Tangled Afterlives
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EGYPT • AFRICA TANGLED How an Egyptian Papyrus Became the Mormon Book AFTERLIVES of Abraham by paul mitchell fter 2,000 years of repose, 11 mummified mercenary-archaeologist, to human corpses and a few scrolls of papyrus excavate scores of catacombs A entombed at Thebes became entangled in the in the Valley of the Kings interwoven threads of an Egyptian autocrat's ambitions, near Thebes. Through a the American public's fascination with displays of the series of excavations along odd and exotic, and the formulation of the United States’ the Nile conducted over most prominent homegrown religion. Life after death has almost five years, Lebolo been far from dull for the only 2 surviving specimens of and hundreds of Egyp- those 11 mummies, now lying undisturbed in the Penn tian workers extracted 11 Museum. The story of the remains that captured the mummies and associated artifacts from a large Ptolemaic attention of both early America's most eminent physical period (305–30 BCE) catacomb. Having collected thou- anthropologist and the founder of the Church of Jesus sands of antiquities for the viceroy's exchanges across the Christ of Latter Day Saints begins in the late 1810s, Mediterranean, Lebolo was granted the Ptolemaic mum- with the political machina- mies as partial compensation for his service. Although tions of the Egyptian viceroy, he arranged for the transport of the mummies to Europe Muhammad Ali. for consignment sale, Lebolo died prior to their arrival in Ali, eager to modernize 1830, leaving the exquisitely preserved corpses with his and militarize his country, antiquities dealer. ordered an exchange of Egyptian artifacts and mum- From Egypt to the United States mies for European industrial Although no records detailing the transaction have sur- machines and weaponry. vived, it is believed that Michael Chandler, an Irish-born He hired Antonio Lebolo, entrepreneur living in Philadelphia, purchased the mum- an Italian policeman and mies directly from Lebolo's dealer and had them shipped ABOVE: Antonio Lebolo (standing, far left) excavated Egyptian cata- ABOVE: Muhammad Ali, Egyptian Viceroy, exchanged artifacts combs for Muhammad Ali. He is shown here with Bernardino Drovetti and mummies for machines and weaponry. Painting by Auguste (standing, center) and the “Drovetti Colossal Head.” Engraving by Couder, 1840. Auguste de Forbin, 1819, from Voyage dans le Levant. EXPEDITION Fall 2016 49 Aerial view of the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, where the 11 mummies were excavated in the early 19th century. Photograph by Mearman. to New York in April 1833. Later, Chandler asserted that Mummies were a novelty for most Americans, as the first he had inherited the mummies from Lebolo, a claimed mummies had arrived in the United States, in Boston, distant relation, but Lebolo's will contains no mention only ten years earlier. of Chandler or the mummies. Chandler, inspecting his purchase, unsealed the Morton Adds to His Collection 11 mummies’ coffins to find fragile but intact rolls of In an 1833 Philadelphia Daily papyrus interred with the bodies. Chandler immediately Chronicle article, which reap- brought the mummies to Philadelphia and exhibited peared verbatim in many them for “a compensation” of 25 cents. The U.S. Gazette other cities in which the of Philadelphia reported in April of 1833 that “the larg- mummies were exhib- est collection of Egyptian Mummies ever exhibited in ited, the pseudonymous this city” was now on display in the Masonic Hall at writer “Pythagoras” urged 713–721 Chestnut Street. The announcement noted that readers to “spare 25 cents the mummies were found “in the vicinity of Thebes, by to see these fragments of the celebrated traveler Antonio Lebolo” and included mortality…The pouting lip, “some writing on Papirus [sic] found with the mum- the bright and scornful eye, mies.” Although the famous Revolutionary-era the panting bosom of the American portraitist Charles Willson Peale opened present beauty, will probably ABOVE: Dr. Samuel George Morton. Reproduced with the one of the country's first museums in Philadelphia in be more fleeting than the permission of the American 1786—capturing attention with the display of a fos- actual remains I now exhort Philosophical Society. sil Kentucky mastodon—public museums were still my fellow citizens to con- uncommon. Instead, early 19th-century Americans template.” Chandler further enticed potential customers flocked to temporary displays such as Chandler's, with a “Certificate of the Learned” posted outside the compelled by curiosity, and willing to pay exhibition, detailing the unsolicited endorsement of a fee, to glimpse fabled seven physicians “calling the attention of the public to an Egyptian mummies. interesting collection, not sufficiently known in this city.” LEFT: Eleven mummies were exhibited at the new Masonic Hall at 713–721 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia in 1833. Lithograph by David Chillas, 1833. 