Reformed Egyptian

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Not to be confused with Demotic (Egyptian).

According to the Book of Mormon, that scripture of the Latter Day Saint movement was originally written in reformed Egyptian characters[1] on plates of "ore"[2] by prophets living in the Western Hemisphere between 600 BC and AD 421. Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the movement, published the Book of Mormon in 1830 as a translation of these plates. Scholarly reference works on languages do not, however, acknowledge the existence of a "reformed Egyptian" language as it has been described in Mormon belief.[3]

Contents

[edit] Reformed Egyptian and the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon uses the term "reformed Egyptian" in only one verse, Mormon 9:32, which says that "the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, [were] handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech" and that "none other people knoweth our language."[4] The Book of Mormon prophet Moroni also implies that his record is written in "reformed Egyptian" both because it took less space on the plates than Hebrew and because of the evolution of his own language since his ancestors left Jerusalem.[5]

Although accounts of the process differ, Smith is said to have translated the reformed Egyptian characters engraved on golden plates into English through various means including the use of a seer stone or the Urim and Thummim, or both.[6] When Smith finished the translation, he said that he returned the plates to the angel Moroni, and therefore they are unavailable for study.[7]

[edit] Mainstream scholars' view of reformed Egyptian

Standard language reference works contain no reference to "reformed Egyptian".[3] No non-Mormon scholars acknowledge the existence of a "reformed Egyptian" language as it has been described in Mormon belief. For instance, in 1966, John A. Wilson, professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, wrote, "From time to time there are allegations that picture writing has been found in America… In no case has a professional Egyptologist been able to recognize these characters as Egyptian hieroglyphs. From our standpoint there is no such language as 'reformed Egyptian.'"[8] Klaus Baer, another Egyptologist at the University of Chicago, called the characters of the "Caractors" document nothing but "doodlings."[9] Anthropologist Michael D. Coe of Yale University, an expert in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican studies, has written, "Of all the peoples of the pre-Columbian New World, only the ancient Maya had a complete script."[10]

[edit] The "Caractors" document

Caractors document. Also known as the Anthon Transcript
Caractors document. Also known as the Anthon Transcript

In 1828 Martin Harris, a farmer from Palmyra, New York received from Joseph Smith a copy of some of the "reformed Egyptian" characters from the gold plates in order to obtain scholarly opinion about their authenticity. Harris then presented the material to at least three scholars in the eastern United States, the most important being Charles Anthon, a noted classicist at Columbia College.[11]

In 1887, David Whitmer said that he had the piece of paper that Harris had showed to Anthon and the other scholars.[12] This short document is known as the Caractors document or the Anthon Transcript.

[edit] Anthon's account of meeting with Harris

Anthon believed "reformed Egyptian" to be a hoax:[13]

The whole story about my having pronounced the Mormonite inscription to be "reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics" is perfectly false. Some years ago, a plain, and apparently simple-hearted farmer, called upon me… Upon examining the paper in question, I soon came to the conclusion that it was all a trick, perhaps a hoax …On hearing this odd story, I changed my opinion about the paper, and, instead of viewing it any longer as a hoax upon the learned, I began to regard it as part of a scheme to cheat the farmer of his money, and I communicated my suspicions to him, warning him to beware of rogues. He requested an opinion from me in writing, which of course I declined giving, and he then took his leave carrying the paper with him. This paper was in fact a singular scrawl. It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted or placed sideways, were arranged in perpendicular columns and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican Calendar given by Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was derived… the paper contained any thing else but "Egyptian Hieroglyphics."[14]

Pomeroy Tucker, a contemporary of Harris and Joseph Smith, wrote that all the scholars whom Harris visited "were understood to have scouted the whole pretense as too depraved for serious attention, while commiserating the applicant as the victim of fanaticism or insanity."[15]

Because Anthon's delineation seems inconsistent with the "caractors document"—for instance, there is no "rude delineation of a circle"—the latter may be only a portion of the material that Harris took to Anthon. Of course, the professor might also have erred in his description of the caractors document, but as Dan Vogel has noted, he must have realized that the document might be produced and his error revealed.[16]

[edit] Harris' account of his meeting with Anthon

According to an account which Joseph Smith attributed to Harris,[17] Anthon "stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. [Harris] then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic; and he said they were true characters." According to the same account, Anthon provided Harris with a certificate as to the veracity of the characters but tore it up after learning the characters were copied from a book said to have been delivered by an angel.[18] Regardless of whether or not Anthon ever wrote such a certificate, it is highly unlikely that Anthon would have been able to read Egyptian hieroglyphs in the late 1820s when Harris showed him the writing specimen because during this period Egyptology was in its infancy.[19] In any case, after his visit with Anthon, Harris was willing to mortgage his farm to publish the Book of Mormon, although it is also possible that his eagerness was based (as he boasted to his wife and sister-in-law) on his belief that the Book of Mormon would be a financial windfall.[20]

[edit] Hoffman forgeries

Hofmann forgery of "Reformed Egyptian" document, LDS archives. Note the columnar arrangement and the "Mexican Calendar" described by Anthon.
Hofmann forgery of "Reformed Egyptian" document, LDS archives. Note the columnar arrangement and the "Mexican Calendar" described by Anthon.

