“He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent.” — Joseph Smith Jr.1
When Angel Moroni visited Joseph Smith Jr. for the first time, he spoke to the young boy of a record on golden plates buried in a hill nearby,2 now known as the Hill Cumorah.3 The next day, Joseph set out for the hill and dug in the place he had been shown in the vision. There, he found a box buried beneath a boulder with the golden plates, seer stones, and breastplate inside. Joseph was not permitted to take the plates that day.2
Descriptions of the plates state that they had the appearance of gold and weighed between 40 and 60 pounds. They were likely not pure gold, and Joseph's younger brother, William, thought the plates might be a mixture of gold and copper.4 The record was written in what Moroni called "reformed Egyptian."5
