7 June 1831
Workers enter a pit tomb near Thebes
Joseph Smith's published history says the French traveller 'Antonio Sebolo' entered the catacombs near ancient Thebes on this date under a licence obtained through Bernardino Drovetti, and obtained eleven mummies. Modern accounts identify the man as the Italian Antonio Lebolo, an agent of Drovetti, and place the excavation somewhat earlier.
Disputed The date, the excavator's nationality and the number of mummies differ between the 1835 church account and later archival research.
circa 1832
Lebolo dies; the collection is willed to a nephew
The church's account says Lebolo put in at Trieste en route to Paris, died after ten days' illness, and willed the whole collection to his nephew Michael H. Chandler, then in Philadelphia. Bushman notes that Lebolo's probate papers mention neither Chandler nor mummies, and that Chandler probably bought the artifacts in New York.
Disputed Whether Chandler was Lebolo's nephew and heir at all, or a purchaser who invented the inheritance story.
3 July 1835
Chandler exhibits four mummies at Kirtlandhinge
Chandler came to Kirtland to exhibit four human figures and two or more rolls of papyrus covered with hieroglyphic figures and devices. Smith and other church leaders paid a fee to view them. Smith was allowed to take the papyri to his home to study.
Why this is a hingeIt is the hinge: the first time a church founded on a translated record acquired an ancient document that outsiders could later read.
6 July 1835
Chandler certifies Joseph Smith's readings
Chandler signed a certificate stating that Smith's deciphering of the characters corresponded 'in the most minute matters' with what he had learned from the most learned men in many cities. Latter-day Saint scholars now acknowledge that neither Chandler nor any American of the time could have made such an attestation authoritatively.
Disputed Whether the certificate is corroboration or a seller's puff; faithful and critical writers agree it carries no evidentiary weight, but disagree on what it shows about Smith's use of it.
early July 1835
Church members buy the collection for $2,400
Some of the Saints at Kirtland purchased the four mummies and the papyri. The 1856 bill of sale states the price as twenty-four hundred dollars. Joseph Coe later described arranging the purchase in thirds with Simeon Andrews and Smith. The sum was large at a moment when money was desperately needed for the Kirtland temple.
late July 1835
'Translating an alphabet … arrangeing a grammar'hinge
Smith's history records that for the remainder of July he was 'continually engaged in translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham, and arrangeing a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients.' The passage was composed later by Willard Richards, who was not present.
Why this is a hingeIt is the church's own statement that an Egyptian grammar was part of the project, and the sentence every later theory of the translation has to accommodate.
Disputed Gee notes there is no evidence Smith read, approved or corrected the Richards passage.
1 October 1835
'The system of astronomy was unfolded'
Smith's journal records that he 'labored on the Egyptian alphabet, in company with brsr O. Cowdery and W. W. Phelps: The system of astronomy was unfolded.' Gee dates the three Egyptian Alphabet documents to this session on the strength of the entry and the three handwritings.
Disputed Gee dates the Alphabet documents to 1 October; the Joseph Smith Papers editors date them from early July onward.
November 1835
Three manuscripts of Abraham 1–2 are written outhinge
Williams and Parrish inscribed Manuscripts A and B, apparently simultaneously and at least partly from dictation; Phelps and Parrish produced the fuller Manuscript–C in a bound volume with prefatory material. Each carries Egyptian characters copied into a ruled left margin beside paragraph-length passages of English.
Why this is a hingeThe physical alignment of a single hieratic character against a whole paragraph of English is the single most argued-over fact in the whole subject.
Disputed Whether the characters were placed first and the English derived from them, or the English came first and the characters were added afterward in an attempt to reverse-engineer a grammar.
22 December 1835
Cowdery's public account is printed
Oliver Cowdery's letter to William Frye appeared in the Messenger and Advocate as 'Egyptian Mummies—Ancient Records.' It corrects the rumor that the purchasers claimed to hold the bodies of Abraham, Abimelech or Joseph — 'which is utterly false' — and reports that seven of the eleven mummies had already been sold to gentlemen for private museums.
