Franklin S. Harris, Jr., discusses examples of writing on metal plates from antiquity.
Franklin S. Harris, Jr., “Ancient Records on Metal Plates,” in Thirteenth Annual Symposium on the Archaeology of the Scriptures, ed. Dee F. Green (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1962), 41–51
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Metal Plates in the Old World
One o the oldest gold plates comes from the tomb of Menkure, 2600 B.C., builder of the third pyramid at Giza. The tomb of Menkure had a blue sarcophagus which contained the remnants of a man and no treasure except sole golden tablets which were inscribed with the characters of a language which nobody could understand at that time. The tablets are now lost because they were used to pay the excavating workmen. The gold was said to be worth about $200. What wouldn’t the Metropolitan Museum of Art pay today of these tablets?
In 1937 a gold tablet was found in the Sumerian Umma in modern Mesopotamia. Umma flourished in the third millennium B.C. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City there is a bronze dedicatory figure which looks like a lion reading from a large sheet. That is a most interesting object to look at, though its size is only about two by three inches. The language seems to be Hurrian written in cuneiform of about mid-III millennium and came from Urkis in northern Iraq. While looking around in the Metropolitan Museum we can also look at a thin piece of gold about three and one-half inches square covered by hieroglyphics on one side. It is from Lishy from the XIIth dynasty (2000-1788 B.C.0 in Egypt.
While we are visiting museums, let us go to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. While visiting there recently I saw three sets of plates of interest to us. While visiting there recently I saw three sets of plates of interest to us. The earliest was an inscribed foundation deposit from Bismayah, Iraq, from the early dynastic period of 2900-2425 B.C. It includes three copper tablets with inscriptions. The second is a Syro-Hittite treasure of a large gold disk with figures from the 15th to 14th century B.C. The third is the gold tablet of Shalmanaser III, King of Assyria, Northern Iraq, 858-824 B.C. It has an inscription on both sides.
One of the famous plates is the boss of Tarkondemos which is a silver plate in form like half an orange with an inscription in Hittite surrounded by one in the cuneiform writing of Assyria. This is an example of inscriptions written in two or three languages when the text was very important. G. A. Barton has reproduced this in his Archaeology and the Bible. In 1254 B.C. after a long war between the Hittites of Syria and Egypt, a treaty was concluded between Ramses II of Egypt and Khattu-sil, king of the Hittites. A translation of the Egyptian copy of the treaty has been given by Dr. A. H. Sayce. Sayce reports that the oldest writing material of the Hittites was metal plates with the characters hammered through to the front surface from the back side.
Seck reports that the kings of Egypt used inscribed tablets of gold, silver and copper to honor their gods. J. H. Breasted gives an example with Ramses III:
I made for these great tablets of gold in beaten work engraved with the great names of thy majesty, bearing my praises—I made for these great tablets of silver in beaten work, carved with a graver’s tool, bearing the decrees and the inventions of the house and temples which I made [in] Egypt.
There are references to records being kept of families, sometimes for genealogies, as we learn from the adventures of the Egyptian envoy to Byblus (1090-1085 B.C.0 and from the Amarna tablets, 14th century B.C. The same type of records were later kept in Rome at the time Lehi of the Book of Mormon account left Palestine at 600 B.C. Somewhat later is the Egyptian plate I the British Museum made of two by six inch gold sheet giving in Greek characters the dedication of a temple to Osiris by Ptolemy Eurgentes and Berenice (242-222 B.C.). I have seen this plate.
Let us return to the Mesopotamian region for another look. Reference was made to the plate of Shalmanezer III in the Oriental Institute. Assurnasirpal II who reigned in Assyria, 884-859 B.C., made a pair of gold and silver tablets which have been found. For that matter there have been found some other plates of Shalmanezer III at Aalawat made of bronze with records of his campaigns. Sargon of Assyria, 722-705 B.C., repeats over and over in his Annals that he kept his records on metal tablets of gold, silver, copper, lead and tin, and also bronze. These were found in 1854 but part of them were lost in an accident on the Tigris River. In 1905 seven lead scrolls were found in Assur in Assyria engraved in Hittite characters and dated from the end of the seventh century B.C.
One of the best known of the modern discoveries are the tablets form Darius I (518-515 B.C.) who buried gold and silver memorial tablets at Persepolis in Iran. These were discovered and undisturbed until 1933. The text sets forth the limits of his kingdom and was written in three languages—Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian—on tablets thirteen inches square and 0.6 inches thick.
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