Analysis and Translation of The Papyrus
In November 1967 the LDS church asked Hugh Nibley, a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University (BYU), to study the fragments. Nibley was a linguist, but not an Egyptologist, and subsequently studied under John A. Wilson and Klaus Baer in an attempt to learn enough about the Egyptian characters to translate them himself. The LDS church published sepia photographs of the papyri in its magazine "The Improvement Era" in February 1968, although a translation was not provided at the time. The editors of an independent quarterly journal Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, arranged a translation of the papyri from the photographs by three American Egyptologists; John A. Wilson (University of Chicago, Oriental Institute), Klaus Baer (University of Chicago, Oriental Institute), and Richard A. Parker (Director of the Department of Egyptology, Brown University). Their translations were published in Dialogue in the summer and autumn of 1968.
Other translations and analyses have been performed at various times since 1968 by Mormon and non-Mormon scholars, including Michael D. Rhodes (BYU), John Gee (BYU), and Robert K. Ritner (University of Chicago). The translations among all of these scholars are consistent.
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