Discovering Lehi: New Evidence of Lehi and Nephi in Arabia

By Lynn M. Hilton and Hope A. Hilton

This "fascinating Mormon odyssey" was first commissioned by The Ensign. But no mention was ever made in that work of the Lihyan (Arabic transliteration for "The People of Lehi") civilization and the remarkable possibilities found in its Arabian ruins. In addition to the Hilton's original research, they have discovered volumes of new evidence and new possibilities. The findings in this book may just be the sign saying, "I, Lehi, was here." It is possible that Lehi and Nephi were actually great missionaries; that they converted thousands as hinted at in D&C 33:8-10. This new evidence suggests that Arabian converts of Nephi and Levi grew in number and influence and prospered (as all civilizations of The Book of Mormon were promised) over a period of 1000 years until they actually ruled Arabia for an additional 300 years. This work may be the most remarkable evidence currently available that Levi and Nephi actually existed and may be the only research to date to actually pinpoint Book of Mormon locations with any degree of accuracy. It is astounding that the city Nephi referred to as Nahum actually exists today as a city of ancient origins. It conforms to the Book of Mormon description of the burial place of Ishmael and the point where they changed their direction of travel from south-southeast to nearly eastward toward Bountiful. Here within our very grasp may be the first physical and historical evidence that Lehi and Nephi, lived, breathed, struggled and taught the gospel as marvelous and influential prophets of The Book of Mormon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cedar Fort Publishing & Media
• Release date: Feb 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781462126385

Book preview

– Chapter One –

The Challenge

Few Clues

Consider the scope of the challenge! We were to follow a trail that had been cooling for more than 2,5000 years, a trail that lay half a world away in sometimes war-torn territory. Crossing the borders in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Oman was in itself a formidable challenge. All the clues to Lehi’s route are contained in a mere eighteen chapters that Nephi wrote years after his journey, and the main purpose of that record was not to trace geography and caravan routes, but to preserve for posterity those marvelous visions given to his father and later to himself.

Priesthood Blessing

Then consider our own qualifications. We loved the Middle East, had many friends there, had often visited its cities and had studied its languages, history, and culture; but we did not have advanced degrees in Middle Eastern studies. We loved the Book of Mormon and had sincere testimonies of its truthfulness, but we were not sophisticated students of the book. But we had an assignment, articulated in blessings pronounced on our heads by Elder Robert D. Hales, who, learning of the assignment given us, wanted to meet us and learn of our preparations and expectations, and who tehn graciously accepted our request for a blessing. Among other ideas communicated, Elder Hales said, I bless you with perceptive minds, that as you listen to stories around the campfires, as you hear what your firends tell you, and as you see what is before you, you will understand its significance for the Book of Mormon. You will find evidence for Lehi’s journey that will strengthen the testimonies of the Saints, convince the youth of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon record, and spread the gospel among the Arab people.

Arab Connections in the Book of Mormon

By word count, about eight percent of the entire text of the Book of Mormon is located in Arabia—that is, eight percent of the toatl words describe events of Lehi and his family while they were in Arabia. In our eagerness to identify New World correlations in the Book of Mormon, perhaps we have often overlooked details from the Old World. It is this eight percent (1 Ne. 1–18) of the sacred text on which we focus.

Also, Nephi spent probably a fifth of his life in Arabia. We know his family spent eight years on the trail to Bountiful and probably another four years to build his ship. This would total twelve years of Nephi’s life, ca. 16 to 28 years, spent in the Arab-speaking world. If he lived about 72 years, then he spent an estimated seventeen percent of his life in Arabia.

Middle East Roots of Mormonism

It has become popular for some nonbelievers to say the Book of Mormon does contain many lofty doctrines and ethical thoughts, but the history never really happened. It is only a good story. The April 1992 Conference Report of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Independence, Missouri, says they recently repudiated the Book of Mormon as a history. Our research shows Nephi’s record was an actual, historical document.

Knowing that the Book of Mormon is true, we started from that premise: What Nephi wrote actually did happen. Inspired by God, Mormon included Nephi’s own record, unabridged. Inspired by God, Joseph SMith translated it, literally and faithfully. The hypotheses and conclusions we present are, of course, tentative; archaeologists and historians may provide further supporting evidence. But the story of our search for Lehi’s route is an exciting adventure, on that has resulted in some basic conclusions related to geographic locales mentioned in the Book of Mormon.

