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What Is “Reformed Egyptian”? The Book of Mormon, the Anthon Transcript, and Joseph Smith’s Lost Language

The Book of Mormon says its final record was written in characters called 'reformed Egyptian,' a script altered over generations and unknown to outsiders. Joseph Smith’s circle preserved character samples associated with the plates, while Martin Harris later described taking a copy to Charles Anthon. Anthon’s own surviving accounts say he regarded the material as fraudulent rather than authentic…

Published · Updated · By the HonestApologist editorial team · How we work

The Book of Mormon makes an unusually testable-sounding claim.

Near the end of the record, Mormon 9:32 says the Nephite writers used characters they called “reformed Egyptian.” The text explains that the script had been handed down and altered according to the Nephites’ manner of speech.

That is not merely a theological statement. It is a claim about language and writing.

If the Book of Mormon is an ancient record, then some real writing system stood behind Joseph Smith’s English translation.

The historical question is therefore simple:

What evidence do we possess for “reformed Egyptian” outside the Book of Mormon claim itself?

What Mormon 9 actually claims

Mormon 9:32–34 says the record was written in “reformed Egyptian,” while also saying the Nephites’ Hebrew had changed.

The passage even anticipates a problem: no other people knew their language.

That gives the Book of Mormon an internal explanation for why outsiders might not recognize the script.

But the explanation also makes the claim difficult to test. If the script is defined as a private, altered Nephite writing system unknown to every other people, failure to identify it externally can always be answered by saying nobody else was supposed to know it.

That is logically possible. It also means the language claim provides little independent confirmation.

Martin Harris and Charles Anthon

Early Latter-day Saint history says Joseph Smith copied characters from the plates and Martin Harris carried them east in 1828 to seek scholarly evaluation.

Harris eventually visited Charles Anthon, a professor at Columbia College.

The familiar LDS version says Anthon initially certified the characters and translation as genuine, then destroyed the certification after learning that Joseph claimed an angel had revealed the plates.

Charles Anthon later gave multiple accounts of the meeting.

The Joseph Smith Papers summarizes the surviving Anthon accounts as consistently saying that he warned Harris he was being deceived and refused to authenticate the characters as a genuine ancient text.

That difference matters. We do not possess an authenticated signed Anthon certificate supporting the Book of Mormon account. Instead we have later conflicting recollections.

Is the surviving “Caractors” document the Anthon Transcript?

A famous sheet of strange characters is often called the Anthon Transcript.

That identification is uncertain.

Handwriting analysis has associated the surviving “Caractors” document with John Whitmer, who joined the movement after the 1828 Anthon visit.

Joseph Smith Papers also preserves later character documents associated with Oliver Cowdery and Frederick G. Williams.

Those documents are important because they demonstrate that early Latter-day Saints circulated symbols they connected in some way with the Book of Mormon plates.

What they do not provide is an independently deciphered Nephite text.

Do the characters look Egyptian?

Visual resemblance is not enough.

Writing systems have to be analyzed through sign inventory, repetition, direction, phonetic values, grammar, bilingual texts, archaeological context, and comparison with known inscriptions.

Egyptology identifies hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic writing because enormous corpora survive.

No comparable corpus of “reformed Egyptian” exists.

A page of undeciphered symbols cannot demonstrate a language merely because some marks vaguely resemble characters from ancient scripts.

Could an Egyptian-derived script have changed dramatically?

Certainly.

Real writing systems evolve. Phoenician scripts generated multiple descendants. Egyptian scripts changed across millennia. Languages borrow writing systems and alter them for local use.

So there is nothing inherently impossible about an Israelite-descended group adopting and transforming Egyptian writing.

The problem is not theoretical possibility.

The problem is evidence.

No recognized corpus from pre-Columbian America has been independently identified as a Nephite Egyptian-derived script.

Ancient American writing makes the question more serious, not less

Mesoamerica did possess genuine writing systems.

Maya writing is extensively attested and increasingly deciphered. Zapotec and other scripts are known from archaeology.

That means the comparison is not literate Mormons versus scholars who think ancient Americans could not write.

Ancient American writing is real.

The Book of Mormon claim is more specific: an Israelite-related civilization used an altered Egyptian script. That specific script has not been identified in the archaeological record.

The strongest LDS response

A Latter-day Saint can answer that the Book of Mormon never claims scholars should be able to identify the script.

Mormon 9 itself says the language had been altered and was unknown to other people.

Furthermore, a small migrant population can lose written traditions without leaving a recoverable archaeological corpus.

All of that is possible.

But it changes the evidential value.

A language that cannot be independently identified cannot be used as strong positive confirmation of the record’s antiquity.

Christian evaluation

Historic Christianity does not depend on a vanished private script available only through one nineteenth-century translator.

The New Testament survives in thousands of Greek manuscripts. Hebrew and Greek biblical texts can be compared with early translations, papyri, inscriptions, and quotations from ancient writers.

That does not make biblical textual history simple.

It makes it publicly investigable.

The Book of Mormon’s original-language claim operates differently: the plates are unavailable, the language is otherwise unidentified, and the surviving character samples cannot be independently translated into the Book of Mormon text.

Final Verdict

“Reformed Egyptian” is an internal Book of Mormon claim, not an independently established ancient language.

Early Latter-day Saint documents show that Joseph Smith’s circle circulated character samples associated with the plates. Martin Harris really did seek scholarly validation. But Charles Anthon’s own surviving accounts say he regarded the material as fraudulent rather than authentic ancient writing.

An unknown, altered Egyptian-derived script is theoretically possible.

What is missing is external confirmation.

Until a real archaeological text can be independently connected to the alleged Nephite script and language, “reformed Egyptian” cannot serve as positive historical evidence that Joseph Smith translated an ancient American record.

Key Sources

Topic: Mormonism