Are there any other documents written in Reformed Egyptian besides the book of Mormon?

Question

Are there any other documents written in Reformed Egyptian besides the book of Mormon?

Answer 1

The Book of Mormon never claims that reformed Egyptian was used regularly. In fact it says the only reason it was written in reformed Egyptian was due to a limited amount of space.



It seems like a weak argument to me. Let's say I create my own written language and call it Twasiof. 2,000 years from now some one discovers my writings. Would it be any less real 1,999 years when it wasn't discovered yet, or in 2,001 years because no other sources were found that match it, or that whoever finds it calls it Batlani instead?

Answer 2

Yes, actually there are quite a few that have been discovered recently.



John A. Tvedtnes and Stephen D. Ricks, “Jewish and Other Semitic Texts Written in Egyptian Characters,” JBMS, fall 1996, 156–63; William J. Hamblin, “Reformed Egyptian” (Provo: FARMS, 1995). See also John Gee, “Two Notes on Egyptian Script,” JBMS, spring 1996, 162–76.

Answer 3

Except that "Russian" is a real language, and "Reformed Egyptian" is not.

Answer 4

Nothing, not even the book of mormon, was ever written in reformed egyptian. It was and still is fake. Mormons only quote "approved" sources. That means only other mormons. If you disagree with them they label you anti-mormon in an attempt to disregard you when more accurately they are indoctrinated to be anti-everybody-who s-not-mormon.

Answer 5

The Jews thrived in Egypt for generations and they could have certainly picked up hieroglyphic writing. I don't know what is meant by reformed, but there was a demotic style of writing, that was much like our cursive script.... I would like to see a sample of this Reformed Egyptian script...

Answer 6

Since they were slaves in Egypt, egyptian was probably the only language some of them could write and it could have mixed with Hebrew over the years so maybe the idea is not so far from reality.

Answer 7

I've noticed that you ask a lot of questions about the Mormons..



Maybe you're a closet Mormon! :p



I'll pray that you'll find the courage to accept the true Church.



Just kidding. :)

Answer 8

No, because Reformed Egyptian doesn't exist. That's why the Book of Mormon is a big, fat lie.

Answer 9

This Site Might Help You.



RE:

Are there any other documents written in Reformed Egyptian besides the book of Mormon?

The Book of Mormon was said to be translated from a language called "Reformed Egyptian." No such language is known. Furthermore, for Jews to write in the language of Egyptians, by whom they were detested, would be like an American writing American History during the Cold War in Russian

Answer 10

Reformed Egyptian is actually Hebrew written in Egyptian characters. You can check out www.reformed-egyptian.com,

http://ldsdoctrine.blogspot.com/2008/05/archeological-evidence-for-reformed.html

Answer 11

The Book of Mormon indicates that it was written using Egyptian characters, called by Moroni "reformed Egyptian," though the Nephites also knew Hebrew (see Mormon 9:32–34). Nephi made "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). Evidently, the brass plates of Laban also contained Egyptian characters, for King Benjamin informed his sons that, without a knowledge of Egyptian, Lehi would not have been able to read them (Mosiah 1:3–4).



Latter-day Saint scholars have long been divided on the issue of the language in which the Book of Mormon is written.1 Some have proposed that the Nephite record was simply written in Egyptian,2 while others have suggested that the Nephite scribes used Egyptian script to write Hebrew text.3 While either of these is possible, this present study will elicit evidence for the latter.4



Non-Latter-day Saint scholars and others have long scoffed at the idea that an Israelite group from Jerusalem should have written in Egyptian and mocked the term "reformed Egyptian" as nonsense. Since Joseph Smith's time, we have learned a great deal about Egyptian and Israelite records and realize that the Book of Mormon was correct in all respects.



The ancient Egyptians used three types of writing systems. The most well known, the hieroglyphs (Greek for "sacred symbols"), comprised nearly 400 picture characters depicting things found in real life. A cursive script called hieratic (Greek for "sacred") was also used, principally on papyrus. Around 700 B.C., the Egyptians developed an even more cursive script that we call demotic (Greek for "popular"), which bore little resemblance to the hieroglyphs.5 Both hieratic and demotic were in use in Lehi's time and can properly be termed "reformed Egyptian." From the account in Mormon 9:32, it seems likely that the Nephites further reformed the characters.



