Where Did Nephi Build the
Ship?
Text and Photography by Maurine
and Scot Proctor
Editor’s note: This article
was published eight years ago on
"We were exceedingly rejoiced when
we came to the seashore; and we called the place
Lehi's journey as described in the Book of Mormon is
a strange and epic tale. He and his family wade through a barren wilderness
for eight years, facing every sort of deprivation, to arrive at a jewel
of a green refuge called
Critics in Joseph Smith's day simply hooted
at the story. According to Hugh Nibley, "The
best guide to
Yet even later when Europeans came to probe
the
Click on photos to enlarge
Unrelenting desert skirting the great “Empty Quarter”
of Arabia, the most forsaken wilderness on the planet.
The question has always been intriguing. For
his early 1950's series on the Book of Mormon in the Improvement
Era, Hugh Nibley pored through the works of
early explorers and found the writings of Bertram Thomas, who shed some
light on the puzzle. Captain Thomas in 1928 had traveled through the arid
wastes of the southeastern corner of
Yet it took two hardy Australian Saints, Warren
and Michaela Aston, to actually pack their bags, fly to
But the Astons wanted more. They wanted to
test the land against Nephi's description to see if any specific location
matched. Nephi gave us many specific clues about his
For a place to qualify as Bountiful, it had to have timber in enough types and sizes to permit ship building and a mountain prominent enough to be called "the mount," close enough that Nephi could retreat there and "pray oft."
With this comprehensive set of clues, the Astons
combed the coast and seriously considered six areas as candidates for
Wild camels rest at the
top of Wadi Sayq about
15-20 miles from the ocean and at a 4,000-foot elevation.
Was this the place where Nephi built the ship? The Astons were compelled enough by the match between Wadi Sayq and Nephi's description of Bountiful that they published a paper detailing their research for FARMS, the Foundation for Ancient & Mormon Studies ("And We Called the Place Bountiful: The End of Lehi's Arabian Journey").
We first came upon the Aston's paper while preparing to photograph and write our book Light from the Dust: A Photographic Exploration into the Ancient World of the Book of Mormon. This was the third in a trilogy of photographic books we had created, and by far the most difficult. Our purpose in the books had been to make vivid and tangible the sacred events of the past by telling them scene by scene with photographs of the actual places.
For the first book, Witness of the Light, we had photographed those places significant in the restoration and in the life of Joseph Smith. The places were documented with land records, property deeds, structures, homes, streets, and fields all directly tied to Joseph and his contemporaries.
Photographing the land that Jesus knew for
Source of the Light was more of a challenge, but with Jewish and
Christian names, and the almost timeless
We were grateful for the Astons’ research on that last question, and so, grabbing our camera, 350 rolls of film, sleeping bags, bug spray, and the Aston's paper that included a few hand-drawn maps, we prepared ourselves to take off for Oman in May 1992.
On the trail of a mystery, there are always
obstacles, and we ran into our first one even before we left
Asking travel agents about
At the American Embassy in
At the Omani embassy we asked for visas, and the man behind the desk looked at us indifferently, saying an English sentence he had used many times before: "It is impossible." Still the Spirit had whispered to us, and to this we clung, sitting down on the office couch as if we simply didn't understand the word impossible. Finally, not certain how to get rid of us, he gave us visa applications, and a week later we were on our way.
We are always extremely specific in our prayers, asking the Lord to touch every detail of our journey. Now, flying to a country nobody could tell us about, we prayed fervently that He would provide a good map for us, as good maps are extremely difficult to obtain in Arab countries.
Renting our jeep in Salalah, we looked over the tourist maps available. They didn't offer the detail we needed to find a remote wadi well off the paved road. We asked the man at the car rental agency if he didn't have anything better. He looked to the right and to the left and then said to us in hushed tones, "I can give you this map, but it is a top secret military map. Be careful." We studied the map with gratitude. It was in English, was an extremely detailed topographical map, and covered only the area we wanted to travel, kilometer by kilometer.
Formidable
view from the top of Wadi Sayq. You would have to have
a Liahona to encourage you to go down such a canyon
with your families.
Eighty miles south of Salalah, in a land nearly unrelieved by vegetation or people, the paved road began to wind tortuously around the dry, steep gorge that is Wadi Sayq. The wadi drops off the western plateau at about 4,000 feet and winds sixteen miles down a narrow path through limestone canyons to shore. From our vantage, at the beginning of the wadi's descent, it was not evident that in a few miles the canyon would be lined with jungle, that the unrelenting brown would give way almost instantly, at the turn of a corner, to emerald forests.
Emerald forests and greenery
would greet Nephi and Lehi and family just about
two miles from the ocean.
If this was the way Nephi and his family came, it would have been like this. They would have had no indication, as they began to wind through a canyon, that the sea was so close, that within miles the thirsty, folded land would be blanketed in green only two miles from shore.