During the early 1980s, forger Mark Hofmann sold alleged Mormon materials to Mormon investors and the LDS Church, including a sample of reformed Egyptian characters probably copied (somewhat recklessly) from the Caractors Transcript in a manner intended to make them more closely agree with the description given by Anthon.[21]

[edit] "Stick of Joseph"

Main article: Stick of Joseph

In 1844, the LDS church published a broadside about the Book of Mormon called The Stick of Joseph, which reprinted some "reformed Egyptian" characters that resemble those on the Anthon transcript.[22]

[edit] Mormon studies of reformed Egyptian

LDS studies of "reformed Egyptian" are necessarily limited to whatever linguistic evidence might be discovered in the text of the Book of Mormon plus the extant seven-line "Caractors" document that may be or may not be the characters said to have been copied from the gold plates.[23] Some Mormons have attempted to decipher the "Caractors" document but, according to Mormon apologist John Gee, "the corpus is not large enough to render decipherment feasible."[24] Nevertheless, various LDS scholars and one RLDS scholar, have made the attempt, including Ariel L. Crowley,[25] Blair Bryant,[26] and Stan and Polly Johnson.[27]

Others have argued that the characters are early examples of Egyptian symbols being used "to transliterate Hebrew words and vice versa," that demotic is a "reformed Egyptian," and that the mixing of a Semitic language with modified Egyptian characters is demonstrated in inscriptions of ancient Syria and Palestine.[28]

It has been hypothesized that the characters resemble those of other languages[29] including Hebrew,[30] Gregg shorthand,[31] Demotic,[32] Hieratic,[33] Coptic,[34] and Mayan/Olmec.[35] Nevertheless, to make such identifications, the characters often have to be turned upside down or sideways.

