What Were the Kirtland Egyptian Papers and GAEL Project?

The GAEL (Grammar and Egyptian Alphabet) project found in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers are a collection of documents created between July and November 1835 that are closely connected to the early work surrounding the Book of Abraham. They include documents titled, The Egyptian Alphabet, the Egyptian Grammar, and the Egyptian Counting document, along with several Book of Abraham manuscripts with symbols written in the margins.

What are the Kirtland Egyptian Papers?

Critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have claimed that the Kirtland Egyptian Papers were made up documents that Joseph Smith fabricated to make it look like he was actually able to translate the Egyptian Papyrus.

According to the critics, the Grammar and Egyptian Alphabet prove Joseph Smith could not translate Egyptian because the characters and the text next to them do not match what modern Egyptologists say those characters mean. Therefore, they argue, Joseph was a fraud who simply made up the Book of Abraham.

This argument assumes these documents were used by Joseph Smith to translate the papyri.

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers Were Not a Translation Tool

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers were probably not Joseph Smith’s original instrument for receiving the Book of Abraham translation. But they may preserve the early Saints’ attempt to document, organize, and understand the layered meanings Joseph was unfolding from the papyri. Like all of Joseph’s other translations of sacred texts, this translation was by the gift and power of God.

The GAEL appears to be a degree-based decoding key, where symbolic characters could be read at different levels: surface sign, name, narrative, priesthood, temple, and cosmological meaning.

The GAEL helps decide which meanings to unfold:

residence
fruitful place
holiness and rest
seeing
firstborn
first man
father/fathers
royal authority
Pharaoh
virtue
priesthood

Those categories line up directly with the Book of Abraham manuscript material: priesthood, fathers, idolatry, Pharaoh, sacrifice, and connect all three Facsimiles together.

Scholars note that when Joseph Smith first received the papyri in Kirtland, he and his associates worked immediately enough that portions (“leaves”) of the Book of Abraham translation were produced by the next day, which Oliver Cowdery read aloud.

The Book of Abraham is not a long book. It is only 5 chapters. Only 13 pages. A significant portion of it was translated immediately.

The Book of Abraham Came First

Detailed analysis of the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar project show that their explanations depend on the English text of the Book of Abraham, especially chapters 1 through 3. The vocabulary used in the documents closely matches Abraham but does not match comparable Genesis passages. This indicates the authors already knew the Abraham text.

William Schryver demonstrated this by analyzing the vocabulary statistically and contextually. Over 90 percent of the meaningful words in the Alphabet explanations appear in Abraham 1 to 3, but not in Genesis 12 or 15.

The documents known as Alphabet and Grammar were created after the Book of Abraham text already existed.

Theory of Kirtland Egyptian Papers as a Rosetta Stone

Hugh Nibley and other respected Latter-day Saint scholars recognized that the Kirtland Egyptian Papers were not a simple translation manuscript in the ordinary sense. One common explanation has been that the brethren may have been working backward from the already revealed Book of Abraham text, trying to understand how the Egyptian characters related to the English revelation.

In that model, the Kirtland Egyptian Papers were not the source of the translation. They were an attempt to study, organize, or systematize what had already been revealed.

That explanation is helpful, but it may still underestimate what the early brethren were doing.

If the GAEL is judged as an attempt to create a modern Egyptological dictionary, then yes, it appears to fail. The sounds and explanations do not line up neatly with standard Egyptian grammar. But the documents do not behave like a normal dictionary. They speak in terms of degrees, expanded meanings, first fathers, priesthood, residence, seeing, holiness, Pharaoh, and sacred order.

Nibley seemed to understand that something deeper was going on. The Kirtland Egyptian Papers were an early attempt to document a layered symbolic system, one in which Egyptian characters could function as compressed anchors for revealed Abrahamic meaning.

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers Were Never an Attempt to Translate

William Schryver’s research argues that the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, including the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, were never intended to function as a Rosetta Stone or as a tool to decipher Egyptian.

Instead, his conclusion is that the project served a different purpose, focused on symbolic representation and internal use rather than linguistic translation.

Schryver’s research points to the project, largely driven by W. W. Phelps, as the development of a cipher or coding system used to organize and share sacred doctrine, not an attempt to translate the papyri.

