Katumin the Princess,
Royal Female Lineage, and the Cobra (Iaret or Uraeus/KT)
We can not but think
the Lord has a hand in bringing to pass his strange act, and proving the Book
of Mormon true in the eyes of all the people. . . . It will be as it ever has
been, the world will prove Joseph Smith a true prophet by circumstantial
evidence, in experiments, as they did Moses and Elijah. (Sept 15, 1842, Times and Seasons)
And in this statement, we may also interpolate, justifiably,
the Book of Abraham being proven to be true, in the eyes of all the people.
My partner in Book of Abraham research, Vincent Coon, has made a number of very important observations with regard to the “Valuable Discovery” documents among the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, which mention a woman named Katumin from ancient Egypt, and he has found some very important insights. Here is a link to his article on his site.
My partner in Book of Abraham research, Vincent Coon, has made a number of very important observations with regard to the “Valuable Discovery” documents among the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, which mention a woman named Katumin from ancient Egypt, and he has found some very important insights. Here is a link to his article on his site.
Vincent’s article is entitled Princess of On: Esoteric
interpretations of "Words spoken by Osiris."
This current document is sort of a companion-piece, so to
speak, to Vincent’s production, from a different angle, which both builds on
and adds to his research, but without being in full agreement with all of his speculations.
In quite a number of issues and details, Vincent and I are
on the same page, and I have found Vincent’s use of the term the “Ahmestrahans”
acceptable to refer to a group of Egyptian Syncretists in the Greco-Roman era, who
Joseph Smith simply refers to as “the Egyptians,” seem to have had some sort of regard for the
Jewish Patriarchs. I am good with that
term, since we really don’t know precisely who these people are. I am good with this interpretation of that term
in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.
Sometimes, dealing with the not-so-good copies of the
original Egyptian by Joseph Smith’s scribes is difficult to deal with, and it
is sometimes hard to make out what they are doing in the Kirtland Egyptian
Papers. However, following the work of
other scholars on the same material can sometimes help identify which symbols
are which. Once we know what symbols we
are actually dealing with for sure, we can then proceed to reverse-engineer
what Joseph Smith, under the influence of the Spirit of the Lord, was up to
with the particular characters in question.
In this case, Vincent has done the leg work, lining up the work of three
different Egyptologists who have identified what the hieroglyphics are in this
case: John Gee, Michael Rhodes and Robert
Ritner. These individuals have all
identified the hieroglyphics in question in Joseph Smith’s translation of the “Katumin”
material in the Valuable Discovery
documents. As these Egyptologists have
shown, these hieratics for the Katumin material actually come from the Amenhotep Book of the Dead, one of the
scraps of Book of the Dead material that Joseph Smith had his hands on. It seems that a lot of material in the
Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar sections of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers is
derived from the hieroglyphics and hieratics from the Hor Sensen Papyrus. But in
this case, we have an exception. As we
already knew, Joseph Smith, following the lead of the ancients, was cobbling
together things that do not seem to be related at first, but that in the way
the Ancients used them in the Greco-Roman period in their iconotropic way, they
are rationally brought together.
Vincent’s careful
analysis of the work of these Egyptologists on this matter has made clear the hieroglyphic
versions of the symbols so that we can now reverse-engineer it.
Now for the analysis.
Here are the poorly-copied hieratics from the Amenhotep Book of the Dead
(a copy of the book of the dead that seems to be no longer extant among the
Joseph Smith Papyri):
And here is the Joseph Smith Translation of this material:
A transcript of this is the following, with the Egyptian
readings enclosed in parentheses as shown by Dr. Robert Ritner:
“(dd) Katumin, Princess, daughter of On-i-tos [Onitah (i.e. Abraham 1:11], King of Egypt, (mdw in) who began to reign in the year of the World, 2962.
“(Wsir) Katumin was born in the 30th year of the reign of her father, and died when she was 28 years old, which was the year 3020.” (The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition, pp. 210-212, bold added for emphasis).