[edit] References and notes

  1. ^ Mormon 9:32
  2. ^ 1 Nephi 19:1
  3. ^ a b Standard language references such as Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., The World's Writing Systems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) (990 pages); David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Roger D. Woodard, ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages (Cambridge University Press, 2004) (1162 pages) contain no reference to "reformed Egyptian." "Reformed Egyptian" is also ignored in Andrew Robinson, Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), although it is mentioned in Stephen Williams, Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).
  4. ^ Mormon 9:32-34. The book says that its first author, Nephi, was taught both the "learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians." 1 Nephi 1:2.
  5. ^ Mormon 9:33 Some LDS scholars have interpreted this to mean that while one of the original written languages of Lehi's group was Egyptian, that language evolved (possibly due in part to contact with other cultures) into a language that became a modified or reformed Egyptian. See Reformed Egyptian by William J. Hamblin, "In fact, the word reformed is used in the Book of Mormon in this context as an adjective, meaning "altered, modified, or changed." This is made clear by Mormon, who tells us that "the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, [were] handed down and altered by us" and that "none other people knoweth our language" (Mormon 9:32, 34). Other LDS scholars note that other languages evolved from Egyptian through the centuries and have speculated that the term "reformed Egyptian" might refer to a form of Egyptian writing similar to other modified Egyptian scripts used to write non-Egyptian languages such as hieratic, a priestly shorthand for hieroglyphics thousands of years old by the first millennium B.C., or early Demotic, a derivative of hieratic, perhaps used in northern Egypt fifty years before the time that the Book of Mormon prophet-patriarch Lehi is said to have left Jerusalem for the Americas. See William J. Hamblin, Egyptian However, Richard Packham, a linguist and former LDS, argues that Hebrew is more compact than hieratic Egyptian.Packham website Other critics argue that Smith chose "reformed Egyptian" since it would be an even safer creation than "Egyptian," and since claiming that New World Hebrew had also been modified over time would have provided additional insurance that no linguist might call such a language into question. In "Three Strikes, You're Out! The Quick and Dirty Case Against Mormonism," Kyle J. Gerkin argues that Smith identified "reformed Egyptian" as the source language because many early nineteenth-century scholars knew Hebrew and no one in 1830 could read Egyptian hieroglyphics: "Joseph's choice of 'reformed Egyptian' was a calculated move. At the time, Egyptian was generally believed to be indecipherable, as the grammar worked out from the Rosetta Stone would not be published until 1837." The Secular Web
  6. ^ Michael Morse, Smith's brother-in-law, said that he watched Smith on several occasions and said his "mode of procedure consisted in Joseph's placing the Seer Stone in the crown of a hat, then putting his face into the hat, so as to entirely cover his face." Michael Morse interview with William W. Blair, May 8, 1879, in EMD, 4: 343. Morse was clearly awed by Smith's ability to dictate as he did and called it "a strange piece of work." David Whitmer said that at one point "the plates were not before Joseph while he translated, but seem to have been removed by the custodian angel." David Whitmer Interview with the Chicago Times, August 1875, in EMD, 5: 21. Whitmer also stated that "after affixing the magical spectacles to his eyes, Smith would take the plates and translate the characters one at a time. The graven characters would appear in succession to the seer, and directly under the character, when viewed through the glasses, would be the translation in English." Chicago Tribune, 15 December 1885 in EMD, 5: 124. Isaac Hale said that while Joseph was translating, the plates were "hid in the woods." Hale said that Martin Harris demanded that Smith give him a "greater witness," and Smith told Harris to "go into the woods where the Book of Plates was, and that after he came back, Harris should follow his track in the snow, and find the Book, and examine it for himself. Harris informed me afterwards, that he followed Smith's direction, and could not find the Plates, and was still dissatisfied." "Mormonism, Susquehanna Register and Northern Pennsylvanian 9 (May 1, 1834): 1 in EMD 4: 286–87. "No primary witness reported that Joseph used [the plates] in any way." Grant H. Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 2–5.
  7. ^ "Joseph Smith Interview with Peter Bauder, October 1830" in EMD, 1: 17; "Joseph Smith Interview with Leman Copley, 1831" in EMD, 1: 24–25. Yet even after Smith had returned the plates to the angel, other early LDS Church members testified that an angel had also showed them the plates. Grant Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 201. In 1859, Brigham Young referred to one of these "post-return" testimonies: "Some of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, who handled the plates and conversed with the angels of God, were afterwards left to doubt… One of the Quorum of the Twelve, a young man full of faith and good works, prayed, and the vision of his mind was opened, and the angel of God came and laid the plates before him, and he saw and handled them, and saw the angel." Journal of Discourses, June 5, 1859, 7: 164.
  8. ^ John A. Wilson, March 16, 1966, cited in Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism (Chicago: Moody Press, 1979), ch. 5. Richard A. Parker, department of Egyptology at Brown University, wrote, "No Egyptian writing has been found in this [Western] hemisphere to my knowledge". Parker to Marvin Cowan, March 22, 1966, in Jerald and Sandra Tanner The Changing World of Mormonism (Chicago: Moody Press, 1979), ch. 5. In the same letter Parker said, "I do not know of any language such as Reformed Egyptian". In 1959, Mormon archaeologist Ross T. Christensen said that "'reformed' Egyptian" is a "form of writing which we have not yet identified in the archaeological material available to us". Book of Mormon Institute, December 5, 1959, BYU, 1964 ed., p. 10, cited in Jerald and Sandra Tanner The Changing World of Mormonism (Chicago: Moody Press, 1979), ch. 5.
  9. ^ Sunstone, (May–June 1980), 30. An early twentieth century scholar said that the "Carators" document looked more like "deformed English." Charles A. Shook, Cumorah Revisited or, "The Book of Mormon" and the Claims of the Mormons Reexamined from the Viewpoint of American Archaeology and Ethnology (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Company, 1910), 538.
  10. ^ Michael D. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999, preface.
  11. ^ Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004), 113–16.
  12. ^ "Address to All Believers," 11. This "Caractors document" is currently owned by the Community of Christ. Shields Research, Mormon apologetics; EMD, 1: 70,fn. 45. Another scholar was probably Samuel L. Mitchill of New York. Mitchill died before being asked for testimony by non-Mormons, but in any case, Mitchill was not a scholar of Egyptian.
