egyptian – Page 3 – Temple Study

Brief Intro to the Joseph Smith Papyri and Book of Abraham

July 2, 2008 by Bryce Haymond 10 Comments

Note: This was going to be the next part of the series on the Egyptian ankh, and its relationship with the papyri and Book of Abraham, but I thought an intro to these first would be a better place to start.

Let’s return again to the subject of the ankh, and related symbols, that we’ve briefly studied, and look to see if these symbols figure at all on the Joseph Smith Papyri. As we’ve seen, these particular hieroglyphs have a strong connection to temple themes, being bestowed by the Egyptian gods in a manner reminiscent of the way eternal life is portrayed symbolically in the temple today. But do these symbols appear on the papyri from which the Book of Abraham was translated, or in the facsimiles, and what does that mean? [Read more…]

Time and Eternity: An Egyptian Dualism

June 25, 2008 by Bryce Haymond 4 Comments

As I was researching for the posts on the ankh, I came across some information which was interesting, describing the Egyptian concept of “time” and “eternity.” These concepts almost seem repetitive and redundant to our modern way of thinking, but to the Egyptians each of these terms represented something concrete and distinct, and both were invoked in certain rituals, texts, and illustrations. It is clear that the Egyptians considered these two ideas as unique, but they often used them together, and so it seems difficult for our present Egyptologists to distinguish or disambiguate what the Egyptians meant by them individually. There has been plenty of speculation.

The two symbols used for the commonly translated “time” and “eternity” are neheh (nhh) and djet (dt), respectively, and looked something like this:

from Kemet.org Daily Devotions (http://daily.kemet.org/archives/archive-052003.html)

Jan Assmann described the difficulty of pinning down an understanding of these hieroglyphics: [Read more…]

The Egyptian Ankh, “Life! Health! Strength!” – Part 3

June 23, 2008 by Bryce Haymond 1 Comment

(Continued from Part 2)

The ankh symbol appears frequently with several other hieroglyphics in certain formulas and invocations that immediately call our attention. These are wedja, seneb, djed, & was.

This table summarizes the different possible explanations for these hieroglyphics that I have been able to find: [Read more…]

The Egyptian Ankh, “Life! Health! Strength!” – Part 2

June 22, 2008 by Bryce Haymond 1 Comment

(Continued from Part 1, which has been updated)

As I mentioned in Part 1, the more interesting aspects of the Egyptian ankh are not necessarily what it means standing alone, but how the Egyptians used it in their texts and illustrations.

There are three principal ways that the Egyptians used the ankh symbol, by itself, in their drawings:

Probably the most common depiction of the ankh is being clutched in the hand by the gods and goddesses on the upper loop portion of the symbol. Wikipedia notes:

The ankh appears frequently in Egyptian tomb paintings and other art, often at the fingertips of a god or goddess in images that represent the deities of the afterlife conferring the gift of life on the dead person’s mummy… ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankh))

In other words, the Egyptians believed that their gods “held” eternal life in their hands, and could bestow it upon certain persons at their pleasing. Chevalier and Gheerbrant note: [Read more…]

The Egyptian Ankh, “Life! Health! Strength!” – Part 1

June 20, 2008 by Bryce Haymond 8 Comments

Detail of Hathor shrine at Hatshepsut's temple in Luxor, Egypt

Egypt figures a central role in the religion of the ancient Near East, where much of our canon of scripture owes its narrative and existence to this locale. Even the Book of Mormon tells us it was written in “reformed Egyptian” (Mormon 9:32). The most interesting aspect, to me, is the adoption into Egypt of traces of the rites and ordinances of the temple of God, and its priesthood. Unfortunately, the ordinances were apostate forms, the priesthood invalid, and all was done in imitation of the true order:

Pharaoh, being a righteous man, established his kingdom and judged his people wisely and justly all his days, seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers in the first generations, in the days of the first patriarchal reign, even in the reign of Adam, and also of Noah, his father, who blessed him with the blessings of the earth, and with the blessings of wisdom, but cursed him as pertaining to the Priesthood. (Abraham 1:26)

But even so, the fragments of the ordinances that are extant in artifacts and texts are very educational. In Hugh Nibley’s classic work The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment he says: [Read more…]