BYU Studies Quarterly

Volume 51 Issue 1 Article 10

1-1-2012

One Eternal Round

Hugh W. Nibley

Michael D. Rhodes

Gary P. Gillum

Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq

Part of the Mormon Studies Commons, and the Religious Education Commons

Recommended Citation
Nibley, Hugh W.; Rhodes, Michael D.; and Gillum, Gary P. (2012) "One Eternal Round," BYU Studies
Quarterly: Vol. 51 : Iss. 1 , Article 10.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol51/iss1/10

This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been
accepted for inclusion in BYU Studies Quarterly by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more
information, please contact [email protected].
 Nibley et al.: One Eternal Round

Hugh Nibley and Michael D. Rhodes. One Eternal Round.

BOOK REVIEWS

The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, volume 19, Ancient History.

Salt Lake City: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies
and The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2010.

Reviewed by Gary P. Gillum

O n October 10, 2003, some eighteen months before Hugh Nibley passed
away, I was accompanied by five of my students to Nibley’s house so
that we could assist two university archivists, Brad Westwood and John
Murphy, in boxing up Nibley’s considerable book collection for eventual
placement in the Hugh Nibley Ancient Studies Room in the Harold B. Lee
Library. While awaiting the arrival of the archivists, we surrounded Nibley’s
bed in the living room, joking and asking questions. One student asked
about the completion of what everyone was calling Nibley’s magnum opus.
With a chuckle, Nibley responded, “Still round and round.”
Hugh Nibley began serious research on One Eternal Round as early as
1988.1 When Nibley’s long-time colleague Michael D. Rhodes took over the
project following Nibley’s death in 2005, he was faced with thirty boxes of
research notes and drafts, 450 computer files, and as many as twenty ver-
sions of one chapter.2 Fortunately, Michael is familiar with most of Nibley’s
prodigious output, as well as the subjects listed in the preface, which are a
reflection of Nibley’s mind and interests and which are all within the scope
of One Eternal Round:
Mathematics, Alexander the Great, the Egyptian pharaohs Sheshonq and
Sesostris, medieval Jewish Kabbala, medieval Jewish and Islamic traditions

1. From an entry in my journal on June 8, 1988: “When I called Nibley to try to

reschedule a session to talk to him about Abraham in Egypt, he grumbled about
salvaging some messed-up footnotes for his book on facsimile no. 2.”
2. Hugh Nibley’s secretary at the time, Pat Ward, deserves a great deal of praise
for keeping the files manageable and findable. It was also helpful to me to have
Michael’s draft in hand while I processed all of these notes and files for the Uni-
versity Archives at BYU, beginning in 2006. The thirty boxes Michael worked with
(plus some additional materials found later) are now represented by 115 archival
boxes (boxes 178–292), a very large percentage of the total 294 archival boxes of
Nibley’s total collection.

104 BYU Studies Quarterly 51, no. 1 (12)

Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2012 1
 BYU Studies Quarterly, Vol. 51, Iss. 1 [2012], Art. 10
Review of One Eternal Round V 105

about Abraham, ancient Hermeticism, Greek myths and their relation-

ship to Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths, early Jewish and Christian
apocrypha, ancient Chinese jade disks, Indian mandalas, the Aztec calen-
dar stone, shaman drums, ancient Egyptian mirrors, axial times, the great
year-rites of ancient civilizations, Paleolithic cave drawings in France, the
Tabula Smaragdina, Hopi Indian ceremonies, alchemy, and the relationship
of myth, ritual, and history. (xiv)

Rhodes wrote transitions, additions, and clarifications to the book, but he

successfully kept them to a minimum, wanting to keep “Hugh’s inimitable
style” (xv) of hyperbole, humor, and satire, as well as his penchant for broad
literary references. Also to his credit, Rhodes retained Nibley’s allusions to
his personal life that are sprinkled throughout the work.
The seeds for One Eternal Round were planted in the summer of 1962
when Egyptologist Klaus Baer wrote a critical letter to Hugh Nibley about
the Pearl of Great Price and its Egyptian connections.3 Leaders of The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints asked Nibley to pursue potential
problems concerning the Pearl of Great Price and the Joseph Smith Papyri.
They encouraged Nibley to research these subjects above others, including
the work he was doing on Brigham Young and a list of projects J. Reuben
Clark had encouraged him to pursue.4 Thereafter, except for some related
and important forays into the Book of Mormon and temples, Nibley spent
the majority of his research efforts on “the book that answers all the ques-
tions.” Abraham in Egypt (two editions) and The Message of the Joseph Smith
Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment (also in two editions) were a large share
of those twenty-five years of research. By the late 1980s, Nibley felt that an
important part of the Pearl of Great Price, Facsimile no. 2, had not received
enough attention by secular Egyptologists or by members of the Church.
The result is One Eternal Round, whose intended audience seems to be from
all parts of these widely disparate groups of potential readers.