There are multiple issues here that need to be addressed,
some that Vincent has already covered in his article. But we need to start out with the character identified
as Katumin. Here is a close-up of the
character identified as Katumin, with what may be variants, and on the right is
a deconstruction of part of it, where it clearly shows that one part is
horizontal and the other vertical in this case:
In some of these versions of the hieratic form, it looks like an eye
rather than the actual hieroglyphic it is derived from. Also, as Vincent Coon points out, this one here is particularly reminicent of a crown with a Uraeus/Snake sticking out of the top:
There seems to be a possible reason for this, as we will see below, with some association with an eye. It is similarly copied this way throughout the Kirtland Egyptian Papers in the Egyptian Alphabet sections, and identified as “Kah Tou Mon,” except that sometimes it is drawn with the two halves horizontally, like an eye, and at other times vertically:
There seems to be a possible reason for this, as we will see below, with some association with an eye. It is similarly copied this way throughout the Kirtland Egyptian Papers in the Egyptian Alphabet sections, and identified as “Kah Tou Mon,” except that sometimes it is drawn with the two halves horizontally, like an eye, and at other times vertically:
And in the example on the bottom left, you can see that one
stroke sort of forms a tail, while the other forms sort of a smaller
circle. Now, Dr. Ritner and the other
scholars identified this as the hieroglyphic for the sound Dd in Egyptian, meaning “to say” or “to speak” or “recitations.” And the second hieroglyph of the pair is the
hieroglyph with the sound mdw, meaning “words.” These two usually go in a pair when they are
found. Here are some other versions of the
hieratic for Dd from Moeller’s
table, number 250:
And here are some for mdw,
from Moeller’s table, number 456:
Now, as we get to the actual hieroglyphic versions, thing
start to get interesting. Together the
hieroglyphics are:
Going from right to left, now it is plain to see that the
hieroglyphic for Dd is
actually a pictograph of a Cobra (Gardiner’s
sign list numbers I10 or I11):
And the picture of mdw is actually a pictograph of a Staff (Gardiner’s sign list S43):
Now, the problem of interpretation here, and the criticisms
of the Egyptologists against Joseph Smith, is that they get too hung up on the words that these spell in
Egyptian, meaning “to speak” and “words.”
Yet they utterly forget that at their core they are just pictures like
how the figures in the facsimiles of the book of Abraham are just pictures. On this blog, a few years back when I
presented the article on the reed symbol and the Land of the Chaldees, it was
clear there that there was no correct understanding of the foundation of what
was going on until we treated these things pictographically, meaning, to dive
into what they are literal pictures of
rather than what they spell out, and to ascertain whatever significance there
may be behind these literal pictures. Its not that Land of the Chaldees was a literal translation of the reed character. Because the symbol itself does not contain that information. Its just that, until we looked at the pictographic significance, the visual pun at work there in that example did not emerge. But once we saw that an ancient name for Land of the Chaldees was Kiengi (Land of Reeds) in Sumerian, then it became clear why the pictographic reed symbol was selected as a decoration to accompany that. It became clear that there was a pairing between the reed symbol and the information Joseph Smith got from revelation that used to be in an ancient manuscript that he did not have in his hands. In other words, the information "Land of the Chaldees" was not found in the reed symbol. The reed symbol was associated as a visual pun with the information Joseph Smith got from revelation. The same is the case here with the "Katumin" heiratic symbols lifted from the Book of the Dead and recycled. It is the exact same principle.
In other words, scholars forget that we are dealing with symbols that have been recycled here, from their original contexts, adapted into other contexts, for use as decorations in new productions entirely, which have nothing to do with their original contexts. In other words, the use of these symbols as decorations to be used to represent the name "Katumin" have nothing to do with their origins from the Book of the Dead, because they were anciently lifted from that context into a new Egyptian document that contained a context that was dealing with something entirely different.
Certain Egyptologists in the Church like Robert W. Smith in particular have argued irrationally and ideologically against the possibility that cursive versions of hieroglyphs (i.e. hieratics and demotics) could be used the same as the non-cursive versions of the characters (i.e. hieroglyphics) in terms of using the characters in a context of recycling or adaptation of the kind that Kevin Barney suggests for larger-scale pictures in the Facsimiles. The problem with this, of course, is that it is a nonsensical assertion of Mr. Smith. Because that's like saying that because the letter A is in italic like this (A), or because it could be in a different font like a cursive A (𝓐), or even the same letter in a highly stylized font (𝔄), that it is still not the letter A, and that it is not derived from Aleph, which is a pictograph of an ox-head. Nonsense. An A is an A is an A. Similarly, the highly-stylized and cursive Arabic versions of the Semitic alphabet are still the Semitic alphabet. It didn't change their historic identity that they are written the way they are written. The hieratic and demotic versions of heiroglyphs are just exactly that: different fonts of the same characters. It is exactly the same as writing English in cursive characters, and there is no distinction. When Egyptologists translate hieratic or demotic, they frequently re-transcribe the *same exact text* in equivalent hieroglyphic characters before they translate them. Moeller's list of hieratics, for example, gives the grand majority of heiroglyphic equivalents to the characters in the hieratic FONT. Just because something is cursive doesn't mean that it isn't the same character, and can be adapted in the same manner, especially if the ancient people doing the adaptation are *literate*, and happen to know which hieratics and demotics are equivalent to which heiroglyphics. Despite my numerous and comprehensive list of examples that I have presented on this blog over the years, where the same principle is demonstrated over and over again, individuals like that continue to pontificate.
