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 Directions
in Hebrew, Egyptian and Nephite Language
Based
on research by William J. Hamblin
A great deal
of effort has gone into trying to correlate the cities and regions
mentioned in the Book of Mormon with the geography of the Americas.
The most widely accepted attempt currently is the "limited geography"
theory most extensively developed by John Sorenson.1 Some critics
have claimed that Sorenson's theory is incorrect because the lands
he ascribes to the Book of Mormon are actually situated along a
northwest/southeast axis rather than north/south as described in
the Book of Mormon. Sorenson offers an excellent discussion of this
issue,2 to which the following can be added.
How would the
Nephites, using the "learning of the Jews and the language of the
Egyptians" (1 Nephi 1:2), have written north, south, east, and west?
The Hebrews, like most Semitic peoples, oriented themselves by facing
east, toward the rising sun. Thus east in Hebrew was simply front,
with south as right, north as left, and west as rear or "sea".3
But the Nephites
also knew the "language of the Egyptians" (1 Nephi 1:2; Mosiah 1:4;
Mormon 9:32). The Egyptians oriented themselves by facing south,
toward the source of the Nile. "One of the terms for 'south' [in
Egyptian] is also a term for 'face'; the usual word for 'north'
is probably related to a word which means the 'back of the head.'"
The word for east is the same as for left, and west is the same
word as right.4
Thus the Hebrew
orientation is shifted 90 degrees from the Egyptian. The Hebrew
word for west (rear) has the same basic meaning as Egyptian north
(back of the head); Hebrew east (front) equals Egyptian south (face);
Hebrew north (left) matches Egyptian east (left); with Hebrew south
(right) being Egyptian west (right).
Thus when Nephi
or his descendants wrote "in the language of the Egyptians," they
would conceptualize the land westward in terms of the Hebrew word
back. But in writing the Hebrew land backward in Egyptian characters,
they would actually be writing the Egyptian word for land northward.
So when the Nephites wrote the Egyptian word for north, did they
have the Hebrew
meaning west in mind, or the Egyptian meaning north?
If Nephi used
the Egyptian terms with Hebrew meanings in mind, and if Joseph Smith
then translated those terms literally, a remarkable coincidence
occurs. In the Hebrew (and modern) concept of directions, land westward
(Hebrew rear) would have been written in Egypto-Nephite characters
as land northward (Egyptian behind ), and land eastward (Hebrew
front) would have been written in Egypto-Nephite as land southward
(Egyptian front). In other words, the conceptual geography of the
Hebrew universe must be "distorted" in relation to the Egyptian
vocabulary in precisely the way that Nephite geography seems "distorted"
in relation to Mesoamerica.
Such Nephite
behavior would parallel the way the Egyptians dealt with the problem
of fitting their conceptual scheme to strange landscapes encountered
when they traveled outside Egypt. They did not change their world
view to fit the new geographical facts but simply kept the same
terminology. This is shown in their handling of the direction of
flow of the Euphrates River. As we have seen, "The Egyptian word
'to go north,' is also the Egyptian word 'to go downstream,' and
the word 'to go south' is also the word 'to go upstream,' against
the current [of the Nile]. When the Egyptians met another river,
the Euphrates, for example, that flowed south instead of north,
they had to express the contrast by calling it 'that circling water
which goes downstream in going upstream,'" which could also be translated
as "the river which flows 'north' [Egyptian downstream] by flowing
'south' [Mesopotamian downstream]."5 In other words, they kept their
own cosmographic mindset unchanged while they adjusted the "real-world"
geography to fit it--which seems to be what the Nephites did.
If this way
of translating directions did not bother the Egyptians, it may not
have bothered their contemporaries, the Nephites. Thus we can see
that cardinal directions were not expressed by ancient civilizations
in the same way they are by modern civilizations. We need to consider
how the Nephites in fact labeled their geography, rather than simply
to presume that north must mean the direction north as we now understand
it.
Notes
1. John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of
Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1985).
2. Ibid., 38-42.
3. See Brevard
S. Childs, "Orientation," in George Buttrick, ed. The Interpreter's
Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962), 3:608.
4. John A. Wilson,
in Henri Frankfort, et al., Before Philosophy: The Intellectual
Adventure of Ancient Man (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1972), 51.
5. Ibid., 45-46.
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