The Book
If fans are hoping for one of Nibley’s more readable books, they will be
disappointed. One Eternal Round is not a relatively easy read like Temple
and Cosmos or Approaching Zion. Neither is the book a magnum opus in the
sense of its size. Even though this latest publication is over seven hundred

3. For the complete story, see Boyd Petersen, Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life
(Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2002), 313–15.
4. In 1955, President Clark’s to-do list for Nibley included a new translation of
the Bible using ancient sources, a study of the true principles of many of the early
Church fathers, and translating the Aztec Codices. Petersen, Hugh Nibley, 273.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol51/iss1/10 2
 Nibley et al.: One Eternal Round
106 v BYU Studies Quarterly

pages long, Tinkling Cymbals and Abraham in Egypt are even longer. How-
ever, if readers are expecting a magnum opus in the sense that it is the most
complete representation of Nibley’s mind during the 1980s and 1990s, they
will be satisfied—if not mentally overwhelmed—by his dense scholarship
and thoroughness. The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri and Abraham
in Egypt are virtual prerequisites for an elementary understanding of and
appreciation for One Eternal Round. I am confident Nibley intended the
book to be a comprehensive look at Facsimile no. 2, not an introductory
“Hypocephalus 101” course.
However, for those of us whose unbounded curiosity outweighs our
scholarly preparation, several study helps are included. Eighty-six black-
and-white illustrations and eight color plates (meticulously provided by
Michael P. Lyon) will reward hours of personal study, wonder, and specula-
tion. Also, readers need not be multilingual, as English represents the chief
language cited in this work. German sources are by far the second most
cited, followed by smaller numbers of sources in dozens of obscure lan-
guages, like the Armenian version of “Pseudo-Callisthenes.”5
While reading One Eternal Round, I also read a biography of Albert Ein-
stein. I personally find Hugh Nibley to be much like Albert Einstein in per-
spective, genius, love of nature, and the interconnectedness of all things. In
fact, Nibley mentions how “the most sublime aspect of Amun is the way he
brings all things together in one, just as science today looks for the Grand
Unifying Theory” (239). Nibley was a great unifier of ancient religious his-
tory in the same way that Einstein was a unifier of physics.6
While footnotes abound, One Eternal Round lacks an alphabetical bib-
liography. Not only could I have used one to satisfy my own curiosity as a
bibliophile but also because of “Nibliographic” questions from others that
continue to come my way. If the bibliography was excluded in the interest of
saving space, it would be a gracious token for the publisher to supply one on
its website. Of course, problems and oversights of one sort or another are
inevitable in almost all books. Michael Rhodes, sensitive to how important
this book was to Nibley, adds a caveat, paraphrasing Mormon: “And now,
if there are faults they are the mistakes of Mike, wherefore condemn not
the things of Hugh Nibley” (xvi). Knowing the history of this massive work

5. When I processed the Nibley papers for University Archives, I set about sec-
ondarily to discover the exact number of languages Nibley had used in his research,
note cards, and vocabulary flash cards. The resulting number was an astounding
thirty-one.
6. Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2007). On the subject of interconnectedness, I doubt I’m the only one
who sees hints of Einstein’s theory in Doctrine and Covenants 88 and 93.

Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2012 3

 BYU Studies Quarterly, Vol. 51, Iss. 1 [2012], Art. 10
Review of One Eternal Round V 107

and the research that went into it, I find it difficult to criticize One Eternal
Round, any shortcomings notwithstanding.
Michael Rhodes indicates that the reader will be able to distinguish
between his writing and Nibley’s. The writing was seamless enough that I
found very little evidence of that. However, one major addition by Rhodes
should be mentioned. On page 117, Michael Lyon supplies a drawing of
what some archaeologists believe is the world’s oldest temple (Göbekli Tepe
in Turkey, considered 11,600 years old) and the source of human civiliza-
tion. The illustration is from an article published three years after Hugh
Nibley’s passing.7 If Nibley had been alive, he surely would have referred to
this article and added much commentary himself. This rare and welcome
addition by Rhodes is but one example of how surprising discoveries con-
tinue to shed light on ancient history, and the history of the hypocephalus
is another example of an artifact that continues to surprise.