This GAEL project functioned as a coded system, not as a method for translating Egyptian, but as a way to organize, preserve, and selectively share advanced doctrine among a small group of trusted believers at a time when the Church had already suffered real consequences for revealing too much, too fast.

But why a coded system for sharing revealed doctrine?

Pure Language Theory

Others theories have speculated that W. W. Phelps’s “Pure Language” project was an attempt to recover or reconstruct the Adamic language spoken before the Fall. Influenced by biblical passages and early Latter-day Saint ideas about a divinely given language, Phelps explored the idea that ancient languages—especially Hebrew and what he called “Egyptian”—preserved fragments of this primal tongue. The project was less about scholarly linguistics and more about seeking a sacred, symbolic language capable of expressing divine truths more perfectly than ordinary speech.

The new evidence suggests that Joseph Smith and WW Phelps may have been trying to describe a real symbolic-revelatory system operating in the Abraham materials: characters that could hold sound, image, name, narrative, priesthood, temple, and cosmic meaning at the same time.

Pure Language to Understand Eternal Truth

I have a theory of what the goal of the GAEL project was.

It relates, at least in part, to the idea of a “pure language.” But what did pure language actually mean?

Zephaniah 3:8-9, speaks of God restoring to the people a “pure language” so they may “call upon the name of the Lord.” This may very well refer to ritualistic temple like worship.

For the early saints, pure language may have been associated with God’s mode of communicating eternal realities with his covenant children. The Doctrine and Covenants, especially Sections 88 and 93, are full of references of receiving “light and truth” as the language of personal revelation from God.

For me, when I receive revelation from God while studying scriptures, it is often very difficult for me to articulate these truths into English to share with my family and Sunday School classes. I think many others struggle with this as well. We receive light, truth, love and knowledge, but just can’t share it the same way we think and feel it.

Joseph Smith was seeking a restoration of all truth—not just Christ’s New Testament Church, but a restoration of ancient truth, back from the beginning. In an 1832 letter to WW Phelps he expressed frustration with the limits of written language and its inability to convey spiritual truth and divine understanding. wrote,

Oh Lord God, deliver us in thy due time from the little narrow prison almost as it were of total darkness of paper and pen and ink and a crooked, broken, scattered and imperfect language.

We also know that the Book of Abraham introduces significant doctrine with strong parallels to temple worship and the endowment. When we have received light and truth, sometimes symbols can help us better understand that truth better than words.

My theory is that the GAEL project was an early attempt to express and share temple doctrine within a structured framework before temples were available.

I believe that as Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham (possibly also as he translated the Book of Mormon), he recognized a form of ancient layered encoding in which characters could carry multiple degrees of meaning. Joseph and his associates may have then tried to understand, document, and imitate that system through the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, possibly with the hope of using symbolic language to preserve and share sacred truths in a controlled way.

The GAEL Project: Pre-Temple Doctrinal Framework

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers reflect an early attempt to organize a way to share sacred doctrine in a safe, controlled, symbolic way before temple worship existed.

The use of layered meanings, restricted interpretation, and compressed symbols points to a brainstorming phase in which deep doctrine and complex ideas could be preserved for a small circle, line upon line, without public exposure or the consequences that had followed from sharing new doctrine too quickly.

While most of the GAEL project involves text and ideas from the Book of Abraham, it also includes passages in sections 76 and 88 of the Doctrine & Covenants.

As temple ordinances later provided a ritual framework for conveying these truths, the need for a written symbolic system became obsolete and so the project was abandoned.

Historical Events Supporting This Theory

Let’s review some of the events in history that support this theory.

February 1832: Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon receive “The Vision” that became Doctrine and Covenants 76
Spring 1832: Backlash follows, including apostasy and violence. Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon are dragged from John Johnson’s home in Hiram, Ohio, beaten, tarred, and feathered by a mob
1833: Severe persecution of the Missouri Saints and expulsion from Jackson County
1834–1835: Preparations begin for the publication of the Doctrine and Covenants, which includes section 76 and 88.
May 1835: Phelps writes a letter to his wife showing a table of “A specimine of some of the pure language” with characters that represent meaning.
July 1835: Michael Chandler arrives in Kirtland with mummies and papyri
July 1835: Joseph Smith begins translating the Book of Abraham
July to November 1835: Work begins on the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar Project
August 1835: Doctrine and Covenants is published
Fall 1835 to early 1836: Egyptian Alphabet & Grammar expansions continue by Phelps and Parrish
January 21 1836: First Washings and Anointing’s performed in Kirtland Temple.
March 27, 1836: Kirtland Temple Dedicated
March 1, 1842: First part of Book of Abraham published in Times and Seasons
May 4, 1842: First Endowments Performed in Red Brick Store
May 15, 1842: Abraham 2-5 published in Times and Season

The Fallout from Doctrine and Covenants 76

A catalyst for the need to reserve sacred doctrine for symbolic and private settings may have occurred after the backlash that followed Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon receiving “The Vision,” now known as Doctrine and Covenants 76, in 1832.

