Claim 7 of 9 · Case 11 · Mormonism
The Book of Abraham was translated from Egyptian papyri that still survive, and Egyptologists read them as ordinary funerary texts, not the words of Abraham.
One claim from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Joseph Smith published the Book of Abraham in 1842 and said he had translated it from Egyptian papyri the church bought along with several mummies in 1835. He presented it as the writing of Abraham himself. For a long time the papyri were thought lost in the Chicago fire of 1871, so the translation could not be checked against its source. Then in 1966 several of the original fragments were found again in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and returned to the church. Egyptologists who have examined them, including scholars with no stake in the question, identify them as standard Egyptian funerary documents, mainly a Book of Breathings and part of a Book of the Dead, from roughly the first century BC, about a thousand years after Abraham. They do not mention him. This is the rare case where a scripture’s own source text can be read today, so it is worth handling carefully and fairly.
Backed by 2 pieces of evidence
The church’s Gospel Topics essay, “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham”
This is the strongest kind of source, the tradition speaking about itself. The church grants the central facts, so the conversation is not about whether the fragments say Abraham. It is about what translated means here.
Robert K. Ritner, “The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition”
Here is an outside expert with the training to read the fragments, reaching the same conclusion the church’s own essay reports the scholars reaching. When the insider account and the outside specialist agree on the facts, the facts are settled and the discussion moves to interpretation.