In April 1904, having been instructed by Ra Hoor khuit to 'abstruct' the Stele of Revealing from the 'ill-ordered house' of the Cairo Museum, Crowley dined with Emile Brugsch, the museum's assistant curator and conservator. Over dinner, he commissioned a copy of the Stele. According to Crowley, this was produced by 'one of the artists attached to the museum'.

The copy, the 1904 Abstruction, is unlikely to have been made a local artist but a member of the museum staff. Before the advent of colour photography, most archaeologists needed to be competent artists in order to record their finds.The beautiful watercolours produced by Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, attest to their skill.

The first published image of the Stele of Revealing appeared in The Equinox, Vol.1, no.viii in 1912. A close examination of the plates in the first edition reveals that that copy of the Stele was in fact finely painted on canvas, presumably therefore in oils. However, much of the detail of the first edition plates was lost in subsequent re-printings, making it appear that the Stele was painted on wood.

Comparison between the 1912 Equinox plates and the Stele of Revealing today demonstrate that the artist has attempted to capture both the content and texture of the object itself, including the water damage around Ankh-af-na-khonsu's head and the ridges of aged varnish across the face of the Stele. In fact, the painted images tell us that the condition of the Stele has not changed to any siginificant degree visually since Crowley saw it in 1904. The copy is an accurate representation of the Stele's content. Only the pupil of the eye in the bottom row of heiroglyphs has been ommitted. Overlaying a tracing of the original Stele on the copy also shows only very marginal differences between them, suggesting the copy's drawing was made in this way - either from the actual object or prints of late 19th century photographs. The copy, however, has a distinct character of its own.

Is the Stele reproduced in the 1912 Equinox the copy actually commissioned by Crowley in 1904? The only known photograph of him with the Stele of Revealing shows a deceptively youthful-looking Crowley in a magical robe and crowned with a ureaus.

It is obvious that the Stele in this photograph is a solid object rather than simply painted canvasses. Unfortunately, the exposure of the photograph has obscured most of the detail of the Stele itself. However, the same dark marks on white apron of Ankh-af-na-khonsu can be seen on the 1912 Equinox plate.

In recreating the 1904 Abstruction it reasonable to assume that the 1912 Equinox plates are in fact reproductions of the obverse and reverse sides of the actual copy commissioned by Crowley himself in Cairo. It certainly would have been convenient to have had them painted on canvas and mounted later onto a wooden block. Alternatively, the 1912 Equinox plates are the first and, therfore, closest copies of the 1904 Abstruction itself.

Isreal Regardie, Crowley's secretary from 1928 to 1931, says that the Stele travelled with Crowley wherever he went. According to an inventory of Crowley's possessions at Netherwood in Hastings, compiled by Kenneth Grant in 1945, the Stele stood on a chest of drawers with the original manuscript of the Book of the Law behind it. It is believed that, after Crowley's death, the Stele was sent to Karl Germer in America. Its whereabouts today is unknown, but it is feared that it was destroyed in the fire that consumed Solar Lodge in 1969.

Some forty years later, this historically important version of the Stele of Revealing has been painstakingly re-created.

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