While it is clear that the Book of Mormon was written in Egyptian characters, scholars are divided on whether the underlying language was Egyptian or Hebrew. Recent discoveries have provided evidence that at least some ancient Israelite scribes were, like the Nephite scribes, acquainted with both languages.



A number of northwest Semitic texts are included in Egyptian magical papyri. These are mostly incantations that, instead of being translated, were merely transcribed in Egyptian hieratic.6 The underlying language is a Northwest Semitic tongue, an early form of Hebrew/Canaanite.7 The texts include the London Magical Papyrus (fourteenth century B.C.),8 the Harris Magical Papyrus (thirteenth century B.C.),9 Papyrus Anastasi I (thirteenth century B.C.),10 and Ostracon 25759 recto.11 The latter dates to the early eleventh century B.C., the time of Israel's judges. While a Semitic text appears on one side, the verso has a text that is pure Egyptian, though whether there is a connection between the two is unknown. In any event, it is clear that some Egyptian scribes were sufficiently versed in the Northwest Semitic tongue that they were able to transliterate it using their own writing system.



Closer to Lehi's time are Israelite documents from the ninth to sixth centuries B.C., from which we learn that the Israelites adopted the Egyptian hieratic numerals and mingled them with Hebrew text.12 More important, however, are Hebrew and Aramaic texts—languages used by the Jews of Lehi's time—that are written in Egyptian characters. One of these is Papyrus Amherst 63, a document written in Egyptian demotic and dating to the second century B.C.13 The document had, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, been preserved in an earthen jar and was discovered in Thebes, Egypt, during the second half of the nineteenth century. For years, Egyptologists struggled with the text but could make no sense of it. The letters were clear, but they did not form intelligible words. In 1944, Raymond Bowman of the University of Chicago realized that, while the script is Egyptian, the underlying language is Aramaic.14 Bowman managed to translate portions of the text, but it did not become the object of serious study until the 1980s.15 Among the writings included in the religious text is a paganized version of Psalms 20:2–6. Here, then, we have a Bible passage, in its Aramaic translation, written in late Egyptian characters.



In 1965, during excavations at the southern Judean site of Arad, a number of ostraca were found. Most of the documents were written in Hebrew and dated to ca. 598–587 B.C.16 One, however, dating "to the seventh century B.C.," was written in Egyptian hieratic.17 Here, then, was evidence that Egyptian writing was known in an Israelite city. This was not surprising, for Egyptian documents from an earlier time had been discovered at the Phoenician (Lebanese) city of Byblos.



More significant, however, was an ostracon uncovered at Arad in 1967.18 Dating "toward the end of the seventh century B.C.," it reflects usage from shortly before 600 B.C., 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. Of the seventeen words in the text, ten are written in hieratic and seven in Hebrew. However, all the words written in Hebrew can be read as Egyptian words, while one of them, which occurs twice, has the same meaning in both Egyptian and Hebrew.19 Of the ten words written in hieratic script, four are numerals (one occurring in each line).20 One symbol, denoting a measure of capacity, occurs four times (once in each of the four lines), and the remaining Egyptian word occurs twice. Thus, while seventeen words appear on the ostracon, if one discounts the recurrence of words, only six words are written in hieratic (of which four are numerals), and six in Hebrew.



The text of the ostracon is integral, rather than a bilingual.21 Yeivin, who translated and studied the text, wrote, "The two scripts provide supplementary information and they are intermingled. One cannot, however, be sure how the scribe who wrote the text read it, whether in Hebrew throughout, pronouncing all the apparent hieratic signs in their Hebrew equivalents, or in a mixed sort of jargon, giving the Egyptian values to the hieratic signs."22



Because the inscription was discovered in Israel, Yeivin never considered the possibility that all the words might have been read as Egyptian, which seems more likely in this case. One thing, however, is certain. The scribe who wrote the text knew both Hebrew and Egyptian writing systems and commingled them in a single text. Perhaps this is what Nephi meant when he said that the language of his record consisted of "the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians" (1 Nephi 1:2).23