This revelation taught ideas that directly contradicted mainstream Christianity:

There is no endless hell
Multiple kingdoms of glory
Temporary punishment after death
Salvation for nearly all humanity
Glory based on law and knowledge

The reaction was intense. Many embraced the revelation and found hope in it, especially in contrast to the Calvinist ideas that prevailed at the time. Others struggled with it and concluded that Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet.

Joseph Wakefield, a high priest and missionary, rejected the revelation and left the Church, later opposing Joseph Smith publicly. Many Saints wrestled with the doctrine, and critics pointed to it as evidence of heresy.

Brigham Young later acknowledged that the revelation contradicted everything he believed at the time and that it took him years to fully accept it.

Only weeks after the revelation, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were attacked by a mob. Joseph was beaten and tarred and feathered. Sidney was beaten so severely that he was delirious for days. These events occurred in the same period when the doctrines revealed in the vision were provoking strong opposition.

Sharing new doctrine amongst a church that consisted entirely of new converts was causing real harm.

Coding Was Already Being Used

By 1834, Church leaders were using coded names in revelations to protect people and sensitive information.

Doctrine and Covenants 104 used substitute names such as:

Enoch for Joseph Smith
Ahashdah for Newel K. Whitney
Olihah for Oliver Cowdery
Shinehah for Kirtland

These were practical substitutions, not symbolism. For the protection of the living people that these revelations involved.

William W. Phelps and the Push Toward Symbolic Systems

William W. Phelps was the primary author of the Egyptian Grammar documents, and potentially the driving force behind the project. Nearly all pages are in his handwriting, with minor later additions by Warren Parrish.

Persecution in Missouri

W.W. Phelps understood firsthand the consequences of public language. His 1833 article on “Free People of Color” in the Evening and the Morning Star was the catalyst that lead to mob violence and the expulsion of the Saints from Jackson County, Missouri. The words he wrote were misundersthood and the saints suffered greatly because of them.

Desire to Create Symbolic Pure Language

Phelps also had an interest in this “pure language” that he and Joseph had previously discussed. In a letter to his wife Sally dated May 1835, more than a month before the papyri arrived in Kirtland, Phelps included a table of invented characters tied to doctrinal meanings. He labeled it “a specimen of some of the pure language.”

His concept relied on character-based symbolic encoding. The characters used in this letter resemble Masonic glyphs or symbolic shorthand common in Masonic coding systems. This was before the arrival of the Egyptian papyri in Kirtland, showing that Phelps’s work on the symbolic “pure” language project was already underway and was not prompted by the papyri themselves.

What the Kirtland Egyptian Papers Actually Are

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers have four different elements to them:

The first part of this video explains these documents very clearly and shows visuals making them easier to understand.

Egyptian Alphabet – 1st Degree

The Egyptian Alphabet appears to have been a shared project involving at least Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and W. W. Phelps. All three of these brethren have similar pages titled “Egyptian Alphabet” primarily in their own handwriting, almost as if they each were creating their own decipher key. Each page is organized into three basic columns.

Some characters in the Alphabet and Grammar appear to be adapted, composite, or symbolic signs, while others overlap with the Abraham manuscripts and the Facsimile 1 character system. The project may have blended copied Egyptian characters, adapted signs, and symbolic shorthand into one interpretive framework.

The second column gives a sound, name, or short word associated with that character.

The third column explains what the character represents, often in the form of a doctrinal idea rather than a simple definition.

The Egyptian Alphabet document appears to be the “1st Degree” of this coding simple, or the simplest form, the lowest base level of meaning for each symbol.