  13. ^ Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 65-66.
  14. ^ (1834-02-17) "Anton to E. D. Howe", Mormonism Unvailed. Painesville, Ohio: Telegraph Press, 1834. 
  15. ^ Pomeroy Tucker, Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism (New York: Appleton and Company, 186), 41–42.
  16. ^ Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004), 114. The document is now owned by the Community of Christ.
  17. ^ Joseph Smith—History 1:62-65
  18. ^ The full account reads, "I went to the city of New York and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof to Professor Anthony (sic), a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments;—Professor Anthony (sic) stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. I then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldeac, Assyriac, and Arabac [Arabic], and he said that they were true characters. He gave me a certificate certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were true characters, and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct." Martin Harris, "Times and Seasons," III, 773.
  19. ^ In 1814, the Briton Thomas Young finished translating the enchorial (demotic) text and began work on the hieroglyphic alphabet. From 1822 to 1824, Jean-François Champollion greatly expanded this work, and he is usually considered the decipherer of the Rosetta Stone. In 1858, the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania published the first complete English translation of the Rosetta Stone. Allen, Don Cameron. "The Predecessors of Champollion", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 144, No. 5. (1960), 527–547. and Adkins, Lesley; Adkins, Roy. The Keys of Egypt: The Obsession to Decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphs (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000 [hardcover, ISBN 0-06-019439-1); 2001 (paperback, ISBN 0-00-653145-8). Although Anton owned a copy of a preliminary study by Champollion published in 1827, it is not certain that he owned the book before the visit from Harris. Nor, of course, did Champollion's book include photographic reproductions of hieroglyphics. Shields Research, Mormon apologetics.
  20. ^ Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 26; Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004), 481.
  21. ^ Blair Bryant explains:"Find a copy of that forgery and you can easily compare and see how Hofmann did it. Just turn a copy of the Caractors Transcript 90 degrees clockwise. Now compare the right-hand most column (line A) with Hofmann's left-hand most column. Reorient the individual characters as in the original (rotate each individual character 90 degrees counterclockwise) and you can identify every character… Then Hofmann added a couple of additional squiggles to the bottom. Then, go to the line B and compare it from top to bottom with Hofmann's second column and so on. He copied it character-by-character with a few changes in flourishes or combinations of elements. He did that for the first four lines. In his fifth column he took elements in sequence from line E at the top and segments of other lines for the circular figure at the bottom. In a letter written several years after the Martin Harris meeting (1834, if memory serves), Professor Anthon described the document characters as being like mixtures of ancient alphabets jumbled and that there was a circular figure similar to an Aztec calendar at the bottom. It seems apparent that Hofmann rearranged the pattern to agree with Professor Anthon's description."
  22. ^ James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 57.
  23. ^ Some LDS members also accept the Kirtland Egyptian papers and Frederick G. Williams note as genuine. BYU. 100 Years. Reformed Egyptian.
  24. ^ See Some Notes on the Anthon Transcript by John Gee
  25. ^ In the February 1942 issue of the Improvement Era magazine, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ariel L. Crowley, a LDS attorney from Boise, presented evidence that the "Caractors" document characters could be of Egyptian origin. See The Anthon Transcript. He discussed Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic in relation to hieratic and demotic Egyptian, the "Caractors" document characters, and Martin Harris's report that Anthon mentioned those languages when he reviewed the transcript. He also presented 194 pairs of photographs comparing characters from the Anthon Transcript with similar or identical characters in recognized Egyptian works such as the Book of the Dead and the Rosetta Stone.
  26. ^ Community of Christ adherent Blair Bryant claims to have found correlation between the Caractors (Anthon) document and the Book of Mormon title page. See Blair Bryant's Caractors Translation.
  27. ^ In the book Translating the Anthon Transcript (Parowan, Utah: Ivory Books, 1999) by Stan and Polly Johnson, the authors argue that the Anthon transcript corresponds to Ether 6:3–13 in the present Book of Mormon. However, John Gee notes that if the so-called Anthon transcript is the actual piece of paper that Martin Harris took to Charles Anthon, it is safe to assume that the characters came from the text they were then translating (the 116 missing manuscript pages, which contained a record from the time of Lehi to the time of King Benjamin). Thus Ether should not be a logical source for the transcript's contents. See Some Notes on the Anthon Transcript by John Gee.
  28. ^ Terryl L. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) 132-33.
  29. ^ See for example these anecdotal comparisons: http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/trackingch6a.htm, http://thedigitalvoice.com/enigma/essays/AAffair1.htm, http://www.shields-research.org/Scriptures/BoM/BYUSAntn.html http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/book_of_mormon/language.html, http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ancients/060228egyptians.html
  30. ^ http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=124 and http://www.shields-research.org/Books/Sperry/AChap09.PDF
  31. ^ The Mormon Mirage
  32. ^ See High Nibley, Since Cumorah, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988), 149–150, http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon028.htm and http://www.geocities.com/rameumptom/bom/demotic.html
  33. ^ Later in E.B. Howe's Mormonism Unveiled, Anthon recalled that the characters were not hieroglyphics. See http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/anthon.htm and http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=124
  34. ^ Jewish and Other Semitic Texts Written in Egyptian Characters - Maxwell Institute JBMS
  35. ^ A number of researchers, including Anthon himself in Mormonism Unveiled, compared the characters to Mexican calendars. See http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=188 for example. See also David H. Kelley, "Cylinder Seal from Tlatilco," American Antiquity 31 (July 1966): 744–46. And also http://www.utlm.org/images/tracking/trackingp72sup_ensignanthontranscript.jpg.

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