Additional evidence for the commingling of Hebrew and Egyptian scripts was discovered during archaeological excavations at Tell Ein-Qudeirah (biblical Kadesh-Barnea) in the Sinai Peninsula during the latter half of the 1970s. Several ostraca of the sixth and seventh centuries B.C. were uncovered. One ostracon, written mostly in hieratic characters, consists of a column of Egyptian measures and five columns of numbers. Along with the Egyptian, the Hebrew word ˈal�?phîm ("thousands") appears twice (with the hieratic "ten" in the numeral "10,000"), while the Hebrew symbol for "shekel" (a weight measure) appears twenty-two times. Because of the order of the numerals in each column, it may be a scribal practice in writing numbers.



A second ostracon contains three vertical columns of numbers. The left-hand column has the Hebrew word garah, the smallest unit of Hebrew measure, after each hieratic numeral. Because the numerals are in order, Rudolph Cohen, the archaeologist who discovered the texts, concluded that "this writing is a scribal exercise." This view is supported by the discovery, at the same site, of a small ostracon with several Hebrew letters, in alphabetic order, evidently a practice text.24



At both Arad and Kadesh-Barnea, there were, in addition to the "combination texts" discussed, other ostraca written entirely in either Hebrew or Egyptian hieratic. The implication is clear: Scribes or students contemporary or nearly contemporary with Lehi were being trained in both Hebrew and Egyptian writing systems. The use of Egyptian script by Lehi's descendants now becomes not only plausible, but perfectly reasonable in the light of archaeological discoveries made more than a century after Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon.



Notes



1. See the discussion by Brian D. Stubbs, "Book of Mormon Language," in Encyclopedia of Mormonism (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 1:179–81.



2. Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, World of the Jaredites, There Were Jaredites (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988 [1st ed., 1952]), 14–18. James E. Talmage, A Study of the Articles of Faith (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1949 [1st ed., 1913]), 291–92, seems to have been the first to note that the "reformed Egyptian" of Moroni's time (Mormon 9:32) need not have been the same as the writing system described by Nephi in 1 Nephi 1:2.



3. Janne M. Sjodahl, An Introduction to the Study of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1927), 14; George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Press, 1955), 1:4, 6–7; Sidney B. Sperry, "The Language and Script of the Book of Mormon," in Our Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1950), 28–38; Sidney B. Sperry, Book of Mormon Compendium (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1968), 31–39; John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Dese

Answer 12

Reformed Egyptian

Answer 13

Hello Ms. TROLLER!

“Reformed Egyptian” signifies writing the Hebrew language in modified Egyptian characters. In recent years, we have learned that several ancient documents were written in precisely that fashion.



Take a break from your badly made ANTI LDS sites and take a look at these books about the subject: John A. Tvedtnes and Stephen D. Ricks, “Jewish and Other Semitic Texts Written in Egyptian Characters” and William J. Hamblin, “Reformed Egyptian” and John Gee, “Two Notes on Egyptian Script” .

Answer 14

Smith claimed to translate the Bible anew, but his translation included errors from the KJV that were openly published at the time the KJV was. Smith never knew. And he added prophesies that he would come as a prophet-not in the Aramaic, Hebrew or Greek versions of the Bible! He was the author of the greatest con of all time. Nothing is proved. Book of Mormon was bs-no white civilization ever existed in the Americas before Columbus. Book of Abraham a fraud--it was a papyri from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The man lied. A con man. He lied to get women and girls to marry him repeatedly. Lied about the Moroni stuff, lied about white civilization in the Americas anywhere. Mormons look so pitifully suckered for believing a huckster.... Million of people don't disappear and take their crops, tools, buildings, animals, records, AND RIVERS with them! Come on.

Answer 15

No, there are not, because Reformed Egyptian is a made-up language.



As far as I can tell, all the sources the mormons are posting are from other mormons. Wow.

Answer 16

There is no such thing as "Reformed Egyptian" and the gold plates never existed.



"You can't convince a believer of anything; their belief is not based on evidence but a deep-seated need to believe."

