If Facsimile 1 is “just a common funerary scene,” why does its closest known parallel point to ritual violence, and why did Joseph Smith get multiple low-probability details right?
Dear CES Letter,
You lean hard on Facsimile 1 because it feels simple. You frame it like this: modern Egyptologists can read the picture, the picture is ordinary, and Joseph’s explanation must therefore be fraudulent.
But Facsimile 1 is not “ordinary” in the way your argument needs it to be. And the more we take the historic record and the actual iconography seriously, the more your confidence starts to look borrowed from assumptions you never defend.
1) Your core move: “common funerary scene”
Your argument depends on a shortcut. Label Facsimile 1 as a standard embalming vignette, then treat any non-standard reading (like attempted sacrifice) as automatically disqualified.
But the closest iconographic parallels are not neutral. They do not just whisper “mummification.” In the closest known parallels from the temple of Dendera, captions and context connect the scene to religious violence against enemies. One caption tied to the closest parallel includes a command attributed to the goddess Bastet: “slaughter your enemies.” That is not a minor detail. That is the exact category of meaning Joseph’s explanation is operating in: enemies, ritual threat, and violence in a religious setting. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}
So which is it?
- If you want to treat the closest parallels as relevant, then you inherit their violent, enemy-focused context.
- If you want to avoid that, you have to explain why “closest parallels” suddenly stop mattering the moment they support Joseph instead of you.
2) The “category error” you never address
Even if someone insists Facsimile 1 belongs to a funerary genre, that still does not prove what you want it to prove.
Why?
Because in documents from the same broad period, images and adjacent text are not guaranteed to be about the same thing. Vignettes can be reused, swapped, misaligned, or placed next to text that only loosely relates, if at all. That is not an apologetic invention. It is a documented reality of these papyri traditions, especially in Books of Breathings material. :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}
So why do you argue as if the “picture = the paragraph beside it” rule is iron law?
If you opened a newspaper or a magazine and saw a photo next to an article, would you assume the photo must be describing that exact article every time? Or would you admit something more basic: layout and reuse happen, and context matters?
3) Facsimile 1 is not a clean “every other example” match
Here is what makes your framing so overconfident. Even researchers discussing Facsimile 1 from an Egyptological angle acknowledge that this vignette has unusual elements compared to typical examples. That matters because it means your “standard explanation” is not automatically the correct one.
And once we admit “non-standard elements,” your next move becomes a question, not a conclusion:
Non-standard compared to what period, what place, what priestly setting, and what cultural mixture?
The papyri context associated with Hor is late, Theban, and cosmopolitan. Thebes was not a quiet, isolated village of one frozen religious meaning. It was a temple city with long-running traditions, shifting interpretations over centuries, and cross-cultural contact. Treating “Egyptian meaning” as one universal definition across thousands of years is not rigorous. It is a shortcut.
4) The “Egyptians did not do human sacrifice” claim aged badly
Your argument also benefits from an older academic assumption that has not held up well over time: the confident idea that Egyptians did not practice human sacrifice or ritual killing.
Whatever someone thinks about Joseph Smith, that older Egyptological confidence has been challenged by evidence and ongoing discussion in scholarship about ritual violence, execration practices, and boundary cases that do not fit the older, tidy narrative.
So I have to ask: why does your argument treat nineteenth and twentieth-century academic certainty as if it were permanent?
When scholarship shifts, do you adjust, or do you keep using yesterday’s confident talking points because they feel useful?
5) Why do Egyptian sources connect similar imagery with Abraham at all?
This is the question I want to press hardest, because your argument does not like it.
If the entire premise is “Joseph made it up, and Egypt has nothing to do with Abraham,” then why do we find scholarly discussion acknowledging that there were Egyptians who associated Abraham with scenes and themes in this iconographic neighborhood?
That does not prove Joseph’s interpretation is correct. But it does make your dismissiveness look premature. And it raises a question your letter does not want to answer:
How did Joseph land on “Abraham” in a context where Abraham traditions were not as nonexistent as your framing implies?
6) The crocodile as a king: lucky again?
Joseph’s explanation identifies the crocodile as representing “the god of Pharaoh,” tied to kingship power. That is very specific.
And it intersects with real, documented Egyptian symbolism where crocodile imagery (for example, Sobek and related motifs)are tied to power, authority, and royal ideology in ways that fit the direction of Joseph’s claim. Even critical readers should be able to admit this is not the most obvious “guess” for a farm boy in the 1830s.
So why does your letter talk like this is an easy and obvious conclusion that anyone would have made?
7) The four gods under the couch:
Now let’s talk about the detail that should make a careful critic slow way down.
Joseph names four “idolatrous gods” connected with Facsimile 1: Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, and Korash.
In Joseph’s day, those names were not sitting in a common English reference shelf as “known ancient deities.” Yet later Latter-day Saint scholarship has argued that at least three of these names connect to Northwest Semitic and related ancient naming patterns, including divine name elements and regional religious vocabulary. The Interpreter Foundation explains this facinating connection here.
Now, I know what you want to say: “proposals are not proof.” Fine.
But your letter does something worse than skepticism. It treats the data as if there is nothing here to explain.
So answer this:
- Why do you speak as if Joseph had no risk of being checked, when he published specific ancient-sounding deity names tied to a specific scene?
- Why does your argument never grapple with the probability problem? Even one plausible hit is interesting. Multiple plausible hits demand explanation.
And if your answer is “he guessed,” then what is your model of Joseph Smith, exactly?
8) Your method problem: flattening Egypt into one timeless definition
Your argument often reads like this:
“Egyptologists say X. Therefore Joseph is wrong.”
But Egypt itself is thousands of years of time, multiple centers, multiple priestly schools, evolving symbols, and documented reinterpretation.
Even Egyptologists have to choose which period’s meaning they are privileging, and even then, symbols can outlive their original explanation by centuries.
So when you treat a “standard reading” as the final word, what are you really doing?
You are collapsing Egypt’s complexity into a single modern summary, then pretending that summary is the only legitimate interpretive frame.
That is not an argument. It is a preference dressed up as certainty.
What this leaves me asking you
You want Facsimile 1 to function like a courtroom photo with a single caption that settles the case.
But when we actually take seriously (1) the violent context in the closest parallels, (2) the known mismatch between vignettes and adjacent text, (3) the non-standard features that complicate a “one size fits all” label, and (4) multiple low-probability interpretive hits in Joseph’s explanations, your confident conclusion starts to look less like scholarship and more like a talking point.
So why should anyone trust your Facsimile 1 argument when it depends on assumptions you never defend, and when the details keep creating problems you do not answer?
Further reading: FAIR Latter-day Saints: Joseph Smith’s Explanations of Facsimile 1