The Hypocephalus
Facsimile no. 2 in the Pearl of Great Price is one of over a hundred speci-
mens, found in nine museums worldwide, of an artifact known to Egyp-
tologists as a hypocephalus (from the Greek, meaning “under the head”).8
The disk was usually between four and seven inches in diameter and made
from various significant materials, from wood to bronze to leather and, on
one occasion, bread dough (188). The owners of hypocephali were either
priests and priestesses of Amun-Re9 or those with whom they associated
(239). Directions for creating a hypocephalus appear in chapter 162 of the
Book of the Dead in Egypt’s Twenty-first Dynasty (1070–940 bc). In Fac-
simile no. 2, eight scenes are presented in panels, which make the Joseph
Smith hypocephalus almost identical with hypocephali in museums in both
Vienna and London (195).
Rhodes provides a brief description of the purpose behind the hypo-
cephalus in his introduction: “Its fundamental purpose was similar to all

7. Andrew Curry, “The World’s First Temple?” Smithsonian 39, no. 8 (2008):
54–60. See also Charles C. Mann, “The Birth of Religion: The World’s First Temple,”
in National Geographic (June 2011): 34ff. Several websites discuss the Great Zim­
babwe Ruins, also reputed to be very ancient.
8. Museums: Cairo, British Museum, Paris, Turin, Berlin, Boston Fine Arts,
University of Pennsylvania, Hermitage, Zagreb, and Vienna (192, 195). Photocop-
ies of most of these examples are found in the Hugh Nibley Papers, L. Tom Perry
Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
9. Min-Amun-Re proclaimed that all the universe is full of life, sustained and
rejuvenated in and by the One at the Center. See Abr. 3:12, 14, 18 and explanations
to figures 5–8; and Moses 1:28.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol51/iss1/10 4
 Nibley et al.: One Eternal Round
108 v BYU Studies Quarterly

Egyptian funerary documents—to ensure the resurrection and deification

of the dead. It graphically portrays the whole creation of God in a circular
or spherical form” (xix). Besides being a creation drama (137), the hypo-
cephalus “represents the circle of the universe” (206).
The hypocephalus may be one of the most significant historical artifacts
to be largely ignored by historians and even many Egyptologists.10 For that
reason, One Eternal Round breaks new ground in Egyptology as well as for
LDS readers. Perhaps this lacuna has come about because of the hidden
nature of the hypocephalus; the Egyptians considered it too sacred for com-
mon consumption, and it was to be understood only by the initiated few.
Egyptologists today increasingly concede that Egyptian religious symbols
involved an esoteric tradition, a supposition that Nibley operated under
for decades—and Joseph Smith long before that. Nibley, who has person-
ally examined 103 of these hypocephali (233), observes that the disk is “first
and last a didactic astronomical chart, which is how Joseph Smith treats
it” (222).

The Chapters
Because there is far too much information to attempt a summary of each of
the fifteen chapters, I will instead provide teasers and insights from some
of the chapters. One wonders how Nibley was able to keep the multifari-
ous details straight in his brain as he worked through each chapter, though
many of his notecards were arranged as neatly as a library card catalog.11
Chapter 1, “The Critics,” traces the contempt some early Egyptologists
had for Egyptian thought. The most influential Egyptologists were disap-
pointed to discover that “religion12 was the whole world of the Egyptians”
(13), and they attempted to dismiss its significance—along with Joseph
Smith’s interpretation of Egyptian religious artifacts. Recently, with the
coming of New School Egyptologists, the religion of the Egyptians has taken
its place as an important system of human thought, seen as a forerunner to
the Greek tradition (16). These new developments in Egyptology should
remind scholars of the resilience of Joseph Smith’s work: “The ancient scrip-
tures revealed through Joseph Smith . . . all begin in the Egyptian setting
and share in many points of Egyptian theological speculation” (13). For

10. Nibley discusses this problem in chapter 1, “The Critics.”

11. Nibley kept 3x5 notecards throughout the house and in a steamer trunk.
When I processed these cards for the Nibley Archives, I measured these stacks of
cards to be thirty-six linear feet.
12. For more information, see Donald B. Redford, ed., The Ancient Gods Speak:
A Guide to Egyptian Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2012 5