50 EXPEDITION Volume 58 Number 2 TANGLED AFTERLIVES LEFT: The two mummified skulls purchased by Dr. Samuel George Morton from showman Michael Chandler, in 1833. The Morton Collection, now at the Penn Museum, includes these embalmed heads of an Egyptian girl (left) and a young woman (right). Photographs by Lisa Gemmill. The May 21, 1833, of Skulls as numbers 48 and 60. The former was reported minutes of the to be the “embalmed head of an Egyptian girl, eight Academy of Natural years of age, from the Theban catacombs” and the latter Sciences report as the “embalmed head of an Egyptian lady about 16 that Dr. Samuel years of age brought from the catacombs of Al Gourna, George Morton, near Thebes, by the late Antonio Lebolo, from whose among the physi- heirs I purchased it, together with the entire body.” Only cians who signed the mummies' heads were retained by Morton after he Chandler's certifi- dissected their bodies at the Academy on December 10 cate, commented and 17, 1833. on “the remarkable development of the Joseph Smith Purchases Mummies and Papyri cranium in one [of Taking the show on the road, Chandler traveled with the the mummies].” remainder of his mummies along the East Coast and into ABOVE: The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where Dr. Morton was a Following Dr. Appalachia, continuing to exhibit and sell the corpses member. From the Library of Congress. Morton's exhorta- until he had only four mummies and some articles of tion, a Maryland papyrus in his possession when arriving in the town of newspaper noted that 9, not 11, mummies were on Kirtland, Ohio, on July 3, 1835. This hilly Northeast display in Philadelphia. This report coincides directly Ohio town served as the center of the Latter Day Saints with Morton's purchase of two of Chandler's mummies: (LDS) movement after the prophet Joseph Smith relocat- the founder of American physical anthropology, later ed from upstate New York in 1831. Chandler was drawn renowned for his racist craniometric theories and his to the fledging religious community following Smith's anatomical collection of human crania—the “American claims of having translated a holy book called the Book Golgotha”—listed his new acquisitions in his Catalogue of Mormon, allegedly inscribed in an ancient Egyptian LEFT: 19th-century illustration of an Egyptian wrapped mummy, most likely similar to those purchased and exhibited by Michael Chandler. Dover Pictorial Archive Series. EXPEDITION Fall 2016 51 TANGLED AFTERLIVES RIGHT: Found in one of the mummy’s coffins purchased by Smith, this fragment of the “Joseph Smith Papyri” was purported to be part of the Book of Abraham. From Wikipedia, public domain. language on golden account of revelation from the plates found buried biblical figure Abraham. His in Palmyra, New translation and facsimiles York. Although of the hieroglyphics were Jean-Francois published as the Book of Champollion had Abraham in the Pearl of deciphered hiero- Great Price, a canonical glyphics with the text in the LDS Church. use of the Rosetta The four mummies and Stone in the early papyri were kept by Joseph 1820s, this scholar- Smith until his death at the ship was unavailable hands of a mob in 1844. The to Smith and the collection passed to Smith’s Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., American linguists mother and was purchased founded the Latter Day Saint movement. By unknown The angel Moroni delivering the plates that Chandler by Abel Combs in 1856, who painter, ca. 1842. of the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith. consulted concern- retained two of the mummies Print from the Library of Congress. ing the meaning of and some of the papyrus frag- the inscriptions on ments. He sold the other two mummies to the Woods the papyrus. On July 6, Smith noted in his diary that the Museum in Chicago, destroyed by fire in 1871. The “Saints at Kirtland” purchased the mummies and papy- whereabouts of Comb's two mummies are unknown, rus for the hefty sum of $2,400, finishing off Chandler's although his papyrus fragments were passed on through collection and providing Smith with raw material for his family and sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art another divinely inspired translation of mysterious texts. (MMA) in 1947. In 1966, a historian researching in the Chandler retired to more mundane pursuits and settled MMA archives recognized the fragments from Smith's on a farm. facsimile in the Book of Abraham. An anonymous dona- Over the course of 1835, Joseph Smith claimed to tion allowed for their acquisition by the LDS Church have translated the papyri, stating that they were an Archives in Salt Lake City, Utah. 52 EXPEDITION Volume 58 Number 2 Salt Lake Temple, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Photograph by Jacek Sopotnicki. Smith’s translation of the papyri was canonized by seasoned travelers, the last known bodily remains of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1880.