The Anthon Account

Martin Harris’s Visit with Charles Anthon

During the winter of 1828, a successful and respected farmer named Martin Harris traveled several hundred miles to New York City to seek opinions about a sample of characters copied from the plates of the Book of Mormon. His purpose was to learn what he could about the nature of the characters before he mortgaged his farm in order to finance the book’s publication.

Evidence suggests Harris met with several scholars including Luthar Bradish Albany, Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill (the vice president of Rutgers Medical College), and Professor Charles Anthon of Columbia University. What he learned from these visits helped persuade Harris to return to his home and mortgage his farm in order to finance the future publication of the Book of Mormon. The work of historians over the last few decades has shed light on many aspects of Harris’s journey, including his visit with Charles Anthon.¹ While questions remain, and some details may never be known, the credibility of Harris’s report has only been enhanced by these recent findings.

The account published in Joseph Smith’s 1838 history describes the Anthon visit and specifically gives a report of the professor’s opinion of the characters. According to Harris, Anthon “said that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic; and he said they were true characters” (JSH 1:64). In 1834 E. D. Howe published a letter from Anthon denying any connection between the characters and Egyptian, stating that “the paper contained anything else but Egyptian hierogylphics.”² Anthon stated, “I never professed to be acquainted with the vast number of languages of which the Mormons speak.”³ While there are still significant questions about the nature of the Anthon transcript,⁴ evidence suggests that Harris’s report of Anthon’s opinion about the characters was essentially accurate and credible.

“Chaldaic” and “Assyriac”

First, it helps to clarify Harris’s reference to languages mentioned by Anthon. The word “Chaldaic” in Charles Anthon’s day did not refer to Babylonian Cuneiform, as some might assume, but rather to what is now known by scholars as Aramaic.⁵ Moreover, Harris’s reference to “Assyriac” would not likely have been the language of ancient Assyria (Akkadian was not deciphered until the mid-nineteenth century). It seems more likely that Anthon referred to Syriac, a language related to Aramiac that began to be used by early Christians around the First Century AD.⁶ So Harris’ report of Anthon mentioning “Chaldaic” and “Assyriac” likely had reference to Aramaic and Syriac.

Anthon’s Personal Library

When Anthon published his 1841 edition of his Classical Dictionary, he cited literature he was familiar with including items from his personal library.⁷ This gives us a good idea of Anthon’s information environment previous to that time. In his article on Egypt from this work, Anthon referenced the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in 1824.⁸

In a section on Egyptian language, one article in this encyclopedia discusses the Rossetta Stone and distinctions between Egyptian hieroglyphics, hieratic, and demotic characters, with several plates comparing the hieroglyphics with demotic script.⁹ The writers also discuss the evolution of Egyptian writing from the pictorial form to the more cursive form of demotic. According to the text, examples of demotic differed significantly from the hieroglyphic form, while the more cursive demotic was closer to “the old Arabic or Syriac characters to which they bear, at first sight, a considerable resemblance.”¹⁰

This description is noteworthy because Harris reported Anthon as stating that the characters bore a resemblance to “Assyriac” (Syriac) and “Arabic” (JSH 1:64). It is unlikely Harris would have derived such a conclusion on his own. In contrast, Anthon had access to scholarly sources which reproduced examples of demotic Egyptian and specifically noted a resemblance between it and Syriac and Arabic scripts, consistent with Harris’ report to Joseph Smith.

“Short-Hand Egyptian”

W. W. Phelps, not yet a member of the Church, wrote a letter to E.D. Howe in January 1831 describing what he had learned in his investigations about the Book of Mormon. Based upon information he likely obtained from Harris, Phelps described Martin’s visit to Anthon with a copy of the characters reporting that the Professor “declared them to be ancient short-hand Egyptian”¹¹ In response, E. D. Howe published a letter from Anthon denying he ever connected the characters with Egyptian. However, there are several lines of evidence which suggest, Anthon’s denials notwithstanding, that it was Anthon who first made the “short-hand Egyptian” connection.

The first has to do with what Joseph Smith and Martin Harris knew about the nature of the characters written on the plates previous to Harris’ trip to New York. Michael MacKay and Gerrit Dirkmaat have argued persuasively, based on the earliest historical sources, that Joseph Smith and Martin Harris likely did not know of any Egyptian connection with the Book of Mormon characters until after the Anthon visit. At this early time, Joseph “was told that ancient American prophets were responsible for the characters on the plates and that the content described the inhabitants of the ancient Americas, leaving him with very little reason to conclude that the plates were written in any form of Egyptian.”¹² Notably, it was only after Anthon reportedly suggested an Egyptian connection that Joseph Smith and his associates began to speak of it.¹³