Now, to start with, let’s review the other translations for Katumin in the Egyptian Alphabet sections of the Kirtland Egyptian papers, where it is spelled “Kah tou mun.” Remember, that in the Egyptian alphabet, some of the translations are presented in order of five “degrees”:
In other words, scholars forget that we are dealing with symbols that have been recycled here, from their original contexts, adapted into other contexts, for use as decorations in new productions entirely, which have nothing to do with their original contexts. In other words, the use of these symbols as decorations to be used to represent the name "Katumin" have nothing to do with their origins from the Book of the Dead, because they were anciently lifted from that context into a new Egyptian document that contained a context that was dealing with something entirely different.
Certain Egyptologists in the Church like Robert W. Smith in particular have argued irrationally and ideologically against the possibility that cursive versions of hieroglyphs (i.e. hieratics and demotics) could be used the same as the non-cursive versions of the characters (i.e. hieroglyphics) in terms of using the characters in a context of recycling or adaptation of the kind that Kevin Barney suggests for larger-scale pictures in the Facsimiles. The problem with this, of course, is that it is a nonsensical assertion of Mr. Smith. Because that's like saying that because the letter A is in italic like this (A), or because it could be in a different font like a cursive A (𝓐), or even the same letter in a highly stylized font (𝔄), that it is still not the letter A, and that it is not derived from Aleph, which is a pictograph of an ox-head. Nonsense. An A is an A is an A. Similarly, the highly-stylized and cursive Arabic versions of the Semitic alphabet are still the Semitic alphabet. It didn't change their historic identity that they are written the way they are written. The hieratic and demotic versions of heiroglyphs are just exactly that: different fonts of the same characters. It is exactly the same as writing English in cursive characters, and there is no distinction. When Egyptologists translate hieratic or demotic, they frequently re-transcribe the *same exact text* in equivalent hieroglyphic characters before they translate them. Moeller's list of hieratics, for example, gives the grand majority of heiroglyphic equivalents to the characters in the hieratic FONT. Just because something is cursive doesn't mean that it isn't the same character, and can be adapted in the same manner, especially if the ancient people doing the adaptation are *literate*, and happen to know which hieratics and demotics are equivalent to which heiroglyphics. Despite my numerous and comprehensive list of examples that I have presented on this blog over the years, where the same principle is demonstrated over and over again, individuals like that continue to pontificate.
Now, to start with, let’s review the other translations for Katumin in the Egyptian Alphabet sections of the Kirtland Egyptian papers, where it is spelled “Kah tou mun.” Remember, that in the Egyptian alphabet, some of the translations are presented in order of five “degrees”:
1st degree: “The name
of a royal family in the female line.”
2nd degree: “A distinction of royal female lineage.”
3rd degree: “Descent
from her by whom Egypt was discovered while it was under water.”
4th degree: “A
lineage, a daughter of Ham.”
5th degree: “A
lineage with whom a record of the fathers was entrusted by tradition of Ham,
and according to the tradition of the elders, by whom also the tradition of the
art of embalming was kept.”
Similarly, for the word “Ho oop hah,” here are the five degrees:
First Degree: “Crown of a princess, or unmarried queen.”
Second Degree: “Crown of a married queen.”
Third Degree: “Crown of a widowed queen.”
Fourth Degree: “Queen who has been married the second time.”
Fifth Degree: “Queen Kah tou mun: a distinction of Royal female lineage or descent, from her whom Egypt was discovered while it was under water, who was the daughter of Ham.— a lineage with whom a record of the fathers was entrusted by the tradition of Ham and accord ding to the tradition of their elders; by whom also the tradition of the art of embalming in was kept.”
It is interesting that some of the degrees here seem to go along with the life-stages of a certain queen along the path of her life, as if the degrees sometimes correspond to time in some way.
Similarly, for the word “Ho oop hah,” here are the five degrees:
First Degree: “Crown of a princess, or unmarried queen.”
Second Degree: “Crown of a married queen.”
Third Degree: “Crown of a widowed queen.”
Fourth Degree: “Queen who has been married the second time.”
Fifth Degree: “Queen Kah tou mun: a distinction of Royal female lineage or descent, from her whom Egypt was discovered while it was under water, who was the daughter of Ham.— a lineage with whom a record of the fathers was entrusted by the tradition of Ham and accord ding to the tradition of their elders; by whom also the tradition of the art of embalming in was kept.”
