When Hugh Nibley first wrote The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, he wrote it for an audience that understood things both Egyptian and Latter-day Saint. It was an audience that at the time did not exist. For the bemused audience that did find the book, many failed to comprehend it. Many of Nibley's readers have supposed that, like Nibley's other works, it was designed to be read straight through and have expressed frustration at the difficulty of doing so. Only the first few chapters are designed to be read in this manner. The rest of the book is a commentary on a particular text, Papyrus Louvre N. 3284, which Nibley introduced in his early chapters. If the reader desires to know a bit more about a particular passage in the text, he or she should go to the appropriate place in the commentary.