“Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1:2)
There is no ancient text that we are all more familiar with than the Book of Mormon. Although written in English for our convenience, in ancient days it was not so. The Nephites used a “reformed Egyptian” language in their writings that “none other people knoweth” (Mormon 9). Obviously, this mysterious language was derived from Egyptian, but it was modified to meet the needs of Lehi and his family.
This wasn’t the first time that the Egyptian language had been modified though. The original Egyptian language was a system of more than 700 hieroglyphs, which were depictions of things in their lives, “such as people, animals, geographical features,” etc. As time went on, a cursive script version of Egyptian was developed and was called “hieratic”. This system was developed to make it easier and quicker to write. Hieratic was widely used on papyrus. Later, in 900 BC, the cursive script of hieratic was further revised and the “demotic” system arose. This shows that the Egyptian language had already been “reformed” before Lehi and his family devised their own system. (Source)
With regards to being written after “the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians”, this too was not an uncommon practice. In the ancient civilizations of the Near East, the Egyptian language was borrowed and modified. An example of this is with the Meroitic language, which was spoken anciently in what is now modern day Sudan. This language, sometimes even recorded on bronze plates, had an alphabet of characters modified from Egyptian. (Source) Another example of this can be found in this account:
“In 1967, Israeli archaeologists discovered at the ancient site of Arad an ostracon from shortly before 600 BC, the time of Lehi. The text on the ostracon is written in a combination of Egyptian hieratic and Hebrew characters, but can be read entirely as Egyptian.” (Source)
The Anthon transcript is a well-known part of church history. Martin Harris took portions of transcripts from the Book of Mormon to Dr. Mitchell, a respected professor of ancient languages. Dr. Mitchell confirmed that the characters on the transcripts were true characters from Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic. We know how that story ends, but it is interesting to see how many different languages were included in those transcripts. (Source) Here is a picture of part of the transcripts taken to Dr. Mitchell:
I also ran across demotic Egyptian in my research and was wondering if that was the same as reformed Egyptian. It's really neat to see how much the Book of Mormon relates to what we are doing in class. The Egyptians made their language more efficient to write down, and then that was what Lehi learned and what the plates were written in! Mind blowing!
ReplyDeleteI wonder whether the "reformed Egyptian" that Mormon used in writing his abridgment was actually the same writing system used by Lehi. I bet that it had changed in some ways over all those years, and maybe that is why Mormon can say that no other people know it.
ReplyDeleteThat'd be awesome as well...reforming the reformed haha
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to read Martin Harris's account of Dr. Charles Anthon's inspection of the 116-page manuscript. He described that the characters were authentic and definitely written in Egyptian. Joseph Smith wrote that Anthon stated the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from Egyptian. It's said that he later denied the credibility of the writings, but at least it was a fulfillment of Biblical prophesy (Isaiah 29:11-12).
ReplyDeleteYes Mark the prophecy was fulfilled, he actually denied the credibility of the writings after he heard how Joseph Smith attained the records from Martin Harris. It is a common misconception among mormon teachings that the manner of the attainment of the plates was the reason Anthon tore up the certification of authenticity. But the real reason was that the Rosetta stone had just been discovered in Egypt by Napolean's army. News of it had not yet reached the United States. Anthon not only did not want to be associated with the story of Angel Moroni, but he also wanted to "save face" among his colleagues since they would know he wasn't capable of knowing if Joseph Smith's translation of the Egyptian was correct without the Rosetta stone information. I think it is interesting to see how the Rosetta stone, a form of code for translation, had such an effect on this "learned man's" motivation to certify the plates.
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