Before our journey, we wondered if our friends in the Middle East would accept our assignment and help us accomplish our goal. They did. They did more. They accepted the goal itself. Mrs. Rihab Ouri of Beirut, a good Muslim friend, summed up the kind of cooperation we received in a letter she wrote us after our return: Did you find the early Mormons of Saudi Arabia? She had made the connection before we had—that one of the sources of our religion is the Middle East, already the cradle of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Timelessness, an Arab Trait

One of the encouraging factors in our search was the discovery of the stark timelessness of the Arabian peninsula. It is a changeless place, not only geographically but also culturally. It is hard for people in highly developed areas of the world to imagine a place staying the same for two thousand years. We look at the world from our 20th centure perspective, in which technology’s immense power transforms landscapes into cities within weeks. But technology’s impact had not reached much of Arabia in early 1976.

However, by the alte 1980s we found the Saudis themselves interested in the history of their peninsula and making constructive attempts to preserve discovered historical sites. Now all major sties are enclosed with strong, high chain-linked fences, though they remain unexcavated. In the past decade, billions of oil dollars have washed this land, resulting in cultural and technological changes of significance. As we looked at the changes between 1976 and the present, we seriously doubted that we could now discover the trail after the dramatic modernization which has occurred. In addition, antiquities are now being fenced and locked by the government, local people and police are much more vigilant and alert against foreigners visiting and photographing ancient sites, and in places huge modern cities are being built over the old trail.

The history of Arabia is written in water, not ink. Where there is water, there is life—that is the inescapable fact of Arabian life; and the great oases of the Arabian peninsula do not move from place to place. Ancient cities could not thrive in a waterless desert, and there is a limit to how far suburbs can extend from central wells and springs. For us, trained in the short time-spans of journalistic history, a surprise came in the way Arabs talk about the three major events of the last 2,500 years of Arabian history. They refer to these sevents with knowledgeable familiarity, as though they took place yesterday:

The breaking of the Marib Dam. Not long before Lehi, some heroic but nameless leader undertook the gigantic engineering feat of constructing this dam or dike. Some experts think that the builders were the Sabaean kings, and that their kingdom was ancient Sheba (present Yemen), the home of the Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon (1 Kings 10 and Matt. 12:42).[1] They date the building of the dam from 750 B.C.[2] Thus this huge dam was in place long before Lehi’s visit in 600 B.C. Rainwater diverted by this dam or dike increased the agricultural fertility of the land by some 4,000 acres, until it supported a significant population.[3] According to the foremost scholar of the subject, the Marib Dam broke in the sixth century A.D.[4] Many survivors of the resultant flood, Christian in religion by the 6th century, faced with starvation, fought their way north, carving out with the sword a place for themselves among the central and northern Arabian clans. The following century, the influence of Muhammad and Islam entered the area. Families were often divided as conversion to Islam spread. The wars that followed lasted centures. Families in Arabia today still remember that they came from Marib and refer to the breaking of the dam as though it happened in their grandfather’s time. Its ruins still lie in the southwest corner of Arabia in Yemen.

The life of the prophet Muhammad. Muhammad’s religious mission in the seventh century A.D. resulted in millions of conversions across thousands of miles, from India to Spain. For the first time, religion united most Arabas and their neighbors across the barriers of waterless sand. Muhammad brought an age of enlightenment that had a direct impact on the Renaiisance in Europe.[5]

The discovery of oil. Thirteen centuries after Muhammad, in the 1940s, the discovery of oil brought the legenday riches of King Midas to countries where donkeys and camels, mud-brick houses, and goat-hair tents had been the measure of wealth. Now wells could be drilled, pipelines constructed, and vast areas and many people freed from the oases’ limitations, increasing in impact in the 1980s and sweeping parts of Arabia into the 20th century almost overnight.

