"At this point I decided to seriously investigate the Book of Abraham. For anyone who may read this who isn't familiar with the Book of Abraham, let me give you a brief history of this particular piece of Mormon scripture. A man named Michael Chandler was traveling through the Eastern United States with about a dozen Egyptian mummies and a couple rolls of Egyptian papyri in the mid 1830's, occasionally selling a mummy here and there. By the time he reached Kirtland, Ohio in 1835 (where the Saints were currently gathered) he had four mummies and two scrolls of papyri left. He would charge people a nominal fee to let them view the papyri and mummies. It was brought to his attention that a local man (Joseph Smith) might be able to translate the papyri. When Joseph looked at it he claimed that one scroll was an account of Abraham (the same Abraham in the Old Testament) in Egypt and that it was written by Abraham's own hand. Joseph claimed that the other scroll was an account of Joseph who was sold into Egypt by his brothers and his travails in Egypt. This was quite a find indeed. Several Church members pooled their funds and bought the papyri for $2,400 and Joseph proceeded to "translate" the papyri that contained the story of Abraham in Egypt. (See History of the Church Vol. 2, pp. 235, 236, 348-351 for a more detailed account)
The "translation" of the papyri was published in the Times and Seasons (a Nauvoo newspaper) as the "Book of Abraham". At the time Joseph Smith "translated" the papyri, the ability to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics was in its infancy so there was nobody knowledgeable enough to dispute his claims.
In 1967, when the original papyri was found in a New York museum and turned over to the Church, every single legitimate Egyptologist that studied the Book of Abraham papyri came to the conclusion that it was nothing more than funerary text taken from the Book of Breathings/Book of the Dead. Even Mormon scholars agree that "...when one compares the text of the Book of Abraham with a translation of the Book of Breathings; they clearly are not the same." (Ensign, July 1988, pg. 51)
Since 1967 the church has come up with at least 10 different theories as to why Joseph's translation doesn't match the actual translation of the papyri. The most common excuse the Church has given over the past 3 decades is the opinion that we don't have all of the original papyri that Joseph Smith worked with and it is possible that the part of the papyri that Joseph actually translated the Book of Abraham from is still lost.
In an Ensign article from July, 1988, BYU employee Michael D. Rhodes wrote: "The Prophet described the papyrus he used in translation in these words: ''The record .. found with the mummies, is beautifully written on papyrus, with black, and a small part red, ink or paint, in perfect preservation.'' (History of the Church, 2:348.) The Book of Breathings papyrus has no writing in red ink and is in an extremely poor state of preservation. It must have been in much the same condition in Joseph Smith's day when fragments of it were glued haphazardly to other totally unrelated papyri." (Michael D. Rhodes, "I Have a Question," Ensign, July 1988, pp.51)
This was yet another example of the Church intentionally omitting certain details to make the facts fit their predetermined conclusion that the Church is true. In the Ensign article written by Michael Rhodes, he quoted Joseph Smith's description of the papyri but you'll notice that he omitted something in the sentence "The record .. found with the mummies, is beautifully written on papyrus, with black, and a small part red, ink or paint, in perfect preservation." This sentence originally read, "The record of Abraham and Joseph, found with the mummies, is beautifully written on papyrus, with black, and a small part red, ink or paint, in perfect preservation."
Mr. Rhodes had to have known that by removing those four little words ("of Abraham and Joseph") and then describing the quote from Joseph Smith as the Prophets' description for "...the papyrus he used in translation..." he was completely changing the original meaning of the quote from that of a general description of all of the Egyptian papyri to just a description of the papyri from which the Book of Abraham came from. The fact of the matter is that the scroll of papyri which Joseph Smith referred to as the "Book of Abraham" was in a state of poor preservation from the moment it fell into the Church's hands and had never contained any red ink. However, "...written on papyrus, with black, and a small part red, ink or paint, in perfect preservation" perfectly describes the untranslated scroll that was referred to as the "Book of Joseph".
Also, there is rock solid evidence that the papyri remains that are currently in the Church's possession to this day are the same scraps of papyri that Joseph Smith claimed to have translated into what is now known as the Book of Abraham.
I am still confused as to why the current "prophet, seer and revelator" of the Church doesn't use his ability as a "seer" to translate the papyri that Joseph Smith clearly identified as the "Book of Joseph". If he was in fact a true "Seer", Gordon B. Hinckley should have no trouble with such a task."