Ryan Patrick’s Reviews > An Approach to the Book of Abraham > Status Update

Got some good reading done today at church during a really lame lesson.

Phelps et al. thought they could learn Egyptian by studying the translation of the Book of Abraham - they were not studying Egyptian in an effort to translate the Book of Abraham, as the critics have charged.

Lots of interesting stuff, but in true Nibley style its just rather scattered about. This stuff will only really sink in when I come back to it with some specific research questions in mind. Still, there's no doubt that the Book of Abraham is a rich text worth studying.

Some real concrete work on Elkenah, Libnah, Korash, and Mahmackrah... fascinating!

Apparently, in Egyptian art, the humans face to the right and gods to the left, in eternal opposition.

So Sobek = Horus = Osiris - it all makes one wonder why the Egyptians bothered with polytheism.

I wonder if there is any connection between the Egyptian heb-sed festival and the year-king cult of Greece described in The King Must Die: A Novel?

The key to "reading" Egyptian art is that its purpose is ritual not story-telling (just like the Egyptian conception of history - there is no past and future, merely the constant recycling of the present).

Facsimile 1 is just like every other Egyptian lion couch scene - except that it's totally different.