The original heading of the Book of Abraham as published in the Times and Seasons for March 5, 1842 (vol. 3, p. 704) was “A translation of some ancient Records, from the Catacombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand upon papyrus.” Nine years later, when the text was printed in England (in Millennial Star, 1851), the editor made changes in the title that have led to serious misunderstandings ever since. Indeed, it is a question whether the Book of Abraham has suffered more damage from its friends or from its enemies, for like other things Egyptian it has exerted an irresistible attraction for everyone to get into the act.
The 1851 heading still stands: A Translation of some ancient Records, that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt.—The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus. But note the significant omissions and insertions. “… purporting to be” is omitted, and in its place an imperious dash that brooks no nonsense—it is the writing of Abraham. Joseph Smith, on the other hand, informs us that the ancient records purport to be writings of Abraham, and proceeds to tell us what they contain. The insertion of the editor specifying that these are “some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands” also takes liberties, implying that the actual possession of the records is what made translation possible, whereas Joseph Smith had already demonstrated at great length his power to translate ancient records with or without possession of the original text. As it stands, the statement “written by his own hand, upon papyrus” comes as an unequivocal declaration of the editor, while it is actually part of the original Egyptian title: “… called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus”—that was Abraham’s own heading. This is important, since much misunderstanding has arisen from the assumption that the Joseph Smith Papyri were the original draft of Abraham’s book, his very own handiwork. The sense in which the formula is to be understood was discussed by the writer some years ago in an article from which we quote:
Two important and peculiar aspects of ancient authorship must be considered when we are told that a writing is by the hand of Abraham or anybody else. One is that according to Egyptian and Hebrew thinking any copy of a book originally written by Abraham would be regarded and designated as the very work of his hand forever after, no matter how many reproductions had been made and handed down through the years. The other is that no matter who did the writing originally, if it was Abraham who commissioned or directed the work, he would take the credit for the actual writing of the document, whether he penned it or not.
As to the first point, when a holy book (usually a leather roll) grew old and worn out from handling, it was not destroyed but renewed. Important writings were immortal—for the Egyptians they were “the divine words,” for the Jews the very letters were holy and indestructible, being the word of God. The wearing out of a particular copy of scripture therefore in no way brought the life of the book to a close—it could not perish. In Egypt it was simply renewed “fairer than before,” and so continued its life to the next renewal. Thus we are told at the beginning of what some have claimed to be the oldest writing in the world, “His Majesty wrote this book down anew … His Majesty discovered it as a work of the Ancestors, but eaten by worms. … So His Majesty wrote it down from the beginning, so that it is more beautiful than it was before.” (297:20.) It is not a case of the old book’s being replaced by a new one, but of the original book itself continuing its existence in a rejuvenated state. No people were more hypnotized by the idea of a renewal of lives than the Egyptians—not a succession of lives or a line of descent, but the actual revival and rejuvenation of a single life.
Even the copyist who puts his name in a colophon does so not so much as publicity for himself as to vouch for the faithful transmission of the original book; his being “trustworthy (iqr) of fingers,” i.e., a reliable copyist, is the reader’s assurance that he has the original text before him. An Egyptian document, J. Spiegel observes, is like the print of an etching, which is not only a work of art in its own right but “can lay claim equally well to being the original … regardless of whether the individual copies turn out well or ill.” Because he thinks in terms of types, according to Spiegel, for the Egyptian “there is no essential difference between an original and a copy. For as they understand it, all pictures are but reproductions of an ideal original.” (402:160.) …
This concept was equally at home in Israel. An interesting passage from the Book of Jubilees [a text unknown before 1850] recounts that Joseph while living in Egypt “remembered the Lord and the words which Jacob, his father, used to read amongst the words of Abraham.” (167:39.6.) Here is a clear statement that “the words of Abraham” were handed down in written form from generation to generation, and were the subject of serious study in the family circle. The same source informs us that when Joseph died and was buried in Canaan, “he gave all his books and the books of his fathers to Levi his son that he might preserve them and renew them for his children until this day.” (167:45.16.) Here “the books of the fathers” including “the words of Abraham” have been preserved for later generations by a process of renewal. Joseph’s own books were, of course, Egyptian books.
