Reformed Egyptian - Mormon Studies of Reformed Egyptian

Mormon Studies of Reformed Egyptian

Mormon studies of reformed Egyptian are necessarily limited to whatever linguistic evidence can be teased from the text of the Book of Mormon plus the extant seven-line "Caractors" document that may be or may not be the symbols said to have been copied from the gold plates. Although some Mormons have attempted to decipher the Caractors document, according to Brigham Young University Egyptologist John Gee, "the corpus is not large enough to render decipherment feasible."

Terryl Givens has suggested that the characters are early examples of Egyptian symbols being used "to transliterate Hebrew words and vice versa," that Demotic is a "reformed Egyptian," and that the mixing of a Semitic language with modified Egyptian characters is demonstrated in inscriptions of ancient Syria and Palestine. Other Mormon apologists have suggested that the characters resemble those of shorthand or various languages including Hebrew, Demotic, Hieratic, Coptic, Mayan/Olmec, and Irish ogham ciphers.