Voree Plates
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The Voree Plates, sometimes called The Record of Rajah Manchou of Vorito were a tiny set of metal plates discovered in 1845 in Voree (now Burlington), Wisconsin.
[edit] History
According to Latter Day Saint or Mormon belief, the ancient inhabitants of the Americas engraved records on metal plates. Joseph Smith Jr., the movement's founding prophet claimed that he translated the Book of Mormon from a set of Golden Plates. Upon Smith's death in 1844, a number of claimants came forward to lead the church, including James J. Strang. Smith's title, as head of the church, was "Prophet, Seer, Revelator and Translator" and Strang was able to emphasize his succession by doing many of the things Smith had done.
In the presence of four witnesses, Strang dug in the Hill of Promise in Voree and discovered 3 small brass plates in a case of baked clay. The witnesses testified that ground had never been disturbed and the burial of the case must consequently have been ancient. As a Prophet and Translator, Strang claimed that he could translate the record, which he asserted was written by an ancient Native American named Rajah Manchou of Vorito.
The translation indicated that Rajah Manchou was, like the Book of Mormon's Moroni, the survivor of a great battle. Manchou also predicted that a "mighty prophet" would one day dwell in Voree and bring forth the plate and the record. Strang published facsimiles of the plates and the translation in his church's newspaper, The Voree Herald. Many Latter Day Saints found the story of the Voree Plates compelling and believed they were a sign that Strang was Smith's true successor. Others contended that the plates were forged by Strang.
Strang was assassinated in 1856 and the Voree Plates have been lost.
[edit] Text and translation
Unlike the text of the Kinderhook Plates which apparently are merely scribbles, the Voree Plates are definitely written in an unknown alphabet. Keith Thompson has conclusively shown that the text of the plates matches Strang's published translation. Although the values of the characters have not been identified, Thompson has shown how words such as "and", "in", "are" reappear in multiple places.
The text is engraved in boustrophedon — the characters begin right to left in the first line, then read left to right in the second, right to left in the third and so on. This method of writing was used in many ancient languages, including archaic Greek and the language of Easter Island.
It is clear that the language of the Voree Plates is not a simple cypher of English, and the brevity of the text may make further decypherment impossible. The fact that the word "and" makes use of the logogram "+", i.e., the plus sign, which is a contraction of et, the Latin word for "and", which appeared in Western literature only in the 15th century, is an argument against the antiquity of the language.