23 February 1842
Reuben Hedlock instructed on the engraving
Smith gave Hedlock instructions concerning 'the cut for the altar and gods in the Records of Abraham' for the Times and Seasons. On 1 March he was correcting the first plate, and on 4 March he exhibited the papyri to Hedlock so the blocks could be sized, giving instructions on the arrangement of the writing on the large astronomical cut.
Disputed Who filled in the missing portions of the damaged vignette, and whether the restorations were revealed or simply drawn in for publication.
1 March 1842
Facsimile 1 and Abraham 1:1–2:18 publishedhinge
The Times and Seasons carried 'A FAC-SIMILE FROM THE BOOK OF ABRAHAM. NO. 1' with Smith's numbered explanation — the angel of the Lord, Abraham fastened upon an altar, the idolatrous priest of Elkenah — followed by the heading 'A TRANSLATION Of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands, from the Catecombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham … written by his own hand, upon papyrus.'
Why this is a hingePublication converted a private study project into a public, checkable claim, complete with pictures anyone could later show to an Egyptologist.
15 March 1842
Facsimile 2 and the rest of the text
The next issue printed the hypocephalus as Facsimile 2 in a fold-out plate with explanations naming Kolob, Oliblish, Enish-go-on-dosh, Jah-oh-eh and Raukeeyang, together with Abraham 2:19 through the creation chapters ending at 5:21.
16 May 1842
Facsimile 3 published
The third facsimile appeared with explanations identifying figure 1 as Abraham on Pharaoh's throne, figure 2 as 'King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head,' figure 4 as the prince of Pharaoh, figure 5 as Shulem, and figure 6 as 'Olimlah, a slave belonging to the prince.'
Disputed Egyptologists read the same figures, from the hieroglyphs above their heads, as Osiris, Isis, Maat, Anubis and the deceased Hor.
1 May 1843
The Kinderhook plates: 'has translated a portion'
William Clayton wrote that he had seen six brass plates covered with ancient characters and that 'Prest J. has translated a portion and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found and he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt.' The plates were later shown to be a nineteenth-century forgery made to entrap Smith.
Disputed Faithful writers argue Smith made only a cursory one-character comparison against the Grammar and Alphabet volume rather than a revelatory translation; critics read Clayton's entry as a straightforward claim to translate.
26 May 1856
Emma Bidamon sells the collection
Twelve days after Lucy Mack Smith's death, Lewis C. Bidamon, Emma Bidamon and Joseph Smith III signed a bill of sale for 'four Egyptian Mummies with the records of them' to a man known only as A. Combs. Combs sold most of it on; the rest, mounted on backing paper, stayed with his housekeeper's family.
9 October 1871
Wood's Museum burns in the Great Chicago Fire
Wyman's St. Louis Museum, which had exhibited two of the mummies since 1856, removed to Chicago in 1863; by January 1864 the collection had passed to the showman Joseph H. Wood. The fire reached Wood's Museum shortly after midnight and reduced it to brick and ash; the Chicago Tribune reported that the only article spared from the collection was a silver-mounted revolver. Joseph Smith III later said he had seen two of the mummies and part of the records there before the fire.
Disputed How much papyrus was in Chicago, and therefore how much is genuinely unaccounted for, remains the crux of the missing-scroll debate.
1880
The Pearl of Great Price canonized
The Book of Abraham, first gathered into Franklin D. Richards's 1851 Pearl of Great Price with the three facsimiles, was canonized as scripture. The phrase 'purporting to be' was dropped from the heading in the 1878 Salt Lake edition and did not return.
1912
Spalding's survey of eight Egyptologistshinge
Bishop Franklin S. Spalding published the replies of eight scholars to whom he had sent the facsimiles, reporting that 'in no case did one man know the opinion of another.' Sayce called the work an impudent fraud; Petrie wrote that 'there is not one single word that is true in these explanations.' Latter-day Saint replies in the Improvement Era attacked the survey's method rather than its Egyptology.
