They didn't recognize the pictographic intent because they were used to the more mechanical, Egyptological usage.  Suppose this manuscript to them was "magical" and "holy" in some way, and much like the "old Jew" in the case of the Genesis text, they decided that they needed to give these elements in this manuscript some structure.  So, suppose that they took them and shifted them around until they had a mechanically-correct Egyptological reading.  But it preserved the original pictographic elements.  Now that this document made it into the hands of Joseph Smith, he was able to see by revelation that it was elements of the pictographic Book of Abraham preserved in this form.  And then, in our day, Egyptologists say, no, this is just an "ordinary" papyrus, and we can read it.  To me, this is a very plausible scenario, and makes a lot of sense to me.  And most of the elements of my theory still work with this.

Edited January 21, 2015 by DragonLancer