Introduction

In the mid 1830s, Oliver Cowdery and Frederick G. Williams recorded four characters that had been copied from the plates and Joseph Smith's translations of those characters. Egyptian translations of these glyphs have been deciphered. One of these glyphs, the name Mormon in the reformed Egyptian, is found in hieratic Egyptian with meaning matching the Book of Mormon prophet Mormon. The glyph (Lazy-S) is found in the ancient Olmec and Maya cultures concurrent with Book of Mormon time frames. The meanings and depictions associated with the Mesoamerican Lazy-S glyph are consistent with the etymological meanings for the phonetic word Mormon found in Egyptian and Sumerian. Book of Mormon descriptions associated with the geographical locations identified as Mormon are consistent with the Mesoamerican meaning of the Lazy-S glyph. The Mesoamerican Mormon glyph may have originated in Sumerian proto-cuneiform.