Scholars from seemingly every corner of Mormon Studies agree: While working on the Egyptian papyri, Joseph Smith and his associates were either unaware of Champollion\u2019s recent work to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, \u00ador simply unaffected by the recent advances in Egyptology. Not only is this position untenable, it\u2019s demonstrably incorrect. The influence of Champollion\u2019s discoveries are directly observable in the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL), one of the most important documents to come out of Joseph Smith\u2019s work with the papyri (sometimes referred to collectively as the KEP, the Kirtland Egyptian Papers), second only to the Book of Abraham itself. And Champollion\u2019s influence isn\u2019t the only thing that\u2019s been overlooked, with important implications for how we understand the translation of the papyri.<\/p>\n
(If you\u2019re not familiar with the GAEL, please take a moment to catch up, or the rest of this isn\u2019t going to make much sense. The best overview of the documents, the issues and the stakes that’s easily accessible is Brian Hauglid\u2019s 2015 chapter<\/a>. You should also take a look at the GAEL online<\/a> at the Joseph Smith Papers.)<\/p>\n That Joseph Smith and his associates weren\u2019t influenced by Champollion is perhaps the one thing that both John Gee and Dan Vogel agree on. Gee: \u201cJoseph Smith was not in the tradition of Champollion to which Egyptology today belongs. Any knowledge he may have had did not come from that source, and indeed, everyone is in agreement about that.\u201d[1]<\/a> And Vogel: \u201cAt the time Smith worked on his \u2018Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language,\u2019 he does not appear to be aware of the significance of Fran\u00e7ois Champollion\u2019s contribution to Egyptology, as was the case for most Americans.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n Or as Brian Hauglid has recently noted: \u201cFrom the perspective of modern Egyptology, the Egyptian alphabet and grammar documents produced by Smith and his assistants in 1835 bear no evidence of an accurate understanding of the Egyptian language.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n Another way this is frequently expressed is to place Joseph Smith in the pre-Champollion tradition, or in the tradition of Athanasius Kircher\u2019s 1652\u201354 Oedipus Aegyptiacus<\/em>. Sam Brown\u2019s work has been broadly influential in this regard.<\/p>\n Though Jean-Francois Champollion (1790\u20131832) had deciphered the Rosetta stone by 1822, culture changed slowly, and the mystique of those inscrutable pictograms persisted\u2014if increasingly metaphorically\u2014inspiring the literati of the American Renaissance, Emerson and his Transcendentalist peers, and a host of other observers. Champollion\u2019s phonetic Egyptian was slow to find traction because hieroglyphs had so long been understood to function as secret pictographic codes rather than an alphabetic system. Though often attributed to the German Jesuit Johannes Kircher (1602-1680), by the nineteenth century this belief had moved well beyond the esoteric literature from which it sprang. [\u2026]<\/p>\n Central to the mystique of hieroglyphs was their pictographic nature. As no phonetic language could, these signs represented actual objects in Nature. Understanding hieroglyphs as pictographic ciphers for the mysteries of human origin and religion provides the most immediate context for understanding Phelps\u2019s and Smith\u2019s Egyptian grammar project. The [Kirtland Egyptian Papers] nearly overflow with creative pictographic interpretations of Egyptian characters. [\u2026]<\/p>\n The hieroglyphic hermeneutic is critical to comprehending what Phelps and Smith understood of their Egyptian project and points to the mystical correspondence that supported the harmonies Smith sought.[4]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Or as Richard Bushman summarized: \u201cIf we follow Samuel Brown\u2019s analysis, Joseph Smith and William W. Phelps stood with Emerson and Reed in the symbolic school of Egyptian interpretation.\u201d[5]<\/a> Terryl Givens\u2019 and Brian Hauglid\u2019s chapter on Abraham in their recent book takes the same approach: \u201cWe cannot begin to comprehend the motive and mechanics behind Smith\u2019s production of the Book of Abraham if we do not see his work in the context of a linguistic mystery that was in his day still more enshrouded in the high romance of ancient religion and priestly powers than in the scholarly efforts of academicians and royal institutes.\u201d In the section \u201cThe Hieroglyph before Champollion,\u201d they state: \u201cSmith or those working to assemble the grammar and alphabet appear to have been operating within the existing cultural assumptions of the time about how hieroglyphs concisely embedded substantial discursive meaning.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n In the introduction to the GAEL for the Joseph Smith Papers, Robin Jensen and Brian Hauglid also note the lack of influence from Champollion in these terms: \u201cIndeed, in America in the 1830s and 1840s, Champollion\u2019s findings were available only to a small group of scholars who either read them in French or gleaned them from a limited number of English translations or summaries. There is no evidence that Joseph Smith or his associates had read contemporary works of French or English Egyptological scholarship, but they nevertheless seemed to approach the papyri with many assumptions that were espoused by scholars who wrote before Champollion.