No Man Knows My History (Arkosh History)

by Fawn M. Brodie

Two auditoriums, one above the other, occupied the first and second * See F. S. Spalding,Joseph Smith Jr. as a Translator (Salt Lake City, 1912). Dr. A. H. Sayce of Oxford stated that facsimile No. 2 was an “ordinary hypocephalus," and No. 3 “a representation of the goddess Maat leading Pharaoh before Osiris behind whom stands the goddess Isis.” Arthur Mace of the Metropolitan Museum of Art called Joseph’s interpretation “a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end.” Dr. W. M. Flinders Petrie of London University wrote: “It may safely be said that there is not a single word that is true in these explanations." Dr. J. H. Breasted of the University of Chicago wrote that “Joseph Smith represents as portions of a unique revelation through Abraham things which were commonplaces and to be found by many thousands in the everyday life of the Egyptians.” t The museum returned the papyri to the Utah Mormons. New scholarly translations were published inDialogue, a Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. Ill, Summer 1968. For a summary see the supplement at the end of this volume. A filmed copy of “Joseph Smith's Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar,” formerly unknown save to Mormon archivists, was reproduced in 1969 by Jerald Tanner of the Modern Microfilm Company in Salt Lake City. It further illustrated Joseph Smith’s extraordinary capacity for linguistic fantasy. stories, and the third floor was given-over to classrooms for the School of the Prophets. Each