Martin Harris, one of the early supporters of Joseph Smith, recounted a pivotal event that occurred in February 1828. Harris visited Professor Charles Anthon, a classical scholar located in New York City, with a transcription of reformed Egyptian characters that had been copied from the golden plates which Joseph Smith claimed to have received from an angel named Moroni. During this visit, Anthon purportedly could not identify the characters as any known language and consequently referred Martin Harris to consult with Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill, an esteemed naturalist and antiquarian who also resided in New York.1
Upon examination of the characters Harris had brought, Dr. Mitchill offered his expertise, observing that the characters bore an unfamiliar resemblance to Egyptian glyphs, yet were not directly identifiable as Egyptian. Dr. Mitchill's assessment went further to suggest that the characters could potentially be associated with a hitherto unknown civilization, which played into the narrative Joseph Smith had presented concerning the origin of the plates—that they contained the record of an ancient and lost civilization.1