It is interesting that some of the degrees here seem to go along with the life-stages of a certain queen along the path of her life, as if the degrees sometimes correspond to time in some way.
Even
though this hieroglyph for the Cobra is used to spell other things, the general
word in Egyptian for Cobra is Iaret,
pronounced “Yaret.” Usually, another hieroglyph for the Cobra, Gardiner’s sign
list I12, is used to represent Iaret:
The Greek word for
this is Uraeus. What are some of the other readings of Iaret/Cobra? As Professor Scott B. Noegel, Chair, Dept. of
Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington tells
us:
("On Puns and Divination: Egyptian Dream Exegesis from
a Comparative Perspective," http://faculty.washington.edu/snoegel/PDFs/articles/Noegel%2045%20TGD%202006.pdf)
As Professor Noegel transliterates it here, Uraeus/ Iaret/Cobra
can also be read as KT or KTY, which are the first two consonants of the name KaTumin!
As for the other consonants, as observed by Vincent Coon, the hieroglyphic after this
actually spell an M sound in the word mdw,
(or the Hebrew mateh/rod, as Vincent points out, acrophonically representing an M), and then following that are the Egyptian uniliteral letters I (the reed symbol)
and N (the water symbol), going from right to left here:
In other
words, in the very hieroglyphics pointed out by Joseph Smith, spells out the very name of Princess Katumin.
Interestingly, Gaudard also points out the “pars pro toto principle,” where "a part
of a sign could stand for the entire sign." Interestingly, the example that he uses is where the pupil of the eye can stand for the entire eye. Indeed, in Joseph Smith's Egyptian Alphabet, this is precisely what is going on, where the pupil of the eye, or a dot, is used for the whole eye hieroglyphic.
Extremely notable as well, as Vincent Coon has pointed out, is the fact that the Egyptian Khat crown/headress with a Uraeus, importantly, seems to correspond to the KT words as well.
Long after the time of the first Katumin, lived another Iaret, no doubt named after Katumin, perhaps in her honor. This later Iaret was queen of Egypt during Tuthmose IV's reign. Her name is spelled her name with
just the single I12 cobra hieroglyphic. We read: “The transcription of her name is
uncertain; it is written with a single cobra, which has a number of possible
readings.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaret). She was the daughter of Amunhotep II and wife
of Thutmose IV. She had various titles
applied to her: King’s Daughter
(s3t-niswt), King’s Sister (snt-niswt), Great King’s Wife/Great Royal Wife
(hmt-niswt-wrt), Great King’s Daughter (s3t-niswt-wrt). Following this same tradition, many queens
throughout Africa for millennia have had the title Great Wife or Great Royal
Wife. This wife was the primary, great
wife of the king, while his other wives would be considered lesser wives.
It is predictable that there would be some pushback from ex-
and anti-Mormons about the idea of the mdw pillar/pole hieroglyph standing for
the M sound as a uniliteral, when it is typically a trilateral. Nevertheless, as certain authors have put it:
"A major change in hieroglyphs
took place under the Ptolemaic Dynasty (305-30 BC), when Egypt was ruled by a
Greek dynasty. During this time the Egyptians created many new glyphs. Priests
were especially interested in writing religious texts in more mysterious and
complex manners. The priests often used new glyphs to form specialized codes
and puns understood only by a group of religious initiates. After the Romans
conquered Egypt in 30 BC, the use of hieroglyphs declined, and eventually their
use died out. The last firmly datable hieroglyphic inscription was written in
AD 394." (http://history-world.org/hieroglyphics.htm)
And also:
(Middle Egyptian: An Introduction ot the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, by James P. Allen, p. 37)
Furthermore, Francois Gaudard writes:
(Middle Egyptian: An Introduction ot the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, by James P. Allen, p. 37)
Furthermore, Francois Gaudard writes:
The designation “Ptolemaic
hieroglyphs” is used by Egyptologists to refer to the script employed by the
scribes of Egyptian temples after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great until
the end of the second century ad. Also called figurative or cryptographic
hieroglyphs, they are not only synonymous with extreme complication, obscure
puns, and strange puzzles, but also with intense challenge and excitement.
Their figurative nature misled early scholars into regarding the hieroglyphic script
as purely symbolic.
To a layman these signs would
probably look like standard hieroglyphs, but to an uninitiated Egyptologist
their interpretation is like exploring a terra incognita, and for good reason.