 BYU Studies Quarterly, Vol. 51, Iss. 1 [2012], Art. 10
Review of One Eternal Round V 109

example, in chapter 2, we learn that exaltation and infinite progression are

two principles that Latter-day Saints share with Egyptian theology, as well
as cosmism, the belief that the universe’s matter is uncreated (43–44). In the
same vein, chapter 3 discusses dispensations and axial times—periods past
or future in which the council of the gods come together—whether in times
of creation or refreshing or upheaval—to save mankind and bring them to
theosis, or godhood (78).
The middle chapters of the book distinguish between myth, ritual, and
history, especially as they connect with Egyptian annual year-rites.13 “The
purpose of the year-rite was to bring all things together in one clear revela-
tion setting forth man’s condition” (113). Egyptian religion embraced the big
picture: the meaning of life, the divine sphere, the godly cosmos of whole-
ness and unity. And this striving for broad meaning—to both Egyptians
and to Joseph Smith—was not used ultimately to create myth but to recre-
ate reality. To the Egyptians, observes Mircea Eliade, “reality is a function
of the imitation of a celestial archetype” (106). And the Egyptians took this
grand celestial archetype very seriously: evidence of the creation drama,
which is related to the year-rite, has been found in every tomb, temple, or
Coffin Text in Egypt (112). Nibley asserts that the coronation of Mosiah in
the Book of Mormon is one of those year-rites, which harks directly to the
“big picture” depicted in the hypocephalus (113).14
Chapters 7 and 8 explain how to read and interpret the hypocephalus.
“The upper part of the hypocephalus brings together sun, moon, and stars
in their various relationships” (285), as well as showing “a progression both
in time and space” (289). The main purpose of the hypocephalus was to
achieve an unbroken contact between spirit and body until the moment of
resurrection (330). Understanding how both the Egyptians and the Prophet
Joseph used representation will go a long way toward grasping Smith’s inter-
pretations, as well as settling the question of myth versus reality. The man
on the throne in figure 7 does not depict God, but is a representation. Like-
wise, what is being handed over is not the Holy Ghost but “‘the sign of the
Holy Ghost’—a sign does not describe, it only points to something” (304).

13. See also Hugh Nibley, “Roman Games as a Survival of an Archaic Year Cult”
(PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1938).
14. Nibley mentions the Hopi people of the village of Hotevilla, which is
believed to be the center of the world where the complete cycle of the year must
be celebrated to keep the human race in contact with heaven (116). According to a
Shoshone acquaintance of mine, Robert Mendez, there are four centers of the world
which are the keepers of sacred writings, including the Hopi. The others are in the
Swiss Alps, the Kikuyu tribe of Africa, and the Tibetans. See Lance M. Richardson,
“They Saw Our Day” (Brigham City, Utah: Brigham Distributing, 2006).

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol51/iss1/10 6
 Nibley et al.: One Eternal Round
110 v BYU Studies Quarterly

The Egyptians and likewise Joseph Smith used representation to explain a

deeper reality. This device, of course, has a long history, whether it be the
creation story in Genesis or the parables of Jesus.
Chapter 9 reviews ascension dramas, ancient apocryphal texts that
describe the ascension into heaven and cosmic tour of a patriarch, prophet,
apostle, or other religious figure, with his subsequent return to earth to
reveal what he has seen. “The Book of Abraham is a classic example of just
such a text” (346). As such, these ascension dramas have more than a super-
ficial attachment to hypocephali, and Nibley appropriately compares them
with the following ascension dramas: The Testament of Abraham, Apoca-
lypse of Abraham, The Testament of Isaac, the books of Enoch, The Ascen-
sion of Moses, the Book of Ezekiel, Second Baruch, the Book of Ezra, the
Book of Revelation, The Apocalypse of Paul, The Narrative of Zosimus, The
Apocalypse of Elijah, The Ascension of Isaiah, The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
and Joseph and Asenath. While reviewing these cosmic texts, the author
challenges his readers in a passage that can only be called vintage Nibley:
One beauty of the hypocephalus is the broadening of our mean provincial
existence. We ignore the fall of the sparrow, but strangely, God does not;
we “suffer the hungry, and the needy, and the naked, and the sick and the
afflicted to pass by [us], and notice them not” (Mormon 8:39). We are not
even interested in our own world except where it concerns our immediate
success and comfort; we refuse even to consider the doctrines the Prophet
Joseph has given us about the lives of other creatures in their respective
sphere and element. It is the singular value of the Pearl of Great Price that
it recognizes the reality of races, peoples, civilizations, and great empires,
which everyone knows have existed through the ages but to which modern
Christianity grants no access to salvation—to the Christian world it is as if
they had never existed, though they represent at least ninety percent of the
world’s population. (394)

