This article is the second in a series, “Revive Your Darlings,” where writers were encouraged to bring back ideas that were cut or abandoned in the writing process of a previous project.
In the early 19th century, two very different men working half a world away from each other found themselves gazing upon inscribed tablets made of gold. One was Joseph Smith, the American religious leader and founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The other was Paul-Émile Botta, a French archaeologist and excavator of the ancient cities of Nineveh and Dur-Sharrukin.1 Both claimed to have uncovered inscriptions that were thousands of years old with deep roots in the traditions of the ancient Near East. It is doubtful that either of them anticipated the connections that modern followers of the Latter-day Saint movement would later draw between their two discoveries. For some present-day Mormons, the evidence from the ancient world shows that if golden plates in Iraq could be found millennia after their writing, then it’s plausible it could have happened again on American soil.
Sometimes, it can be just as important to prove that something is not impossible as to prove that something is plausible.
Painting of Joseph Smith by an unknown painter, circa 1842. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Though a buried tablet of gold may seem like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, the practice of burying foundation deposits formed from precious materials to be found by future generations is part of a long tradition in Mesopotamia that flourished under the Neo-Assyrian empire (c. 911-612 BCE). Building temples and palaces was a vital part of kingship in Mesopotamia. To commemorate these achievements, kings would place foundation deposits beneath the floors of their building projects that described, with great hyperbole, the splendor of the building and the virtues of the king.2 While the vast majority of these deposits were tablets and other objects made of clay, Assyrian deposits included tablets of gold, silver, lead, alabaster, and other precious materials.
I discovered the topic of ancient tablets of gold in my exploration of writings that were explicitly not meant to be read or sometimes not meant to be understood. My dissertation took cryptographic cuneiform texts and placed them side-by-side with the understandable but physically-inaccessible writings found on foundation deposits. If, like me, you’re looking for images of golden Assyrian tablets, Google will sometimes lead you to blogs and informational websites run by members of the Latter Day movement. Ultimately, my advisor was right to have me cut the paragraph on Mormon fascination with the subject; it didn’t have anything to do with the social aspects of hidden writing. But the idea stuck with me. While the Assyrians buried their foundation tablets with the hope that future generations would find them and read them, it’s hard to imagine this was the afterlife they expected for them.
The earliest known example of a golden foundation tablet from Mesopotamia comes from Shalmaneser I (reign c. 1273-1244 BCE), a king of the Middle Assyrian empire, a precursor to the Neo-Assyrians. However, it was the cities Paul-Émile Botta excavated that captured the attention of the Mormons, built by a group known as the Sargonids, named for the first king of their dynasty Sargon II (reign 722-705 BCE). Beginning in the 1840s, Sargon II’s capital city of Dur-Sharrukin was excavated by Botta and his team, who had heard of the site while working at the site of ancient Nineveh. The timing of these excavations is of great importance to those members of the Latter-day Saint movement who study the history of golden tablets because, crucially, they occurred after Joseph Smith is said to have uncovered his own set of tablets.
Paul-Émile Botta, 1840, by Charles-Émile-Callande de Champmartin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The story goes that the golden tablets that contained the Book of Mormon were unearthed in Manchester, NY by the prophet Joseph Smith in 1827 after the location was revealed to him by the angel Moroni. Smith carefully guarded the tablets, not allowing anyone to view them while he translated the inscription into what was eventually published in 1830 as The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi. The religious text contains the writings of ancient prophets who purportedly lived in North America from 600 BCE to 421 CE.
The central myth of the Book of Mormon is that North America was settled by a Hebraic tribe known as the Jaredites in 2250 BCE, followed by a second wave of migrants from the Near East known as the Nephites around 600 BCE. According to the myth, Lehi, a descendant of the biblical patriarch Joseph, sailed to the continent via the Indian and Pacific Oceans. His son Nephi would subsequently lend his narrative to the Book of Mormon as a prominent prophet.3 The logic is that if Lehi was living in the Near East prior to 600 BCE, it is possible that he was influenced by the very real and contemporaneous practice of burying inscribed golden tablets in the ground. Therefore, the practice of burying gold tablets could have influenced the Mormons of the ancient Americas when, according to Mormon lore, the roots of the Latter Day movement were based in the ancient Middle East. At the very least the Assyrian evidence could be a sign that it is not complete fantasy to find golden tablets buried in the ground.
Gold foundation tablet of Ashurnaṣirpal II found in his palace in the city Apqu (modern Tell Abu Marya). Klaus Wagensonner, 2020, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Given Smith’s secrecy regarding the tablets and the way in which the Book of Mormon breaks with traditional history, members of the Church–especially those who hold important positions within it–have strongly desired material that would corroborate its claims. For example, a 1967 publication from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints titled “Gold Plates Used Anciently” reviews then-current scholarship showing that ancient civilizations used golden tablets to transmit important information. The author writes:
Today, archaeological discovery shows that both gold plates and stone boxes to contain them were used by ancient recorders of approximately the same period of time, from the same part of the world, as were the people described in the gold plates deciphered by Joseph Smith.4
More recently, in his 2007 article “Sacred Writing on Metal Plates in the Ancient Mediterranean,” former professor of history at BYU William J. Hamblin uses evidence of ancient practices to demonstrate the “plausibility” that Lehi would have participated in them as well. In the 1980s, the forger Mark Hofmann played on the desire for corroborating material by convincing high-ranking Church officials of the veracity of many of his forged documents that both supported and challenged the official narrative of the Latter-day Saint movement.5 With such deeply held religious beliefs on the line, it is no wonder that many believers would latch on to any historical or archaeological evidence that could bolster those beliefs.