Indeed, during the Middle Kingdom and the beginning of the New Kingdom, the
number of signs commonly used by the scribes totaled about 760, but in the latest
periods of Egyptian history many new signs were created and the corpus of
hieroglyphs grew to several thousand signs (see, e.g., Daumas et al.
1988–1995). Concurrently, there was also a significant increase in the number
of phonetic values that could be attributed to a single sign. A hieroglyph that
in classical Egyptian was read in one or two ways could now have up to twenty
or even thirty different readings, as in the case of the sign [Gardiner’s sign
list Aa2], usually identified as a pustule.
Moreover, a single word could also
be written in various and complicated ways, making the script all the more
difficult to decipher. However, if it is true that the use of cryptography reached
its peak during the Greco-Roman period, it was not restricted to that era. (http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/2010%20Ptolemaic%20Hieroglyphs.pdf,
Visible Language: Inventions of Writing
in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond, edited by Christopher woods, p. 173, Oriental
Institute Museum Publications, Number 32).
Then Gaudard writes that one of the principles of these
Ptolemaic hieroglyphs was this:
The “acrophonic principle,” by
which multi-consonantal signs could
retain only the value of their first consonant, regardless of whether it
was strong or weak (e.g., the sign [Gardiner’s sign list E34, for a hare], usually
read wn, could stand for the letter w).
Interestingly, Gaudard also points out the “pars pro toto principle,” where "a part
of a sign could stand for the entire sign." Interestingly, the example that he uses is where the pupil of the eye can stand for the entire eye. Indeed, in Joseph Smith's Egyptian Alphabet, this is precisely what is going on, where the pupil of the eye, or a dot, is used for the whole eye hieroglyphic.
Then on page 175, Gaudard writes:
Depending on the nature of the
texts, the Ptolemaic hieroglyphic script could exhibit greater or lesser
degrees of complication. One can in fact distinguish between two types of
scripts: the first type, which could be referred to as “common,” includes a certain
percentage of new signs and phonetic values, but once these are known, texts
written in such a script can generally be read without major difficulties. However, the other type of script, where each
sign has been carefully chosen, is extremely complicated and would even pose a
challenge to an experienced Egyptologist (see Sauneron 1974, p. 46). Texts of
this latter type are well represented by two famous hymns inscribed in the hall
of the temple of Esna in the late first century ad, one of them being composed
almost entirely with signs depicting a ram and the other with signs depicting a
crocodile (see, e.g., Leitz 2001). When
confronted with such a profusion of subtleties, complications, and
sophisticated signs, the reader may wonder about the motivations of the ancient
scribes. While it might be tempting at first to see this system as a means of
concealing sacred knowledge from the uninitiated, several indications seem to
point in a different direction, making such an explanation rather unlikely. Indeed,
due to their placement high on the walls, several of the texts inscribed in
temples remained illegible to the visitor and were obviously not meant to be
read (see Sauneron 1982, p. 51). For this reason, there was apparently no need
to hide their content, since they “were effectively answerable in detail only
to the gods” (Baines 2007, p. 47). Moreover, important theological texts could
be composed in a perfectly accessible script, while inscriptions of lesser
importance were sometimes written in a highly cryptographic one (see Sauneron
1982, p. 52). All of this suggests that
the use of such a script should best be viewed as part of an intellectual game
rather than as a deliberate attempt at hiding any secret lore.
So while the name Katumin isn’t likely to have been
deliberately written in this papyrus by the person that wrote it for the
purpose of hiding the name Katumin in it, it was viewed by some other
interpreter as serviceable precisely for that usage. This is the essence of the idea of
iconotropy. The original author of a
document didn’t need to have that intent.
Only that someone saw that the symbol or series of symbols were serviceable
for that usage. Either way, it was
indeed an “intellectual game” going on, more than some kind of “encryption.” Either for the interpreter, or for the original author. An interpretation of this sort where the original author didn't intend it, but the interpreter imposed it is along the same lines of medieval Kabbalistic practices, where Kabbalists find meaning in scriptural texts that they themselves impose on it, when the original writers of a text had no intent for its usage in this way. That doesn't make it "wrong." It just makes these things symbols that are used by the interpreters in their own system, imposing the system of symbology on a text after the fact, rather than something that the original authors came up with.
Extremely notable as well, as Vincent Coon has pointed out, is the fact that the Egyptian Khat crown/headress with a Uraeus, importantly, seems to correspond to the KT words as well.
Here is a piece of critical information as well:
She appears on a stela from Nubia.
She is depicted behind Tuthmosis IV as he is smiting the enemy. Iaret is shown
wearing a simple dress . . . She is depicted holding what looks like a mace in
her right hand.
