In Sunday School I learned that the Book of Mormon was originally written in a language called Reformed Egyptian. It was then translated into English by Joseph Smith in 1829. This didn’t really hit home to me until one day I was looking through the encyclopedia with my dad. He pointed out a section about the alphabet. There were about eight ancient alphabets on a chart compared with the Roman one we use today. It had columns with the letters A, B, C, D, E, etc, and the equivalents from the various alphabets. It even had Egyptian. I was intrigued because that was the language of the Book of Mormon. I thought to myself, “Why not translate it back to Egyptian?”
I started almost immediately. I got my own blue paperback copy of the Book of Mormon, some paper, pens, and pencils. I was ready to begin.
I started with the first little phrase, “I, Nephi.” By looking down the chart I saw the phonetic Egyptian equivalent of the letter “I”. (How was an eight-year-old supposed to know that the Book of Mormon was actually translated from hieroglyphics.) The Egyptian letter was a little squiggly thing, but I did my best to copy it onto my paper.
I did the same for the letters in the word “Nephi”. The letter “N” looked like a fish, “E” was comprised of three lines, “P” was a circle that was smashed down a bit, and the letter “H” was represented in Egyptian by a rectangle with four lines drawn through it. I finished the word off with another letter “I” which was the squiggly thing again.
I had translated six letters from English to Egyptian. What an accomplishment! Two whole words! It was tiring though. I made a little mark with my pencil between the word “Nephi” and the next word and put bookmarks in the Book of Mormon and also the encyclopedia so I could take up where I left off at another time.
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