In this there is no thought of the making of a new book by a new hand. It was a strict rule in Israel that no one, not even the most learned rabbi, should ever write down so much as a single letter of the Bible from memory: always the text must be copied letter by letter from another text that had been copied in the same way, thereby eliminating the danger of any man’s adding, subtracting, or changing so much as a single jot in the text. It was not a rewriting but a process as mechanical as photography, an exact visual reproduction, so that no matter how many times the book had been passed from hand to hand, it was always the one original text that was before one. … But “written by his own hand”? This brings us to the other interesting concept. Let us recall that that supposedly oldest of Egyptian writings, the so-called Shabako Stone, begins with the announcement that “His Majesty wrote this book down anew. …” This, Professor Sethe obligingly explains, is “normal Egyptian usage to express the idea that the King ordered a copy to be made.” (297:20.) Yet it clearly states that the king himself wrote it. Thus when the son of King Snefru says of his own inscription at Medum, “It was he who made his gods in [such] a writing [that] it cannot be effaced,” the statement is so straight-forward that even such a student as W.S. Smith takes it to mean that the prince himself actually did the writing. And what could be more natural than for a professional scribe to make an inscription: “It was her husband, the Scribe of the Royal Scroll, Nebwy, who made this inscription”? Or when a noble announces that he made his father’s tomb, why should we not take him at his word? It depends on how the word is to be understood. Professor Wilson in all these cases holds that the person who claims to have done the work does so “in the sense that he commissioned and paid for it.” (408:239f.) The noble who has writing or carving done is always given full credit for its actual execution; such claims of zealous craftsmanship “have loftily ignored the artists,” writes Wilson. “It was the noble who ‘made’ or ‘decorated’ his tomb,” though one noble of the old kingdom breaks down enough to show us how these claims were understood: “I made this for my old father … I had the sculptor Itju make (it).” (Ibid., p. 243.) Dr. Wilson cites a number of cases in which men claim to have “made” their father’s tombs, one of them specifically stating that he did so “while his arm was still strong”—with his own hand! (Ibid., p. 240.)
Credit for actually writing the inscription of the famous Metternich Stele is claimed by “the prophetess of Nebwen, Nest-Amun, daughter of the Prophet of Nebwen and Scribe of the Inundation, ‘Ankh-Psametik,’ ” who states that she “renewed (sma. w) this book [there it is again!] after she had found it removed from the house of Osiris-Mnevis, so that her name might be preserved. …” (397:48, viii.) The inscription then shifts to the masculine gender as if the scribe were really a man, leading to considerable dispute among the experts as to just who gets the credit. Certain it is that the lady boasts of having given an ancient book a new lease on life, even though her hand may never have touched a pen. (Ibid., p. 49.)
Nest-Amun hoped to preserve her name by attaching it to a book, and in a recent study M. A. Korostovstev notes that “for an Egyptian to attach his name to a written work was an infallible means of passing it down through the centuries.” (388:191.) That may be one reason why Abraham chose the peculiar Egyptian medium he did for the transmission of his record—or at least why it has reached us only in this form. Indeed Theodor Böhl observed recently that the one chance the original Patriarchal literature would ever have of surviving would be to have it written down on Egyptian papyrus. (33:134f.) Scribes liked to have their names preserved, too, and the practice of adding copyists’ names in colophons, Korostovstev points out, could easily lead in later times to attributing the wrong authorship to a work. But whoever is credited with the authorship of a book remains its unique author, alone responsible for its existence in whatever form. (232:74-78.)
There is early evidence for this idea in Israel in the Lachish Letters from the time of Jeremiah in which the expression “I have written,” employed by a high official, “must certainly,” according to H. Torczyner (405:81), “not be meant as ‘written by my own hand,’ but may well be ‘I made (my scribe) write,’ as in many similar examples in the Bible and in all ancient literature,” even though the great man actually says he wrote it.
So when we read “the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand upon papyrus,” we are to understand, as the Mormons always have, that this book, no matter how often “renewed,” is still the writing of Abraham and no one else; for he commissioned it or, “according to the accepted Egyptian expression,” wrote it himself—with his own hand. And when Abraham tells us, “That you may have an understanding of these gods, I have given you the fashion of them in the figures at the beginning,” we do not need to imagine the Patriarch himself personally drawing the very sketches we have before us. It was the practice of Egyptian scribes to rephrase obscure old passages they were copying to make them clearer, and when this was done the scribe would add his own name to the page (289:3), which shows how careful the Egyptians were to give credit for original work only—whatever the first author wrote remained forever “by his own hand.”
From The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley: Abraham in Egypt. Click Here to buy the book.
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