(http://mathstat.slu.edu/~bart/egyptianhtml/kings%20and%20Queens/Queen_Iaret.html)
Similarly, the symbol of the “sceptre or staff is one of the
most ancient symbols of authority. The words ‘nobleman’ and ‘official’ both
included the hieroglyph of a staff, so at an early stage the staff seems to
have represented the authority of any person with significant power, not just
the pharaoh.” (http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/royalemblems.html).
One of the possible
readings for the cobra hieroglyph for Queen Iaret’s name is Wadjet, the name usually of a goddess
by that same name. As was shown above, the other pronunciations are KT (Kat) and W't.t (Weyet). Wadjet seems to be phonetically linked to Wayet. Usually, the hieroglyph
used for the goddess Wadjet is Gardiner’s sign list I13:
The goddess Wadjet has direct association with the staff
symbol:
Another early depiction of Wadjet
is as a cobra entwined around a papyrus stem, beginning in the Predynastic era
(prior to 3100 B.C.) and it is thought to be the first image that shows a snake
entwined around a staff symbol. This is a sacred image that appeared repeatedly
in the later images and myths of cultures surrounding the Mediterranean Sea,
called the caduceus, which may have had separate origins.
Her image also rears up from the
staff of the "flag" poles that are used to indicate deities, as seen
in the hieroglyph for uraeus above and for goddess in other places. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadjet)
A form of her name is used for the famous Wedjat eye, the eye of the Moon, the
eye of Horus or the eye of Ra. The name is
derived from the term wadj,
referring to the color green, symbolizing the papyrus, a symbol for Lower Egypt.
The pharaohs wore the Uraeus as a
head ornament: either with the body of Wadjet atop the head, or as a crown
encircling the head; this indicated Wadjet's protection and reinforced the
pharaoh's claim over the land. In whatever manner that the Uraeus was displayed
upon the pharaoh's head, it was, in effect, part of the pharaoh's crown. The
pharaoh was recognized only by wearing the Uraeus, which conveyed legitimacy to
the ruler. There is evidence for this tradition even in the Old Kingdom during
the third millennium BCE. Several goddesses associated with or being considered
aspects of Wadjet are depicted wearing the Uraeus also. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uraeus)
Interestingly, the “spelling” of the word for goddess in
Egyptian, the word ntr.t, is this:
The feminine form could also be
written with an egg as determinative, connecting goddesses with creation and
birth, or with a cobra, reflecting the use of the cobra to depict many female
deities. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_deities).
So, in summary, the Queen, the Great Royal Wife herself had
the honorific name of the goddess Wadjet/Iaret herself. The King of Egypt was not a king without the
use of the symbol, and the tradition of the use of this symbol went back in to
the earliest parts of the old kingdom of Egypt.
This was an extremely ancient phenomenon. And it is proper that Wadjet should be identified
both by a combination of both the staff and the cobra. The tradition of associating the cobra with a
woman and with the authority of the king had to have started at some point in
the Old Kingdom.
Note that in the quotation at the top of this article, Ritner shows that the symbol dd (cobra) was associated with the line about Katumin, and it is consistently translated as
Katumin throughout the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar documents. Notice that Ritner shows that it is the
symbol mtw (staff/scepter) that is
associated with the line about the reign
of Onitah. Pictographically, the
cobra is in exactly the right place to refer to the woman who was of royal
descent, and pictographically, the staff is in exactly the right place to refer
to the reign of her father. And so, if
it were true that the idea here was for Joseph Smith to translate actual text
here, then we indeed would have nothing, but when there are things clearly
going on here with pictographic, iconotropic interpretations, it is all
entirely fitting and appropriate. It all
fits very snugly together, contrary to Ritner.
As
we saw in a quote above, the staff is associated with the flag pole, the
Egyptian sign for God (ntr), Gardiner's sign list, R8.
The Coptic (Late Egyptian) version of the word ntr, which is pronounced as noute, attests to the dropping or silencing of the sound of the r at the end of this particular word in some dialects of the Egyptian language. Other times, in other Egyptian words, we see this manifest as well. For example, in the Book of Abraham, one of the Egyptian gods was given the name of Elkenah. Yet, in some parts of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers that are early Book of Abraham Manuscripts, the name is given as Elkener. The name of Pharaoh Onitah (Onitos) might be another example of this. In the Valuable Discovery documents, it is given as Onitos, showing the possibility that someone in the Greco-Roman time period had attached the Greek nominative S to the name, much like the word Egyptus (Aegyptos) in the Book of Abraham. Yet, that name in other parts of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers is given as Zeptah. Or, is there yet a different reason that we will yet see, that there was an S attached to his name in this form of Onitos? Indeed, there seems to be, as the reader will see.