Why this is a hingeIt is the first time the church's translation claim was tested by outside experts, and B. H. Roberts conceded there were then no Egyptian scholars in the church who could answer them.
Disputed Nibley argued the panel was prejudiced by Spalding's framing; Ritner replied that their 1912 assessments 'remain valid in 2001.'
spring 1966
Atiya recognizes Facsimile 1 at the Metropolitan
Aziz S. Atiya, searching for Coptic material at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, opened a file containing eleven papyrus fragments. One was the original of Facsimile 1, glued to a backing sheet on which the missing arms, torso and head had been drawn in. An 1856 certificate of ownership was with them.
27 November 1967
The Metropolitan transfers eleven fragments to the Churchhinge
In a ceremony in the museum's Egyptian section, director Thomas P. F. Hoving presented the eleven pieces and the Bidamon letter to N. Eldon Tanner of the First Presidency. The collection was sent to Brigham Young University for study, and photographs were published in the Improvement Era in January and February 1968.
Why this is a hingeThe recovery put the source documents in the hands of people who could read them, ending seventy years in which the argument had run on the facsimiles alone.
Summer and Autumn 1968
Dialogue publishes the translations
Working from the Improvement Era photographs, Dialogue commissioned readings. In the summer issue John A. Wilson and Richard A. Parker identified fragments as a Book of Breathings copied for a Theban priest named Hor and as Books of the Dead; Grant Heward and Jerald Tanner published the identification of the Small Sensen text as the source of the margin characters. Baer's complete translation followed in the autumn issue.
1971
Nibley's reading of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers
Hugh Nibley published 'The Meaning of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers' in BYU Studies, arguing that the papers were either a preliminary 'studying it out' stage or a failed attempt to reverse-engineer an already-revealed English text, and portraying the work of Phelps, Cowdery and Parrish as largely independent of Smith. FAIR describes this reading as having become the dominant Latter-day Saint view.
2010
The scroll-length argument
Andrew Cook and Christopher Smith argued in Dialogue that no more than about 56 centimetres of the interior of the Hor scroll can be missing, closely matching Baer's earlier estimate. Gee, who had estimated a much longer roll, revised his figure to about 314 centimetres. Faithful commentators concede they cannot independently adjudicate the mathematics.
Disputed The length of the missing portion, and whether scroll geometry can settle it at all.
8 July 2014
The Gospel Topics essayhinge
The Church published 'Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham.' It grants that no eyewitness account of the translation survives, that the surviving fragments are standard funerary texts dating from the third century BCE to the first century CE, that none of their characters mention Abraham, and that the grammar book's rules and translations do not correspond to those recognized by Egyptologists. It leaves the source and the method open.
Why this is a hingeIt is the institution conceding in its own voice the facts that had been treated as anti-Mormon claims for a century, without conceding the conclusion.
Disputed Critics say the essay's appeal to a lack of unanimity about the vignettes overstates real scholarly disagreement.
2018
The Joseph Smith Papers publish the Egyptian material
Revelations and Translations, Volume 4, edited by Robin Scott Jensen and Brian M. Hauglid, printed high-resolution images and transcripts of the surviving papyri, the Egyptian Alphabet documents, the Grammar and Alphabet volume, and all the Book of Abraham manuscripts. Its editorial notes state that the scribes' work 'does not comport with modern Egyptological understanding of Egyptian characters.'
2019
The faithful side splits in public
John Gee reviewed the volume under the title 'The Joseph Smith Papers Project Stumbles'; Jeffrey Lindsay charged bias; the series editors Matthew Grow and Matthew Godfrey replied that they read the evidence differently from Gee, holding that translation occurred in Kirtland and again in Nauvoo. Lindsay quoted Hauglid's own statement that he now rejects a missing Abraham manuscript and no longer agrees with Gee or Muhlestein.
Disputed Whether the Kirtland Egyptian Papers precede or follow the English text — the whole question, still unresolved among faithful scholars.
