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At face value, the above can be viewed as evidence that two different scripts were shown to Anthon—a script Anthon simply identified as Egyptian and another script containing characters of a less certain origin. Joseph Knight Sr.’s report seems to corroborate the idea of two different scripts for he stated that Harris “found men that could translate some of the Carictors . . . But there were some Carictors they could not well understand.”


The possibility of an Egyptian script that Anthon could readily identify and another script that he could not readily identify would be in harmony with claims within the Book of Mormon itself. Mormon and Moroni, who lived c. 400 AD, created an abridgment of the main Nephite records using a language that had been “altered” over their thousand-year history which they called “reformed Egyptian.”

It was reformed so much that “none other people knoweth our language” (Mormon 9:32, 34), suggesting that even an ancient Egyptian would not have understood their language in spite of the name given.14 Mormon, however, noted that as he was creating his abridgment of the main Nephite history, he “searched among the records” and “found” the set of plates that contained the “small account” written by Nephi, Jacob, and others down to King Benjamin. He felt they were important to include and indicates that he would simply “put them” with the remainder of his abridgment (Words of Mormon 1:3–6).15 Since Nephi and Jacob lived around a thousand years before Mormon and Moroni, the language and characters on this small record would not have been the altered “reformed Egyptian” that Mormon and Moroni used. Rather, Nephi tells his readers plainly that he wrote using “the language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1:2), a language that his father Lehi knew how to read and had taught to his children (Mosiah 1:4). It is known from archaeology that there was a scribal tradition using Egyptian hieratic in Israel during Nephi’s day.16 This Palestinian Hieratic is currently the most plausible candidate for an Egyptian script Nephi would have used to make his own record.

In the 1841 account, Anthon described the characters as "arranged in columns like the Chinese mode of writing .. (g)reek, Hebrew, and all sort of letters ... intermingled with sundry delineations of half moons, stars, and other natural objects, and the whole ended in a rude representation of the Mexican zodiac."

Anthon described the transcript as containing "in one or two parallel columns rude imitations of Hebrew and Greek characters together with various delineations of sun, moon, stars, &c.."

Anthon stated in the letter that the story of his supposed authentication was false, that Anthon had identified the writings as a hoax, and that he had told Harris that the writings were part of "a scheme to cheat the farmer [Harris] of his money".