Evidence #97 | September 19, 2020

Book of Mormon Evidence: Cimeters

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Scripture Central

Abstract

On several occasions, the Book of Mormon refers to a weapon called a “cimeter.” Once thought to be an anachronism, it is now known that this weapon was used in both the Old World and the New, in both biblical and Book of Mormon times.

On several occasions, the Book of Mormon refers to a weapon called a cimeter,1 which is an older spelling for scimitar, a curved sword that usually has a cutting edge on the convex or outer side. Some readers have claimed that the term cimeter is out of place in the Book of Mormon.2 This is largely due to the widespread belief that scimitars (cimeters) were not invented until after the rise of Islam (ca. 7th century AD)—much too late to have been used by the Nephites. However, it is now known that this weapon, in various forms, was known in both the Old World and the New, in both biblical and Book of Mormon times.

Late Bronze Age Scimitar, Image via The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Scimitars are depicted in the ancient Near East as early as 2000 BC,3 and according to one scholar they may have been the more common sword in ancient Israel. Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars now know that the Hebrew term kidon refers to a scimitar.4 In 1 Samuel 17:45, when David faced Goliath, he declared, “You come against me with a sword [hereb] and spear [hanit] and scimitar [kidon], but I come against you with the name of Yahweh Sabaoth, god of the ranks of Israel” (1 Samuel 17:45).5 Some writers have thought it strange that the Lamanite chieftain Zerahemnah would carry both a sword and a cimeter (Alma 44:8), but as Paul Hoskisson has observed, the biblical text says the same about Goliath.6

Weapons which can accurately be called scimitars were also used in ancient America. These curved swords were designed for slashing and typically consisted of a flat hard wooden base approximately 50 centimeters (20 inches) long, into which obsidian blades were set along both edges.7 Once thought to be a post-Classic invention (ca. AD 900–1500),8 evidence now dates these weapons to Classic (AD 300–900) and even pre-Classic times (1500 BC–AD 300).9 

From Borgia Codex.

For example, a monument dating to AD 613 from Tonina, Mexico shows a noble posing with a curved “scimitar-like flint blade.”10 Long, curved scimitar-like daggers are portrayed in the hands of warriors at Teotihuacan, ca. AD 450.11 Ann Cyphers, the leading archaeologist at San Lorenzo (ca. 1500–900 BC), observed that one monument displays a weapon that “has a curved body with eleven triangular elements encrusted in the sides.”12 Another monument at the same site displays “an object in the form of a curved macana with 14 triangular points” including one on the tip.13

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