Joseph Smiths Role in the Egyptian Alphabet

The three surviving copies show clear differences in role and development. Joseph Smith’s copy is the least developed in terms of written explanation, with pages that mostly list characters and brief labels and very little elaboration. This pattern suggests he was involved at an early stage by providing the core doctrinal framework that needed to be included, likely outlining the key ideas as the prophet and revelator. Shaping the way that characters could have multiple meanings.

The expansion, refinement, and systematizing of those ideas appear to have been carried out by his scribes. Joseph’s copy reflects oversight and direction, with no indication that he was attempting to fully develop or formalize the symbolic system himself. Oliver’s copy contains longer explanations and Phelps is the most complete and developed.

This “Alphabet” seems to have been worked on after only the first part of the Book of Abraham was translated. It’s not an alphabet at all, includes many characters that are not Egyptian. Naming this document the “Egyptian Alphabet” would confuse someone looking for a coding decipher guide.

If what we have is all the work they did on the Alphabet portion of the project it appears that they abandoned that step, as they never got around to adding meaning to many of the characters written in the left column. Almost as if the first degree of meaning really wasn’t all that important.

Egyptian Grammar – Mid Degrees

The Egyptian grammar appears to be an expansion of the Alphabet. Yet when I look at it and compare it to the copies of the Alphabet we have, there are many symbols in it that I can’t find on the Alphabet. The Egyptian Grammar utilizes meanings layered in degrees, where a single character can represent a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire doctrine.

The beginning of the Egyptian Grammar pages discusses how one line below the character puts it in the 4th degree, two lines 3rd degree, and three horizontal lines it is the 2nd degree. This document relied on the entirety of the translated Book of Abraham including facsimile 2 to provide expanded degrees of meaning using the coding system being developed.

The Egyptian Grammar lays out multiple degrees of more complex meaning for the same character, moving from short definitions to long doctrinal explanations.

These expansions closely follow existing revelations, especially the Book of Abraham and sections 76 and 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants. The content shows that the doctrine already existed and was being reorganized, layered, and systematized rather than discovered through translation.

While the Alphabet functions like a key or index with the basic surface level meaning, the Grammar functions like an interpretive framework. It shows how one symbol could stand for an entire chain of ideas depending on the level or degree being invoked.

This fits a symbolic or coded system where meaning is controlled by context and shared understanding. The Grammar is almost entirely in Phelps’s handwriting, which supports the idea that he may have been the primary architect of the system. Its level of organization and completeness also suggests it was written after the Alphabet.

Page 4 of the Egyptian Grammar document appears to be what William Clayton assumed was Joseph Smith’s translation of the hoax Kinderhook plates in 1842. Knowing that this wasn’t a translation device refutes anti-Mormon claims that Joseph Smith translated the Kinderhook Plates.

Egyptian Counting

The Egyptian Counting document assigns made-up symbols next to English number words and shows how they can be combined to represent larger numbers. The meanings clearly come first and the symbols are added afterward, which is the opposite of translation.

Because the same substitution pattern appears in the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, this document strongly shows the project was about encoding information into symbols, not translating Egyptian. Not about Egyptian numbers or counting. The Egyptian counting is a way to code numbers so that they can be shared by only those that understand the code.

Abraham Manuscripts

Translation of the Book of Abraham

The Abraham manuscripts are copies of the Book of Abraham text with Egyptian characters written in the margins. These characters correspond to the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar project, and are labeled by part and degree, including references to the fifth degree.

These manuscripts do not look like Joseph Smith’s original manuscript of translated text, where the English text was first being revealed. They look more like working documents created after the Book of Abraham English text already existed. The characters appear to function as reference points, showing where a symbol or character applied to a block of the ‘5th degree” of Abrahamic meaning.

In other words, the characters were not producing the English text in a simple one-character, one-word manner. They were being used to show how a character could expand into a larger section of revealed meaning. The 5th Degree seems to relate to the Priesthood.

These manuscripts are better understood as degree-based working copies. They show Phelps, Parrish, and the early brethren trying to map Egyptian characters onto the already revealed Abraham text, demonstrating how a single character or cluster could “unzip” into entire paragraphs of scripture with different meaning.

This also explains why the marginal characters are important. These were the anchors. They connected the Book of Abraham text to the layered symbolic system being developed in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.

How the Coding System Worked

The system organizes doctrine symbolically. Characters act as containers for ideas rather than words. Meanings expand by degree. The same character can represent different levels of meaning depending on context.

