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* African blacks are excluded from the Mormon priesthood because they are said to be descendants of Noah's cursed son Ham and his wife Egyptus, a descendant of the fratricide Cain. Supported mainly by the Mormon Book of Abraham, a document "translated" from Egyptian burial papyri by Joseph Smith in 1835, this teaching resembles the Southern Christian theology that was used to justify slavery. Historians have noted that the Mormons, who began as egalitarians, were sojourning in slave-state Missouri—and having serious troubles with their Missouri neighbors about their free black brethren—when Smith's revelation was made known. The curse does not apply to other black peoples, such as those in the South Pacific, who have become members of the Mormon priesthood.