The second factor has to do with Anthon’s known information environment, as opposed to that of Martin Harris. Charles Anthon in the 1841 edition of his Classical Dictionary wrote, “the characters of the hieratic are, for the most part, obvious running imitations or abridgments of the corresponding hieroglyphics.”¹⁴ He also cited sources from his own personal library which dealt with the subject, including Champollion’s book, Precis du systeme hieroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens, the Edinburgh Review and the American Historical Review.¹⁵

In December 1826, James Browne discussed Champollion’s work on the Egyptian language in an article published in the Edinburgh Review which described hieratic Egyptian as “a tachygraphy of the hieroglyphic writing.”¹⁶ The word was used several times by Champollion himself in the book under review.¹⁷ The word tachygraphy means “short-hand.” Browne wrote:

The HIERATIC, or sacerdotal writing, is immediately derived from the hieroglyphic, of which it is merely a tachygraphy. The form of the signs is considerably abridged; but they nevertheless comprise figurative, symbolic, and phonetic characters … All the hieratic manuscripts extant, whether they belong to the Pharaonic, Greek, or Roman epochs, exhibit merely a tachygraphy of the hieroglyphic writing, however widely some of the characters may, at first view, appear to differ from it. This method seems to have been confined to the transcription of texts or inscriptions connected with matters of religion.¹⁸

American writers also made use of this term. In an article published in June 1827, the anonymous writer for the American Historical Review described several forms of Egyptian writing. “The first of these, which Champollion calls hieratic, is no more than a short and rapid delineation of the hieroglyphic” and noted that “the hieratic system, however, is not absolutely identical with the hieroglyphic, although originally merely a species of short-hand, introduced to save the labour of a full delineation of the latter.”¹⁹

Anthon possessed these sources as part of his personal library, and the article from the American Historical Review appeared less than a year before Martin Harris’s visit. This poses an important question: “Where else, except from Anthon, would Harris and hence Phelps have gotten this precise phrase, the phrase shorthand Egyptian? It was not part of Harris’s environment or education. Indeed, the phrase is so singular that it appears only this one time in LDS history.”²⁰

Based upon the above evidence, the following scenario seems most likely:

Anthon probably mentioned shorthand Egyptian because he was struck by certain obvious similarities in the transcript to hieratic or demotic Egyptian. From this, what else can one conclude, except that Harris told the truth about what Anthon said on this point? … Caught on the horns of a dilemma, and having unwittingly fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 29, Anthon took the easy way out: He tore up the statement he had innocently given to Harris and denied Harris’s story.²¹

Conclusion

Evidence for the credibility of Martin Harris’s report of Charles Anthon’s initial opinion about the characters inscribed on the gold plates can be found in sources known to Anthon, but likely not to Harris. These sources compare the demotic Egyptian script to Syriac and Arabic and refer to hieratic as short-hand Egyptian writing. Because these same specialized terms (or, in the case of Syriac, a very similar and easily confused term) appear in Harris’s account, and because it is hard to imagine Harris making up this combination of terms or deriving them from some other source, they enhance the reliability of Harris’s version of what happened, while casting doubt on Anthon’s side of the story.

Book of Mormon Central, “What Do We Know About the ‘Anthon Transcript’? (Mosiah 8:12),” KnoWhy 515 (May 9, 2019).

Book of Mormon Central, “Why Did Martin Harris Consult with Scholars like Charles Anthon? (2 Nephi 27:15),” KnoWhy 514 (May 7, 2019).

Richard E. Bennett, “‘A Nation Now Extinct’: American Indian Origin Theories as of 1820: Samuel L. Mitchill, Martin Harris, and the New York Theory,” Journal of Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 20, no. 2 (2011): 30–51.

Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith’s Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2015), 39–59.

Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter, Martin Harris: Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2018), 87–101.

Robert F. Smith, Gordon C. Thomasson, and John W. Welch, “What Did Charles Anthon Really Say?” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon: A Decade of New Research, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1992), 73–75.

FARMS Staff, “Martin Harris’ Visit with Charles Anthon: Collected Documents on the Anthon Transcript and ‘Shorthand Egyptian,’” (FARMS Paper, 1990).

1 Nephi 1:2 2 Nephi 27:152 Nephi 27:162 Nephi 27:172 Nephi 27:182 Nephi 27:192 Nephi 27:20Mosiah 1:4Mormon 9:32Mormon 9:33–34Joseph Smith History 1:63–65

1 Nephi 1:2 

2 Nephi 27:15

2 Nephi 27:16

2 Nephi 27:17

2 Nephi 27:18

2 Nephi 27:19

2 Nephi 27:20

Mosiah 1:4

Mormon 9:32

Mormon 9:33–34

Joseph Smith History 1:63–65