But between these three events, Arab memory floats over legendary and contemporary battles, the reign of kings, good harvests, and bad droughts. All events—past, present, and future—are insahalla (God wills it), and a thousand years is little different from a hundred. The Lord knew the why, when, how, and where of Lehi’s journey. As readers of the Book of Mormon, we started out knowing the why and when. And we were determined to piece together whatever clues we could find taht might increase our understnaindg of how and where. Discoveries by the Saudi Arabian Antiquities Department in the past seventeen years have enhanced our research and made it possible to add to our original findings.

How Old is the Arab Civilization?

The ancient Greeks coined the term Arabia, deriving it from the name of a pastoral people living in what is now northern Arabia. The term arabi appears in 7th century B.C. Assyrian records.[6] But even before any of this, King Solomon was collecting tribute from the Kings of the Arabs from this same area in 950 B.C. (1 Kings 10:15). Therefore, it is valid to conclude taht a vast Arab civilization was long established by the time Lehi, Nephi, and their colony journeyed in the borders of the Red Sea, the Arab homeland, in 600 B.C.

Forming the Trail’s Outline

We read in great deatil the first eighteen chapters of 1 Nephi and discovered that Nephi has actually given many clues to his Arabian journey. So we started thinking, piecing together possible answers to our questions and examining scholars’ works, both ancient and modern, for whatever help they could give us. We set a departure date of January 20, 1976—giving us only four months to immerse ourselves in Lehi’s life and times from available written records.

As we prepared to make our journey, we wrote letters to Arab friends in seven Middle East countries, explaining our plans. We were astonished and overwhelmed with gratitude by their enthusiastic responses and offers to help. All seemed eager that we succeed in our search, for we would be looking in the ancestral homeland of all Arabs, the Saudi Arabian peninsula. These friends, we felt, would be a key to unlocking our understanding of Nephi’s words. Our supposition proved true.

Early in our thinking and research, an outline or picture of Lehi’s trek began to form in our minds, and these ideas were later buttressed by the insights and information graciously shared by our longtime friends and new acquaintances in the Middle East as well as by our own experience. To form that mental outline, a theory, really, we drew on the scholarship of Middle East experts in Utah, on our own reading in ancient and contemporary accounts of Arabia, and on some small but exciting hints from Latter-day Saint history. A central figure was Dr. Hugh Nibley, whose series of ten articles in the Improvement Era in 1950 first examined in detail the available scholarly evidence for the accuracy of the Book of Mormon account of Lehi’s trip through Arabia. In support of the divine origin of the Book of Mormon, Brother Nibley showed that evidence not available to Joseph Smith had in fact become well-known only in the 20th century.

Critics of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith have yet to answer the fact that he revelaed truths to the world which were unknown in 1830. A prime example is the location of a place called Bountiful described in 1 Ne. 17:7, a place wehre Nephi and his brothers could ahve built the ship to cross the ocean to America, a fertile valley, abounding in vegetation, adjacent to a great desert, but on the sea coast and located East of Nahom.

The geography of Saudi Arabia was mostly still shrouded in mystery in 1830. The first serious visitor in modern times was Johann Burkhart who managed to write and publish in England his 1812–1813 adventures of discovery in Africa and southern and northern Arabia. However, he never reached southeastern Arabia, nor did he describe any place he visited where there existed flowers, fruits, honeybees, streams, or a forest large enough to provide timber for building a ship. In fact, his descriptions of the places he saw in the peninsula would lend one to believe that only sand and desolate wasteland, controlled by warring Bedouin tribes, existed. Burkhart embraced Islam just to survive. Distrust and hatred of Christians since the time of the abortive crusades in the 11th to 13th centures had made the area off-limits except to the bravest of travelers.

Besides his interesting work on such things as the appropriateness to Arab culture of Book of Mormon names and poetic expressions, Doctor Hugh Nibley made important suggestions about the route: that Lehi was obviously familiar with desert travel and therefore knew the main caravan routes; and that he most likely followed on of those down the Wadi al-Araba to the Red Sea at al-Aqaba, then along the eastern Red Sea coast to the town of NAH’M (Nahom), later found to be on the fifteenth parallel of north latitude, where Lehi would have had to make the turn east, as reported in 1 Nephi 17:1, to reach the fertile Qara mountains on the seacoast. Doctor Nibley pinpointed this area as the only likely place for Bountiful, discovered by westerners in the 1920s and made known to a surprised world by Bertram Thomas in 1932.