This approach fits early nineteenth-century ideas about ancient languages, where one symbol could convey entire concepts. It also aligns with cipher systems used in Masonic and esoteric traditions familiar to Phelps.

The coding system also fits the world of late Egyptian and Ptolemaic writing. Ptolemaic temple texts often used layered meanings, expanded sign values, puns, symbolism, and theological wordplay. A character could carry a surface meaning, a sound value, a visual meaning, and a deeper sacred meaning at the same time.

Hor papyrus connected to Facsimile 1 dates to the same general era when this layered style was flourishing. The GAEL’s use of “degrees” may preserve an early attempt to describe that kind of system: characters that could expand into names, places, priesthood themes, temple movement, and cosmic order.

The GAEL Helps Decide the Unzip

The GAEL helps determine which meanings should be unfolded. It appears to provide that guide, working as the decoding key.

If a character can carry sound, image, symbol, doctrine, and narrative at the same time, then something has to guide the interpretation.

It points toward the same categories that dominate the Book of Abraham:

residence, fathers, firstborn, seeing, holiness, rest, priesthood, Pharaoh, virtue, authority, and degrees of glory.

These are the same themes found in Abraham’s story: the residence of the fathers, the right of the firstborn, the priesthood of the fathers, the corruption of Pharaoh’s priesthood, the sacrifice of the virtuous virgins, and Abraham’s movement toward a higher sacred order.

So the GAEL was a symbolic system and a filter that helped decide which layer of meaning was being “unzipped” from the characters.

The Ptolemaic-style character values provide the possible meanings. The GAEL helps identify the Abrahamic direction of those meanings. The Book of Abraham shows the full revealed expansion.

It is also interesting that, although Joseph Smith began translating the Book of Abraham in 1835, it was not published until 1842 in the Times and Seasons, just a few months before the introduction of the temple endowment.

It was later included in book form in the 1851 Pearl of Great Price and formally canonized as scripture in 1880.

If the Book of Abraham represented the highest-degree unfolding of sacred material, the early Saints may not have immediately known how much of it should be made public or how quickly it should be shared. The Kirtland Egyptian Papers may reflect that tension: an attempt to preserve, organize, and understand sacred meaning before the Church had a fully developed temple framework for teaching those truths.

Calling the system “Egyptian” likely served two purposes. It aligned with beliefs about ancient sacred language, and it acted as a cover. A document titled “Egyptian Grammar” would attract less attention than one openly labeled as a doctrinal code.

5th Degree – Priesthood Degree

The fifth degree appears to unlock the priesthood-theological layer of the Abraham story. At this level, the characters unfold the central conflict of Abraham 1: Abraham’s claim to the true priesthood of the fathers, the corruption of his inherited family order, and the counterfeit authority of Pharaoh’s priesthood.

The first-degree meanings of the Facsimile 1 characters that appear in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers already point in this direction:

first being, first man, kingly power, dominion, royal blood, Pharaoh, crown, queen, virgin, virtue, and royal lineage.

Those are the same themes that dominate Abraham 1: firstborn rights, Adamic authority, priesthood lineage, Pharaoh’s royal claim, and the virtuous virgins sacrificed by a false priesthood system.

The fifth degree then expands those same ideas into the full priesthood drama:

Abraham begins in a fallen father-house. He seeks the firstborn priesthood right that traces back through Adam and the fathers. His own fathers reject righteousness and turn to false gods. Pharaoh’s priesthood claims sacred authority but uses it for idolatry and sacrifice. Abraham is brought to the altar, threatened with death, delivered by God, and moved toward the true covenant authority and divine priesthood he was seeking from the beginning.

So the fifth degree takes the first-degree themes of first man, royal power, Pharaoh, virtue, and lineage, then unfolds them into the priesthood-theological storyline of Abraham 1.

The Doctrines in a Symbolic Language

The Grammar encodes doctrines that were considered sacred, controversial, and or would soon become published and thus available to the public. The major topics of the GAEL project were:

1. Divine Authority and Priesthood

Core idea: Authority originates with God and is passed down through appointed lineage and covenant.

Supporting elements found in the Alphabet and Grammar:

Right of the firstborn
Patriarchal authority
High priesthood
Authority passed from the fathers
Appointment before the foundation of the world
Foreordination
Lawful heirs to priesthood
Governance established by divine decree