- Carl Sagan

Answer 17

Is that a question or a chance to display how much you know. I hate Mexicans but can speak and write in Spanish. See how stupid that argument is? Greeks wrote in many languages of their enemies...its called scholarship. Anyways you are a troll who doesnt deserve real answers.



Edit: just in case you still wanted an answer---here is one:

What is "reformed Egyptian?"

Critics who raise the objection seem to be operating under the false impression that reformed Egyptian is used in the Book of Mormon as a proper name. 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). First we should emphasize that Mormon is describing Egyptian characters, or what we today would call a script or writing system. It is the form or shape of the characters or symbols that was altered by the Nephites. Nephite reformed Egyptian is thus a unique script. It derived from the Egyptian writing systems but then was modified and adapted to suit Nephite language and writing materials.



The fact that modern linguists and philologists don't know of a script known as reformed Egyptian is irrelevant, since Mormon tells us that the script was called reformed Egyptian "by us," that is, by the Nephites; they may have been the only people to use that descriptive phrase. For example, both the terms cuneiform and hieroglyphics are non-Egyptian terms for the scripts of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.[1] The Mesopotamians did not call their writing system cuneiform, nor did the Egyptians call their writing system hieroglyphics.[2] Nevertheless, we would not insist that the Mesopotamians and Egyptians never existed because they did not call their writing systems by the same names used by modern historians, philologists, and archaeologists.



Does the Book of Mormon's assertion that the Nephites took Egyptian characters and modified them to write Hebrew words make historical and linguistic sense?[3] It is a common phenomenon for a basic writing system to undergo significant changes in the course of time, especially when written with new writing materials.[4] Turning specifically to Egyptian, there are numerous examples of modified (or reformed) Egyptian characters being used to write non-Egyptian languages, none of which were known in Joseph Smith's day.



Examples of "reformed Egyptian"

Egyptian hieratic and demotic. The Egyptian language was written in three related but distinct scripts. The oldest is hieroglyphic script, dating to around 3000 B.C.; it was essentially a monumental script for stone inscriptions. Hieratic, a second script, is a modified form of Egyptian hieroglyphics used to write formal documents on papyrus with brush and ink, and demotic is a cursive script.[5] Thus, both the hieratic and demotic scripts could be considered "reformed" or modified versions of the original hieroglyphic script. These are both examples of writing the Egyptian language in reformed versions of the Egyptian hieroglyphic script; there are also several examples of the use of reformed or modified Egyptian characters to write non-Egyptian languages.



Byblos Syllabic texts. The earliest known example of mixing a Semitic language with modified Egyptian hieroglyphic characters is the Byblos Syllabic inscriptions (eighteenth century B.C.), from the city of Byblos on the Phoenician coast.[6] This script is described as a "syllabary [that] is clearly inspired by the Egyptian hieroglyphic system, and in fact is the most important link known between the hieroglyphs and the Canaanite alphabet."[7] Interestingly enough, most Byblos Syllabic texts were written on copper plates. Thus, it would not be unreasonable to describe the Byblos Syllabic texts as a Semitic language written on metal plates in "reformed Egyptian characters,"[8] which is precisely what the Book of Mormon describes.



Cretan hieroglyphics. Early forms of writing in Crete apparently developed from a combination of "Egyptian hieroglyphic, Mesopotamian cuneiform and Phoenician native signs into one single, new pictographic script."[9] Note again that there is a mixture of Semitic (Mesopotamian and Phoenician) and Egyptian writing systems, precisely as described in the Book of Mormon.



Meroitic. Meroitic, the script of ancient Nubia (modern Sudan), "was first recorded in writing in the second century B.C. in an 'alphabetic' script consisting of twenty-three symbols, most of which were borrowed or at least derived from Egyptian writing....The script has two forms, hieroglyphic and cursive."[10] Meroitic hieroglyphic signs were "borrowed from the Egyptian...[and] the cursive script derived mainly from the Egyptian demotic script."[11]



Psalm 20 in demotic Egyptian. Scholars have also recently deciphered an Aramaic version of Psalm 20:2-6 that was written in demotic Egyptian characters.[12] This is precisely what the Book of Mormon claims existed: a version of the Hebrew scriptures in the Hebrew language, but written using Egyptian characters.