The trail, actually a line of ancient hand-dug water wells which necessity dictated they must follow, turned nearly eastward near the 15th parallel, North latitude and terminated in a well-watered, verdant Shangri-la of gardens, palms trees, fruits, flowers, honeybees, and animal life on the shores of the Arabian Sea over 700 miles away at Dhufar, Oman (Bountiful). From this shore, countless Arab sailors before and after Lehi had braved the hazards of the ocean in boats and ships, planks tied together with coconut fibers. The stately jumaise (sycamore-fig) tree grew in abundance only in this area of Arabia and no other. Many of these sailors had reached India and in later centuries even China.

Figure 1-1

The first name at each location is the modern name, followed by the ancient name from the Book of Mormon, the Bible, or another ancient source. As reconstructed, it is 2156 miles from Jerusalem to Dhufar, Oman (Bountiful). Such a journey would take four months on camels to travel straight through, but the colony camped enroute.

Inland twenty miles from the feritle coastal area of Dhufar, the well-protected, almost secret groves of bush-sized frankincense trees grew, the reason for the trail’s existence. The tiny spot, unknown to the ewstern world in 1830 (see Appendix B), is the only place on the Arabian peninsula that, because it receives the rain of the annual monsoons blowing across the Indian Ocean, where they release their latent fertility, could be properly called Bountiful. The are, from Salalah to Wadi Sayq, in Dhufar, Oman, is isolated on three sides by a ring of mountains the Qara, beyond which lies the vast barren Rub-al-Khali (Empty Quarter), a sand desert traveleres have rarely penetrated. On the south it faces the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, other natural barriers. (See Figure 1-1.)

The Theory Requires Verification

Lehi’s general route seemed theoretically possible, but was there indeed such a passable trail, perhaps even a caravan route that he could have known about? As Hugh Nibley suggests, Lehi was apparently like Moses, who spent an early apprenticeship in the desert before the Lord used him to lead the children of Israel across the Sinai. In the expanded version of An Approach to the Book of Mormon,[7] Doctor Nibley explains that Lehi could also have been involved in commercial ventures, such as those which we now know brought some Jews of Lehi’s time into extensive dealings with the Arabs. Such Jews traveled along the caravan routes, enjoyed protection by local sheikhs and sometimes even established permanent colonies. Lehi may well have been chosen for the great work of leading a group of the house of Israel across Arabia on their way to a promised land because his early life prepared him in the ways of the desert, o rperhaps the Lord provided him with that desert experience to prepare him for the later, more difficult journey. Could we find the route along which the Lord led him, using Lehi’s own knowledge and the Liahona? As we studied available maps, the general route appeared possible. The period from 1000 to 500 B.C., which of course includes Lehi’s trip, is the great period of overland trade routes from the kingdoms of South Arabia through present-day Saudi Arabia to the civilizations of the Mediterranean.

Camel caravans carried spices and aromatics, particularly frankincense and myrrh, to the eager markets. We needed to cover the same ground, take pictures, and talk to travelers and residents along the road; then we might succeed in our assignment.

Gus W. Van Beek, The Rise and Fall of Arabia Felix, Scientific America (December 1969): 41.

[return]

Fr. Eugene Hoade, East of the Jordan (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1966): 318.

[return]

Van Beek, Arabia Felix, 43.

[return]

Ibid., Arabia Felix, 39.

[return]

Philip K. Hitti, The Arabs: A Short History (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1966): 187.

[return]

Kamal S. Salibi, A History of Arabia, (Caraban Books, Delmar, NY, 1980), page 2.

[return]

Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1964): 47ff.

[return]

– Chapter Two –

The Frankincense Trail

Lehi’s Trail Well-Populated

Gradually, from our study and thinking, a clearer picture began to emerge. It was especially exciting to learn of an ancient caravan route that followed almost exactly the theoretical trail we had constructed from the Book of Mormon and other church publications. Known as the frankincense trail, and originatng at the ancient source of frankincense, a fertile spot on the coast of modern Dhufar in Oman seemed the only place that fit Nephi’s description of Bountiful.

Twisted limbs of large frankincense tree at Salalah, Dhufar, Oman, 1983.

