Facsimile No.1 Fig. 11. wrote:Designed to represent the pillars of heaven, as understood by the Egyptians.
This is just so wrong in so many ways. Nothing could be further from the truth. Smith was dead wrong. He was guessing. He was fantasizing. He was making stuff up and creating his own world view of what he thought it should be.
"Pillars of heaven" is not what the series of interconnected rectangles represent. Smith was wrong. He knew nothing of Egyptian architectural motif anymore than he knew the Egyptian language. Smith's claim of so-called
"pillars of heaven" is just the opposite of what the symbols represent. This is getting to be quite a habit for Smith in getting everything diametrically opposed to the truth and interpreting Egyptian iconography in opposite to what is factually true.
The rectangles aren't pillars in heaven but are bricks (or stone) on earth! Other examples of Smith's blunders are shown in Facsimile No. 3, women are men and a god is a slave -- a vile Asiatic (Abraham) sitting on a god's throne in heaven! Smith's interpretations were almost always the opposite of the truth! It's really rather bizarre. It's a freak show!!!
But I digress. Back to Fig. 11, which is the baseline of the drawing and the foundation upon which the site is geographically located seeing the temple walls or palace facade in which it represents is ever adjacent to the Nile river and the Egyptian crocodile. The scene is in Egypt, period. You can forget about the so-called plain of Olishem. The Egyptian artist was mindful of proximity and convention using art to show the importance and placement of each particular layer or concept. The building is near the Nile, the Nile hosts the crocodile, the crocodile is near the lion bed where Osiris is rising. Proximity and geographic design is part of the message of the papyrus!
Robert Ritner gives an excellent sumnation of fig. 11, in
Part I, advance forward to the 1:46:00 mark.
Ritner tells us that the series of rectangular shapes represent a niched bricking motif, a standard feature of Egyptian design that goes back to early Egypt and has interconnections between Egypt and Sumer brick archetecture and is used as a baseline in design for Egyptian art.
Everything Smith said about Facsimile No.1, from top to bottom, was essentially false -- it's just wrong, all of it. The text of the Book of Abraham attempts to take the scene out of Egypt to some fantasized place in Chaldea. That too is wrong. The Facsimile Explanations and the site or location as told in the story of the Book of Abraham is wrong. John Gee can search for the plain of Olishem until the day he dies but he will never find it not even after he dies!
Sorry John, but you're wrong and you can blame Joseph Smith for that.