Anyhow, the name Onitah seems to be a likely origin of the word ntr/noute, since Pharoah was thought of as a god to the Egyptians. Certain Egyptian gods are thought by some to have originated as real human beings at some point, perhaps very ancient royalty, and were elevated to be gods by the pagan Egyptians.
Many have wondered at the derivation of the term ntr in
Egyptian. Note that the primary ideas we
are working with are poles, flags and serpents, according to the pictographic evidence. If we start our search in Hebrew, which is a
related Afro-Asiatic language, we find a very interesting term which is tann or tannin (Strongs 8577), meaning sea
serpent (leviathan) or dragon.
Notice the interesting pattern here that the T and the N are transposed
in this word from the NTR word in Egyptian. We should probably make mention of the Titans from Greece, a similar word applied to giant deities, a name
which similarly has an uncertain derivation, yet seems to fit this context
well.
The nearest word in Hebrew that resembles NTR is the term is
nathar (Strongs 5425), meaning to jump, or to agitate. According to some
sources, in the Berber language, NKR
means to rise up, or to get up.
(https://www.religiousforums.com/threads/is-the-root-meaning-of-ntr-neter-god-nut-neith-hathor-ra-horus.189735/page-2). The claim by some scholars is that the
ancient Egyptian T is pronounced like the English CH, and some Egyptologists
propose a sequence of consonantal changes from an original K to Ky to T,
meaning that the original word in Egyptian was probably NKR. (https://www.religiousforums.com/threads/is-the-root-meaning-of-ntr-neter-god-nut-neith-hathor-ra-horus.189735/#post-4850988).
However, it is equally as possible that NT and NK forms simply co-existed in
various dialects and language families, and were cognate, and had a certain
amount of interchangeability.
In Sanskrit,
the word for crocodile is nakar (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Crocodiles-help-scholar-link-Indus-Valley-Sangam-era/articleshow/29073088.cms). Of course, the crocodile is a reptilian. The Indian
cobra is the naja naja. In Sanskrit, the word for cobra is naga. In the Indian
subcontinent, naga is also the word
for a deity that takes a serpentine form. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nāga). China is also known to have a mythology about
dragons that are deities or heavenly beings.
The word naga in Sanskrit is
derived from the Proto-Indo-European word *(s)nek-o,
meaning “snake.” This word has what is
called an “s-mobile,” meaning, that the S in some forms of the Indo-European
derivations of this word is there, and sometimes not. The Germanic derivation is *snek-a, and of course, being that
English is partially a Germanic-derived language, we have it in English as, you
guessed, it: snake. But as you can see,
since, the S is mobile, it manifests in Sanskrit as naga, even though Sanskrit
is an Indo-European language. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nāga)
. Interestingly, the cognate to the
Proto-Indo-European word for serpent in Semitic is NKhS, or nahas, or in
the Hebrew, nakhash (Strongs
5175). Note that in this cognate, the S
is no longer at the front of the
word, but is transposed to the end of the word. The S is getting pretty mobile between
language forms indeed. Now, in Hebrew,
the word nakhash is derived from a
primitive root with the same pronunciation (Strongs 5172), which means to hiss, or to whisper a magic spell, or prognosticate,
or to observe signs/omens. So, it is because of the snake’s hiss that it
is derived from this root. Now,
interestingly, we saw earlier that to lift or to rise or to get up in the
Berber language is NKR. But the other
forms in Hebrew for this kind of idea are interesting. For example, nasah (Strongs 5375) means to lift. Nasas
(Strongs 5264) means to be high or conspicuous. And now for a clincher, that seems to
indicate we are indeed on the right track.
The derived word from nasas that we are looking for is nes (Strongs 5251), which means a standard, a signal, an ensign, a flag, or a pole. Similarly, we have nasik (Strongs 5257), meaning a libation, a molten image, or a prince (by anointing). And then this is
derived from nasak (Strongs 5258),
meaning to pour out, to cast metal, a libation, or to anoint a king. Now, yet again, we see once again, the S and
the K transposed from both the nakhas form, as well as the *(s)nek-o
Indo-European form. Here we see in these
words the makings of a molten image, or an image of a false god, and the
anointing of a king Pharaoh of Egypt, who became a god over time in the minds
of the pagan Egyptians.