We realized that a cursory reading of the Book of Mormon might give the impression that Lehi and his family traveled into a desert vacuum, barren of people and civilization and far from any well-traveled route; a more careful reading of the text reveals several clues, implying inhabited regions connected by much-used trails. Saudi Arabia has been inhabited at least since Abraham’s time when Hagar and Ishmael were put out of Abraham’s tent and found refuge in the desert (Genesis 21:14–20). Ishmael’s descendants became a separate people from Isaac’s descendants. According to Muslim tradition, the Zam-zam well in Mecca is the water that God pointed out to Hagar to assuage the thirst of the child Ishmael.[1]

By Moses’s time a large confederation of Arab tribes known as the Midianites propsered in the area (Figure 2-1). As Semites, they were akin to the Hebrews, but often warred with them. Their capital was the present site of al-Bad (see Figure 8-2, in chapter 8). Ruins from the ancient Midianite civilization are being uncovered every year. We have visited and examined the water well at al-Bad and climbed into many of the carved-stone burials in the mountains, attributed to the prophet Shuaib (Jethro) in the Koran. The ancient well, though now dry, is of great inerest because it is hand-cut through the living stone to a depth of about fifty feet. This has been identified as a Nabetean-Arab well, which could be an enlargement of a more anicent Midiante well. Here Zipporah could have watered her father’s sheep when she met the roayl son of the Egyptian court, Moses (Ex. 2:16–21). After living here forty years, Moses returned to his people in Egypt and later brought them out of bondage, though Sinai to the promised land. The Midianites disappeared from history about 1000 B.C., conquered and absorbed by the Dedanites.

Figure 2-1

al-Bad, Saudi Arabia is shown on this map as Jethro

In Genesis 25:3 we read of two of Abraham’s descendants by Keturah his second wife, Sheba and Dedan. These two men brought their clains to settle in Arabia. Sheba settled in the south, his capital being in Yemen; Dedan ruled in the north at the present site of Median Salih and al-Ula. In recent years, in Saudi Arabia, the remainds of the Dedanite capital at al-Ula have been identified. Dedan, a powerful kingdom, is mentioned in the Bible eleven times, from Genesis to Ezekiel, and is a kingdom never conquered by King Solomon. The Dedanite borders touched the southern border of Israel in King Solmomon’s reign. The Dedanites were people made rich by the frankincense trade; they were powerful merchants (Ezek. 38:13). They became corrupt and were overthrown about 500 B.C., crushed by an internal uprising who became known as the Lihyanites (meaning "The people or tribe of Lihy or Lehi) civilization, led, it is supposed, by the trade route proprietors and caravaneers of the frankincense trail.

The famed account of the visit of the Queen of Sheba, who traveled from Yemen north-northeast along the Red Sea to Jerusalem to visit Judah’s King Solomon, is further evidence of the existence of a well-traveled road, even 3000 years before Lehi’s time. In fact, Jesus himself describes this Queen of the South coming from The uttermost parts of the Earth, (Matt. 12:42), verifying its further use in ancient times. We have seen the ruins of her castle in Marib, Yemen, and postulate she used the same ancient road.

The Lihyanites (LEHI-AN-ITES)

An ancient Arab tribe, pronounced Lehi-an-ites, bears the very name of the ancient Book of Mormon Prophet Lehi. They flourished along part of Lehi’s path immediately after he passed through and became in their own right wealthy middle-men in the frankincense trade.

The existence of Arab people living in Yemen, along the old Lehi trail, is established in an article Archaeology of Arabia by Professor Albert Jamme of Catholic University [Washington D.C. (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Vol. 1:246)]. As Jamme says, it is well established that Arabs from the Hadramaut (Yemen) were in place by the 9th century B.C. A clay stamp found at Bethel in Israel is an identical counterpart of one found at el-Mashod, Yemen. As Jamme says, These two stamps testify to active incense trade between the two cities in the 9th century.

Drinking Water

Lehi and Nephi could not have traveled without food and water for their families and beasts of burden. Nephi records no miraculous manna descending to feed them. They had to work hard for their food, and sometimes they complained because of hunger. No waters are reported gushing miraculously from rocks of Horeb, as Moses had produced with the touch of his rod.