We saw a type here. We are told to "endure to the end," to bear with patience our tribulations, yet the end does not always announce itself. Sometimes when we feel we can be brave no longer, all that is required of us is just a little more.
Our first
view of Wadi Sayq from
high above on the cliffs overlooking the
Unable to travel the wadi to the shore, we found an unmarked dirt road that we hoped would lead to Rakhqut, a tiny, seaside village about six miles along the shore from Wadi Sayq. Our calculations were correct, and we arrived after dark to a village shut down for the dry season, its inhabitants retreated to the mountains. It stood quiet and ghostly on the shore of the sea, a silent mirage.
We stopped the one truck we saw and with gestures and a few words asked, "How do we get to Wadi Sayq?" They answered that the only way to go there was "by ship," and we understood that in the morning someone would help us.
In the evening darkness, we drove out of the
nearby deserted village and parked by the beach, trying to find a place
to rest. The stars shone brightly over the Arabian Sea, the northeastern
curve of the
We went toward the lights with some anxiety. Had we broken a law? Was this the military or the police? In true Arabian hospitality, it was a few remaining villagers come to greet us with cold drinks and an offer to take us to Wadi Sayq the next morning in a fishing boat.
Here was our “ship” that would take us the few kilometers on the
Our navigator was to be a scrawny fourteen-year-old boy who spoke only Arabic. We showed him our photocopied pictures of Wadi Sayq from the Astons' paper, drew maps in the sand, pointed in the air, and finally, somehow, came to an agreement. He hadn't been to the wadi, but he recognized it.
Placing $6,000 of camera equipment in the front
of an 18-foot fishing boat was a little disquieting the next morning. The
six- and seven-foot waves crashing onto the beach looked as if they would
easily swallow a Pentax, a Nikon, and us — and
no life jackets were available. But this boy knew the ocean and he watched
the waves and at a signal pushed us quickly into the sea. Not one drop touched
us or the equipment. Within minutes, at full throttle, we arrived at one
of the most beautiful locations in the million square miles of
Early morning sun glimmers upon the beautiful beach where
we landed at the most likely candidate where Nephi built the ship.
We landed at the far west end of the beach and, wading through the night's tidewater pool, we brought all our gear to a higher area by a large rock and began drawing symbols and pictures in the sand to encourage the boy to come back the next day to pick us up. Three o'clock was the appointed hour; we would have 32 hours to photograph this place.
Wadi Sayq
is one of two "rivers" in
This lovely wadi has water all year round and is a lovely contrast to
the stark desert but two or three miles from here.
It was, as the Astons suggested, a place that
perfectly matched Nephi's description. A free-standing mountain occupied
the southwest of the beach. Towering tamarind and sycamore trees suitable
for shipbuilding grew up in the wadi a few hundred
yards away from shore. Here was a freshwater source, sardine in the sea
for eating, land and water to grow crops. We had seen jasper deposits at
the top of the wadi, suitable for striking together
to make fire. These were a startling combination of characteristics in
Monsoons water the area from June through September, creating a knot of jungle and undergrowth in the wadi and seaward slopes, but since we were there in the driest month of the year, May, we soon learned we had come with disadvantages and an advantage. The land was not as beautiful for photography, but the vegetation had burned back, exposing the wadi's secrets.
Here you can see the peculiar mound and part of the double-row
of stones leading away from it.
The Astons had written that they had found archaeological remains in Wadi Sayq, signs of former human habitation. They reported that on the east side of the wadi stood a mound some twelve feet high and forty-five feet in diameter, now covered with wind-blown sand and vegetation. Radiating from this mound, they noted, were double lines of stones. One of them stretched about ninety feet toward the beach. A second double line of stones, some 400 feet long, curved back toward the freshwater of the wadi.
They also reported a rock face, not far from the mound that contained several groups of graffiti. Though some of the graffiti looked relatively recent, sketched on the rock was what appeared to be a much older set of graffiti, its red pigment faded with time. Painted in that faded red on the rock was a ship.
If you look
carefully you will see an ancient image of a ship drawn in graffiti on the
rock face not far from the mysterious mound. A large black camel is drawn,
perhaps hundreds of years later, over the ship just about center of the
picture.
We began our exploration of the wadi on the opposite side from the mounds, asking the Lord to open our eyes to see what was there. As we walked, we started to see double lines of stones everywhere. One line over 600 feet long stretched perpendicular from the beach, back into the trees. Another at right angles to it ran across the valley. The more we walked, the more we saw. One sixty-foot line of double stones ended at a twenty-four-foot square collapsed area.
Here you can look across the expanse of the wadi
(where the green is) and note many lines of stones — signs of human habitation.