Remember that in Facsimile number 1 of the Book of Abraham,
the god Sobek which was a crocodile in the water, figure 9, is
the idolatrous god of Pharaoh. Indeed,
in Sanskrit, it is NKR, which in Egyptian is NTR/NKR. And the name Sobek has 2 out of the three consonants we have been working with here the
whole time.
The next part that we are concerned about in the characters from the Amenhotep papyrus is the Egyptian symbols I and N. These are Uni-literal characters, meaning that each only has one consonantal sound in the Egyptian Alphabet, one being the character for the Egyptian letter I (the papyrus reed symbol on the right, which is Gardiners sign list M17), and the other for the Egyptian letter N (the symbol for water on the left, which is Gardiners sign list N35).
We have already dealt somewhat with the pictographic elements in these two symbols above. As we read above, the Goddess Wadjet had the sign of the papyrus reed associated with her, as well as the color green, since wadj means green one or papyrus-colored:
Wadjet . . . known to the Greek world as Uto . . . or Buto . . . among other names, was originally the ancient local goddess of the city of Dep (Buto) . . . She was said to be the patron and protector of Lower Egypt and upon unification with Upper Egypt, the joint protector and patron of all of Egypt "goddess" of Upper Egypt. The image of Wadjet with the sun disk is called the uraeus, and it was the emblem on the crown of the rulers of Lower Egypt. She was also the protector of kings and of women in childbirth. . . .
The name Wadjet is derived from the term for the symbol of her domain, Lower Egypt, the papyrus.
Her name means "papyrus-colored one", as wadj is the Ancient Egyptian word for the color green (in reference to the color of the papyrus plant) and the et is an indication of her gender. Its hieroglyphs differ from those of the Green Crown (Red Crown) of Lower Egypt only by the determinative, which in the case of the crown was a picture of the Green Crown and, in the case of the goddess, a rearing cobra. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadjet)
The Papyrus plant lives by the water, and the god of Pharoah, the crocodile, lives in the water. Along with the mdw or staff symbol, these two are associated with the line that Joseph Smith produced, saying that Onitah had begun to reign in the year 2962. The element here of a reign once again is quite clearly indicated pictographically both by the staff as well as by the papyrus leaf. In another part of the Kirtland Egyptian papers, the papyrus leaf/reed was interpreted by Joseph Smith to be Land of the Chaldees, since the ancient name for Land of the Chaldees is the land of reeds, but this is a separate context entirely. And as these pictographic elements depend to a large degree on outside context imposed upon them, it is not surprising that multiple interpretations of these symbols in separate contexts exist entirely separate from each other, when lifted from a context alien to that in which they were found originally in a Book of the Dead copy.
The next hieroglyphs from the Amenhotep papyrus we have to deal with are these:
Usually, when reading these together as a unit, they spell out the name Osiris. Another "spelling" of the name Osiris is this:
As you can see in the first example, as well as the second, we see the throne symbol, usually vocalized as IS or WS/US (Gardiner’s sign list Q1), and the eye symbol, usually vocalized as IR (Gardiner’s sign list D4). As we stated previously, in the first example, we have the flag/NTR hieroglyph already analyzed above. In the first case, it is used as a determinative, stating that Osiris is a god. But in this name, this is interchangeable with the other determinative in the second case that we see above, the seated male god, which is Gardiner’s sign list A40. Either spelling is appropriate.
Alone, by itself, the throne symbol pronounced (IS), indicates the goddess Isis, pronounced Iset, since the et ending indicates the feminine.
These symbols are used to decorate this line in Joseph Smith’s translation: “Katumin was born in the 30th year of the reign of her father, and died when she was 28 years old, which was the year 3020.”
Interestingly, the Book of the Dead names Isis, who is the throne, as “She who gives birth to heaven and earth.” Isis was considered the patron of childbirth, the archetypical mother, the perfect example of motherly qualities (http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/isis.html). And Osiris is known to be the god of the dead, the god of the afterlife. So in these figures pictographically is seen both the elements of birth and death. And so, we see that an external context of Katumin’s life was imposed on them, and with that context, we see that they are able to symbolize both her birth and her death.
The eye symbol, if seen as the Eye of Horus, or the Wedjat. The wedjat was a symbol that was found on the mummies in the tomb, meant to protect them in the afterlife, and of course, it is the symbol of the goddess Wadjet, as we had seen previously. It is a symbol of restoration, protection, and sacrifice, because of the myth of the offering of the eye of Horus to his father Osiris in the hopes of the restoration of his life. Once again, the themes of life, death and restoration/resurrection are found in these symbols. This is entirely appropriate for the context of how Joseph Smith is interpreting them.