This image of the gold plates of Darius I of Persia is often used in Mormon sources. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Neo-Assyrian tablets are used to argue for a connection between the ancient Near East and the ancient Americas, but their 19th century discovery is just as important in arguing against a later connection, one that would also undermine Latter-day beliefs. Joseph Smith couldn’t possibly have been aware of the Neo-Assyrian golden tablets in the 1820s when he translated from his gold tablets, the argument goes, because he was doing so 20 years before the discovery of ancient Neo-Assyrian cities captured both Europe’s and America’s imaginations. Regardless of whether ancient Mormons were able to learn of the practice of burying inscribed golden tablets from Near Eastern sources, it was at least not possible for Smith to have faked his tablets based on archaeological evidence because the world didn’t yet know of that evidence.
The website Evidence Central, a project of the non-profit Book of Mormon Central, maintains a collection of evidence related to confirming the veracity of the Book of Mormon.6 In an article on Mesopotamian Foundation Deposits, in addition to citing instances of ancient tablets of gold from the likes of Shalmaneser I, Sargon II, and their relatives, the unnamed author makes what they consider to be an important point:
Notably, the Mesopotamian foundation plates were all discovered long after the Book of Mormon was first published. It is therefore impossible that Joseph Smith’s story of the buried gold plates drew upon knowledge of this ancient practice.7
Writings in everything from academic journals to popular blog posts take the existence of golden plates in the archaeological record not only as a sign of plausibility for the Mormon origin story but as evidence of a shared cultural touchpoint that lends credence to the stories contained in the Book of Mormon itself.
A photograph of the 1841 First European (London) edition of the Book of Mormon, at the Springs Preserve museum, Las Vegas, Nevada. Prosfilaes, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Other, more popular works on the topic have the tendency to suggest, but crucially not conclude, that the Near Eastern evidence can be used to strike down any criticism of Smith’s story. As early as 1957, Franklin S. Harris Jr. was writing for a magazine published by the Church called The Instructor about the large number of metal plates with texts that have been found in the archaeological record.8 He concludes that these discoveries invalidate earlier criticism of the plausibility of Joseph Smith’s metal plates. While the criticism may not be valid, Harris stops short of a full-throated defense of the possibility of Smith’s story.
The historical and archaeological records are often used, and sometimes abused, in the name of proof. Neo-Assyrian kings like Sargon II inscribing golden tablets then burying them in the foundations of their monumental structures can be seen as buoying the story of Joseph Smith and the tablets revealed to him in western New York. Because Smith never allowed anyone but himself to view these tablets, the fact of their existence has been scrutinized by many from both inside and outside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The desire for proof is, therefore, understandably strong.
Even so, the intertwining of ancient Assyrian history and the Latter-day Saint movement is something that few in the early 19th century would have predicted. Though Joseph Smith and Paul-Émile Botta lived and worked half a world away from each other, what they unearthed in their respective corners eventually became part of the same story. Because sometimes, it can be just as important to prove that something is not impossible as it is to prove that something is plausible. And sometimes, what’s most important is to prove that something isn’t possible at all.
- Both Nineveh and Dur-Sharrukin are located in the northern part of the region we know today as Iraq.
- Foundation deposits in Mesopotamia can take many forms and have changed over the course of the millennia in which they were in practice. Foundation Deposits in Ancient Mesopotamia (1968) by Richard Ellis is still the best resource in the field of Assyriology for a comprehensive overview of the many different ways Mesopotamian kings used foundation deposits.
- A synopsis of the history written in the Book of Mormon is provided by the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/believe/book-of-mormon/quick-summary-of-the-book-of-mormon
- A digitized copy of “Gold Plates Used Anciently” is available online: https://issuu.com/vintageldspamphlets/docs/gold_plates_used_anciently_1967.
- Hofman’s story has been told most notably by Simon Worrall in The Poet and the Murderer: A True Story of Verse, Violence and the Art of Forgery (2002).
- Evidence Central describes themselves as a website developed by Book of Mormon Central, a non-profit organization independent from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but supportive of the Church, its leaders, and its teachings. Their work is supported by the Charis Legacy Foundation.
- https://evidencecentral.org/recency/evidence/foundation-deposits
- Harris, F.S. Jr. (1957). Others Kept Records on Metal Plates, Too. The Instructor 92(10), 318-321. Book of Mormon Central keeps a copy of the article in its online archive of Mormon scholarship: https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/sites/default/files/archive-files/pdf/harris/2020-08-11/franklin_s._harris_jr._i_92.10_others_kept_records_on_metal_plates_too_october_1957.pdf.
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