Chapters 10 and 11 examine ancient Hermetic teachings and practices

that were eventually rejected by Christianity but were resurrected by Joseph
Smith. Nibley examines the Hermetic Tabula Smaragdina and “the simi-
larities it shares with various objects described in Egyptian, Mesopotamian,
Chinese, Jewish, Early Christian, gnostic, and Arabic sources. These include
shining stones, jade disks, the tablets of destiny, the Urim and Thummim,
and especially the hypocephalus” (462). Like the philosopher’s stone, these
jewels of discernment and tablets of destiny were instruments on which the
ancients “said all their knowledge rested” (425). Nibley then provides five
examples of Hermetic teachings that were rejected by conventional Chris-
tianity and Judaism but that are found in early Christianity. “The doctors of
the fourth and fifth centuries . . . succeeded in condemning the doctrines of

Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2012 7

 BYU Studies Quarterly, Vol. 51, Iss. 1 [2012], Art. 10
Review of One Eternal Round V 111

(1) literalism, (2) cosmism, (3) plurality of worlds, (4) premortal existence
of man, and (5) the creation as organization of matter” (484). Nibley clearly
points out the relationship between these teachings and Facsimile no. 2.
Towards the end of his life, Nibley bemoaned how he had not learned
much about mathematics—but that he would make up for it in the next
life. However, Michael Rhodes points out that Nibley’s “discovery of the
mathematical relationships depicted on Facsimile 2 such as the golden sec-
tion or phi proportion, the 1-2-√5 triangle, the Pythagorean 3-4-5 triangle,
the Fibonacci series, the phi spiral, the pentagram and the hexagram (star
of David), and their relationship with the biological and mineral worlds are
remarkable and insightful, providing whole new areas of research for future
scholars” (xxi–xxii).15 How fitting that the final chapter of Nibley’s last book
was a foray into realms previously unexplored. And how fitting to end on
that which endures beyond this crumbling sphere: “The day dawns when
the nautilus is no more. The rainbow passes, the flower fades, the mountain
crumbles, the star grows cold. But the beauty in mathematics—the divine
proportion, the golden rectangle, spira mirabilis—endures forevermore.”
For Nibley, this sacred geometry places on the hypocephalus “the stamp of
eternity” (631–32).

Conclusion
Throughout Nibley’s long career, his critics have seen him as a patternist
that has gone too far, conveniently seeing what fits and discarding what
doesn’t. With One Eternal Round, it becomes more difficult to maintain this
disparaging assessment of Nibley’s work. Nibley and Rhodes point out that
they “are not picking convenient parallels at random,” but that the subjects
treated in One Eternal Round are central and were of “immense importance”
(73) to the Egyptians. Joseph Smith’s explanation of Facsimile 2 is at the core
of what they sought after: an understanding of the nature of life, the afterlife,
and the cosmos, all of which would lead them to resurrection and godhood.
Nibley’s book provides significant evidence of Joseph Smith’s authenticity
by presenting for the first time many facts, symbols, and artifacts that he
could not have known about in his day.
Michael Rhodes is to be commended for faithfully observing Nibley’s
intentions in One Eternal Round. In the final words of his introduction,

15. Nibley also looks at the music of the spheres and the Tree of Life in their
connection to the hypocephalus. An updated discussion of the Tree of Life is found
in a new publication by John W. Welch and Donald W. Parry, eds., The Tree of Life:
From Eden to Eternity (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, Utah: Neal A. Maxwell
Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2011).

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol51/iss1/10 8
 Nibley et al.: One Eternal Round
112 v BYU Studies Quarterly

Rhodes writes the following: “One Eternal Round, Hugh Nibley’s final pub-
lication, the culmination of a life dedicated to the gospel of Jesus Christ
and to discovering truth wherever it could be found, is a monument to his
scholarship, his remarkable ability to see relationships in diverse areas of
study and to synthesize them into a comprehensible whole, and his humble
willingness to consecrate his work to the glory of the Lord and the further-
ance of his kingdom here on earth. I consider it one of the greatest blessings
of my life to have known him and to have associated and worked with him”
(xxii). I fully empathize with Rhodes and wholeheartedly give my “Amen.”

Gary P. Gillum (who can be reached via email at [email protected]) is Ancient

Studies Librarian-Emeritus at Brigham Young University. He has compiled, indexed,
archived, edited, and reviewed Hugh Nibley’s writings for over thirty-five years.

Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2012 9