Attestations of Cumorah and Comron

Cumorah and Comron (Comnor) in the Book of Mormon

Before the final Jaredite battle took place, the opposing armies spent years gathering together their forces, which involved arming men, women, and even children (Ether 15:14). While a precise count isn’t given, the number of enemy combatants in these armies must have been vast. Importantly, this conflict centered around a hill named Ramah—the very same hill, renamed as Cumorah, where the Nephites gathered all of their people for a final battle with the Lamanites.¹ Cumorah, therefore, was a place of immense slaughter, the epicenter for the destruction of two civilizations.

Before the battle at Ramah, the Jaredites fought another major conflict at the hill Comnor (Ether 14:28). While the current edition of the Book of Mormon for Ether 14:28 reads Comnor, Royal Skousen has noted that “the printer’s manuscript clearly reads Comron both times in Ether 14:28.”² The original manuscript containing this name is no longer extant, but the evidence from the printer’s manuscript suggests that an error was made during the Book of Mormon’s 1830 typesetting.

With this adjustment in spelling, the names Cumorah and Comron are more similar than most readers might recognize. The similarities are even closer under the assumption that these names derive from an ancient Semitic language, in which vowels weren’t written out. Several proposals have been given for the etymology of these names.

A Hebrew Etymology for Cumorah

As suggested by Stephen Ricks and John Tvedtnes, the name Cumorah may derive from the Hebrew word kĕmôrāh (“priesthood”) which is based on the word Kômer (“priest”).³ The Hebrew word kôhēn is the usual word for priest in the Hebrew Bible and refers specifically to Levitical priests. In contrast, the word Kômer refers to priests who weren’t of the Levitical order.⁴ Ricks and Tvedtnes argue that “since Lehi’s party did not include descendants of Levi, they probably used Kômer wherever the Book of Mormon speaks of priests.”⁵

Akkadian Etymologies for Cumorah and Comron

An alternate and intriguing possibility, in light of the Book of Mormon text, is that both Cumorah and Comron may derive from the Akkadian verb kāmaru (“to heap up, pile up”).⁶ “The Akkadian verb kāmaru in the G-stem means ‘to heap up, to layer’ including corpses, and in the N-stem it is applied to ruin mounds and piled up corpses.”⁷ Mesopotamian texts which utilize this term, for example, speak of “the wall of Eanna which had buckled and become a heap of ruin,” while in another the goddess “whose people(‘s bodies) have been heaped up says, ‘O my people!’”⁸ An Akkadian derivation for two place names in lands that once belonged to the Jaredites may be explained in light of the Jaredites’ Mesopotamian origins (Ether 1:33; 2:1).⁹

Heaps of Bones and Dead Bodies in the Book of Mormon

The Akkadian etymology is especially attractive since Cumorah and Comron in the Book of Mormon were both places of tremendous slaughter. Concerning the wicked, a Jaredite prophecy warned of a great curse in which “their bones should become as heaps of earth upon the face of the land except they should repent of their wickedness” (Ether 11:6; emphasis added). The destruction recorded in the final Jaredite battles seems to at least partially fulfill this prediction. Ether 14:21, for example, mentions that “the whole face of the land was covered with the bodies of the dead.”

Further evidence of this outcome can be found in the record of Coriantumr, the last Jaredite king, which mentioned that the Jaredites’ “bones lay scattered in the land northward” (Omni 1:22). The Nephites who first stumbled into this land (by accident) also confirmed that it “was covered with bones of men, and of beasts, and was also covered with ruins of buildings of every kind” (Mosiah 8:8; cf. Mosiah 21:26). In Alma 22:30 Mormon consciously references this same “land which had been peopled and been destroyed, of whose bones we have spoken” (emphasis added).¹⁰

It seems likely that the hills Cumorah (Ramah) and Comron—where two of the final Jaredite battles were fought—were especially covered with the remains of fallen soldiers. In a sad twist of fate, Cumorah would once again be littered with dead in the aftermath of the final Nephite-Lamanite battle. Mormon recorded that his people’s “flesh, and bones, and blood lay upon the face of the earth, being left by the hands of those who slew them to molder upon the land, and to crumble and to return to their mother earth” (Mormon 6:15).

From all these statements, it becomes clear that the association of the Jaredite lands (and their Nephite counterparts) with heaps of moldering bones and bodies is almost ever-present in the Nephite record.¹¹

Conclusion

While the term Cumorah might derive from a Hebrew word meaning “priesthood,” the possibility that Cumorah and Comron both stem from the Akkadian term kāmaru (“to heap up, pile up”) is enticing. Both of these hills were the sites of major Jaredite battles, and the Jaredites’ Mesopotamian origins provide a good (although not the exclusive) pathway for Akkadian to have influenced Nephite languages.¹² What better etymology for these names than an ancient term which denotes the piling or heaping up of things, including dead bodies? This proposal is reinforced by the way that the Nephite record keepers repeatedly commented upon the bones which covered the places of Jaredite destruction.

“Cumorah,” Book of Mormon Onomasticon, last updated July 3, 2020, online at onoma.lib.byu.edu

“Comnor,” Book of Mormon Onomasticon, last updated September 5, 2020, online at onoma.lib.byu.edu

Stephen D. Ricks and John A. Tvedtnes, “The Hebrew Origin of Three Book of Mormon Place Names,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 6, No. 2 (1997): 89–91. Reprinted in John W. Welch and Melvin J. Thorne, eds., Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1999): 88–92.

Omni 1:22Mosiah 8:8Mosiah 21:26Alma 16:11Alma 22:30Mormon 6:2Mormon 6:4Mormon 6:5Mormon 6:6Mormon 6:11Mormon 6:15Mormon 8:2Ether 11:6Ether 14:21Ether 14:23Ether 14:28

Omni 1:22

Mosiah 8:8

Mosiah 21:26

Alma 16:11

Alma 22:30

Mormon 6:2

Mormon 6:4

Mormon 6:5

Mormon 6:6

Mormon 6:11

Mormon 6:15

Mormon 8:2

Ether 11:6

Ether 14:21

Ether 14:23

Ether 14:28