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n Only Jeff Lindsay<\/a> has seriously questioned this idea, pointing out that Champollion and his work on deciphering hieroglyphics were too well known in the United States for Joseph Smith and his associates to have been entirely unaware of them, conceding only that \u201cOf course, the technical details of Champollion\u2019s work were not widely known.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n To add another source documenting widespread awareness of Champollion’s accomplishment to the ones provided by Lindsay, here\u2019s an excerpt of anonymous verse that appeared on the first page of The Friend<\/em>, a Quaker devotional and literary magazine published in Philadelphia in 1830:<\/p>\n Ill-fated clime! as turns the mournful eye My brothers and sisters in Mormon Studies, if American devotional verse published in 1830 treats Champollion as a household name and his decipherment of hieroglyphics as a well-known event, it\u2019s untenable to think that Joseph Smith didn\u2019t know about it in 1835. Which forces us to ask the question: What were Joseph Smith and his associates thinking by creating a grammar and alphabet for what would seem to be a language already well on its way to decipherment? We\u2019ll eventually come back to that question.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n I\u2019ll need to break this up into several parts, but I can sketch out where we’re going. Without making any supernatural assumptions, we can determine what Joseph Smith knew about Champollion and see its influence in the GAEL. There are a few things that have been overlooked about the GAEL, including by the JSPP editors. And Champollion isn\u2019t the only influence on the GAEL that\u2019s been overlooked. To understand the GAEL, though, we have to take its grammatical explanations seriously rather than treat them as nonsensical verbiage.<\/p>\n Of course, there are also religious implications that will eventually come up for discussion, and I can summarize them as well. I\u2019m convinced that the Book of Abraham is revealed scripture containing vital and essential truth. There are real limits on what Egyptology can tell us about the Book of Abraham, although there are still reasons to pursue various lines of research on the ancient world. I continue to think the Book of Abraham can fairly be described as a translation, and with a somewhat narrower definition of the term than I’ve previously argued<\/a> for.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for an opportunity to make rude comments about Joseph Smith, the Book of Abraham, John Gee or Dan Vogel, or the church, this is not the place for you.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> John Gee, \u201cJoseph Smith and Ancient Egypt,\u201d in Approaching Antiquity: Joseph Smith and the Ancient World<\/em>, ed. Lincoln H. Blumell, Matthew J. Grey, and Andrew H. Hedges (Provo: Religious Studies Center, 2015), 443.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Dan Vogel, Book of Abraham Apologetics: A Review and Critique<\/em> (Signature Books, 2021), 6.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Brian M. Hauglid, \u201c\u2018Translating an Alphabet to the Book of Abraham\u2019: Joseph Smith\u2019s Study of the Egyptian Language and His Translation of the Book of Abraham,\u201d in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith\u2019s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity<\/em>, ed. Brian M. Hauglid, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Michael Hubbard MacKay (University of Utah Press, 2020), 364 n. 3.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Samuel Brown, \u201cJoseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden,\u201d Church History<\/em> 78, no. 1 (March 2009): 44, 45, 50.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Richard L. Bushman, \u201cJoseph Smith\u2019s Place in the Study of Antiquity in Antebellum America,\u201d in Approaching Antiquity: Joseph Smith and the Ancient World<\/em>, ed. Lincoln H. Blumell, Matthew J. Grey, and Andrew H. Hedges (Provo: Religious Studies Center, 2015), 18.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> Terryl Givens and Brian Hauglid, The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism\u2019s Most Controversial Scripture<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2019), 181, 188.<\/p>\n [7]<\/a> Robin Scott Jensen and Brian M. Hauglid, eds., Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts<\/em>, The Joseph Smith Papers. Revelations and Translations 4 (Salt Lake City: Church Historian\u2019s Press, 2018), xvii.<\/p>\n
\nO\u2019er the sad wrecks of glory long gone by,
\nHow oft will memory former days recall,
\nWhen science flourish\u2019d in the lordly hall,
\nWhen learning and the arts in union bland,
\nShed their full lustre o\u2019er thy happy land.
\nTheir proud memorials still in strength sublime
\nGlow in bright contrast with thy darker time:\u2014
\nStill tell of former greatness\u2014yet in vain!
\nOn ears unheeding swells the solemn strain;
\nDim o\u2019er their treasures hangs the veil of night.
\nTill, lo! Champollion comes, and all is light.
\nThe tombs their mystic secrets see revealed,
\nTheir sacred records the papyri yield;
\nTemple and palace, obelisk and fane,
\nProclaim the wonders of their ancient reign.
\nTell they not now of Egypt\u2019s early time?
\nSpeak they not loud Jehovah\u2019s power sublime?
\nHow, loved of Heaven, the patriarch Abraham came?[9]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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