On we walked, exploring the wadi, double-checking the Astons’ paper to see if they had mentioned any of this. They hadn't. We wondered if their silence indicated that they had come in the wet season and that vegetation had obscured the view.
The further we explored, the more stunned we were. Who had built these double lines, and for what purpose? Further down the wadi, we saw a foundation. Not far away we began to see several three-feet high stone structures shaped like an omega. A little father, we saw the remains of an ancient well. At every turn, we documented what we saw, taking hundreds of photographs in just a few hours.
We started to do more concrete thinking about
Nephi and his family than we ever had before, lifting them out of the vague
nowhere land of our imagination to begin to wonder how practically they
had accomplished their mission at a place called Bountiful. Just before
they had come to
Free-standing mount here at Wadi
Sayq could have been the mount where Nephi went
oft to talk to God (see 1 Nephi 18: 3)
Throughout the day, we explored both sides
of the wadi, sloshing back and froth across it,
photographing the mound, the graffiti, and more, but if an
Sleeping was nearly impossible with the heat, the hungry mosquitoes, and noisy sand crabs. After a short while, our skin began to twitch from the insect poison it carried. We finally fell into a fitful sleep, amazed at what we'd seen and hoping the boy would remember to come get us the next day.
By morning, we were quickly running out of water, so having photographed extensively and hiked as far as strength would allow, we decided to rest in the shade of the rock face with the ancient graffiti, read 1 Nephi and pray. Somewhere in the middle of chapter seven or eight, we began to feel little pains on our legs and pulled up our pant legs to see we were covered with ticks — ticks already red with our blood. (Scot ended up with 137 bites that took more than four months to heal.)
The wadi
is verdant and inviting and probably seemed like heaven to Nephi and Lehi
and family; hence they named the place “
From our vantage in the shade at a
Could these have been the supports for the scaffolding of a ship? Curiously, here, in this oval shape, the vegetation grew more densely. We knew that archaeologists have often observed that where wood has deteriorated, vegetation grows. And if people built a ship and launched it, they would certainly not stop to tear down their scaffolding but leave it, as is, to decay into the earth.
Note the darkened area in an oval shape in the midst of the
barren rocks and then the dark piles of rocks leading down to the ocean.
When the true history
books are opened, the expedition of Lehi's family,
over twenty centuries before
Finally, we noted piles of rocks leading in succession to the high-water tide line of the ocean, perhaps used as supports for a launching ramp.
Large
stone that could have been used as part of a foundry.
Not far from here, we noted a large, concave, half-moon-shaped rock with an air shaft that ran completely underneath. Observing the traces of carbon built up on the rock face, we mused that this might be a candidate for a foundry. The rock, the mound, and the oval shape of a ship were all proximate to each other. We wondered if the double line of rocks from the fresh water to the mound was to bring water to run some kind of waterworks, if the mound might have once been some kind of pulley system used to build a ship.
We also wondered if the double line of rocks from the fresh water to the mound was used in any way to transport the lumber from the large trees that grew a little further up the wadi.
Trees that towered 70 and 80 feet high grew in abundance
along the edge of wadi.
For us however, the time at Wadi Sayq had ended. In this forgotten place, we had discovered what had not been seen before. As we hopped into the little boat, this time with four other Arab boys, and headed eastward on the ocean to the village, we would have been content to ponder what we had seen.
Instead, we had not been traveling five minutes when the boys cut the motor way back. We turned around to see their faces white with fear. We had noticed a large, dark swell of water to the front of the boat. "What's wrong?" we asked.
"Nimrani!" they cried back.
"What's a nimrani," we asked.
"Very big fish. Eats people."
"How big?"
"Bigger than the boat," was their reply.
We later learned that our little boat had been floating on top of a whale shark, which can be as large as 65 feet long and weigh 70,000 to 80,000 pounds, but they are not hostile, which knowledge would have been comforting at the time.
Moments later, large five- and ten-pound fish were jumping headlong out of the water and over the full length of our boat. Fish after fish, seemingly defying gravity, sprang over our boat. The boys handed us our empty two-liter water bottles and motioned for us to protect ourselves by "batting" them away from us.
So what do we conclude from our trip to Wadi Sayq? We do not know who made that mound, those double lines of stones. We do not know who left the shape of a large ship on the beach there with piles of rocks that lead to the ocean. We do not yet know conclusively in what time period these things were built. Nor, at this point, without further study, can we be sure exactly what the original purpose was for the scanty remains left behind. Since our trip, FARMS sent a team of scholars to observe the area. A few others have returned as well. Much is left to be discovered here.
View of the best candidate for Nephi’s
What is clear is that Lehi's desert journey, ending in a lush refuge called
How could Joseph Smith have known any of this when he translated the Book of Mormon in 1829? He couldn't have. That Wadi Sayq exists is, as Hugh Nibley would say, another "bulls-eye" for the Book of Mormon.