Proto-Sinaitic and the alphabet. Semitic speakers of early second millennium B.C. Syria and Palestine seem to have adopted reformed or modified versions of both Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform into syllabic and alphabetic systems of writing. Ultimately, this reformed Egyptian script became the basis for the Phoenician alphabet, from which nearly all subsequent alphabets derive.[13] "The Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were written in a Semitic language, and...their letters were the prototypes for the Phoenician alphabet. The letters are alphabetic, acrophonic in origin, and consonantal, and their forms are derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs."[14] "Since the Canaanite/Phoenician syllabary formed the basis of the Greek alphabet, and the Greek in turn of the Latin, it means, in the words of Gardiner, that 'the hieroglyphs live on, though in transmuted [or could we not say reformed?] form, within our own alphabet.'"[15] In a very real sense, our own Latin alphabet is itself a type of reformed Egyptian, since the ultimate source of our characters is Egyptian hieroglyphics.



Conclusion

There are thus a number of historical examples of Semitic or other languages being written in "reformed" or modified Egyptian script; the Book of Mormon account is entirely plausible on this point.



EDIT: sorry--here are the cites to mostly non-mormon books

[1] The term cuneiform was first used in the nineteenth century, while hieroglyphics was the Greek term for the Egyptian writing system.



[2] For a general introduction on hieroglyphics, see W. V. Davies, Egyptian Hieroglyphics (London: British Museum Publications, 1987).



[3] John Gee summarizes the evidence and analysis on the subject, arguing for a Hebrew-based language written in an Egyptian-based script in his "La Trahison des Clercs: On the Language and Translation of the Book of Mormon," Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 6/1 (1994): 79-83, 94-99.



[4] Michelle P Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), provides examples of the wide array of scripts of the Roman alphabet, many of which are unrecognizable without training.



[5] Davies, Egyptian Hieroglyphics, 21-24.



[6] For basic summary and bibliography, see David Noel Freedman, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4:178-80. For a detailed linguistic study and translation, see George E. Mendenhall, The Syllabic Inscriptions from Byblos (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1985). The original publication with full plates and transcriptions is M. Dunand, Byblia Grammata: Documents et recherches sur le deoeloppement de l'ecriture en phenicie (Beirut: Direction des Antiquites, 1945); photographs and transcriptions of all the documents can be found on pp. 71.



[7] Anchor Bible Dictionary, 4:178b.



[8] Hugh W. Nibley, Lehi in the Desert; the World of the Jaredites; There Were Jaredites, vol. 5 in The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988): 105.



[9] Jan Best and Fred Woudhuizen, eds.,Ancient Scripts from Crete and Cyprus (Leiden Brill, 1988), 4.



[10] Davies, Egyptian Hieroglyphics, 61.



[11] Jean Leclamt, "The Present Position in the Deciphering of Meroitic Script," in The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of Meroitic Script (Ghent: Unesco, 1978), 112.



[12] Stephen D. Ricks, "Language and Script in the Book of Mormon," Insights (May 1992), 1; Charles F. Nirns and Richard C. Steiner, "A Paganized Version of Psalm 20:2-6 from the Aramaic Text in Demobc Script," Journal of the American Oriental Society 103 (1983): 261-74; Richard C. Steiner, "The Aramaic Text in Demotic Script: The Liturgy of a New Year's Festival Imported from Bethel to Syene by Exiles from Rash," Journal of the American Orientnal Society 111/2 (1991): 362-63; For a full bibliography, see Gee, "La Trahison des Clercs," 96-97, n. 147. See also John A. Tvedtnes, "Linguistic Implications of the Tel-Arad Ostraca," Newsletter nnd Proceedings of tke Society for Early Historic Archaeology 127 (1971): 1-5.



[13] Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1982). I. J. Gelb, A Study of Writing, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Universiy of Chicago Press, 1969), x- xi, provides a chart illustration the derivation of the Phoenician and all subsequent alphabets from Egyptian hieroglyphics.



[14] Benjamin sass, The Genesis of the Alphabet and Its D