Posted on 07/11/2009 2:20:18 PM PDT by greyfoxx39
The Discovery of the Valley of Lemuel: No, it wasn't a mirage, Part One
by Bruce A. Santucci
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to discover a Book of Mormon archaeological site like the Valley of Lemuel? It might change your life forever. Knowing where Lehi actually camped might set you off on a journey you wouldn't end until you had reached Bountiful.
Such was the force that compelled George Potter, his colleagues and I each time we turned off the paved roads of modern civilization and headed our 4 X 4s, loaded with extra cans of gasoline and drinking water into the Arabian outback. George was hot on the ancient trail of Lehi and assured us we would be safe and successful in our efforts.
But what if his theories were wrong and someone did get hurt? Moses described this land as "a great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water." Consider the following story from the Arab News just last month:
YOUTH DIES OF THIRST IN DESERT:
Baqaa -- A 25 year-old Saudi from the Assulaimy family was found dead by security officers in the desert on Saturday after a weeklong search.
A team from the civil defense, patrol police and the criminal investigation units confirmed that the man had died of thirst, Okaz reported.
Assulaimy was on an outing with his family to Atana and Akhdar valleys in the Tabuk region.
After reaching the area, the family went out to see the sites and asked the youth to stay behind and look after their belongings.
"When the family returned, they could not find him. They made a fire to help the man find his way back during the night. But he did not return. They later searched for him everywhere before informing the police," the Arabic paper said.
Six jeeps, a helicopter and several security officers were involved in the search, which lasted for seven days.
The youth was planning to celebrate his wedding after winning the consent of a Tabuk family to marry one of their daughters.
Meanwhile, a viper attacked a group of Saudi youngsters on Friday while they were resting close to Baqaa. One of the youths eventually managed to kill the snake.
Various poisonous snakes are emerging from their hideouts because of the high temperatures and health officials have urged the public to be on their guard.
Zaid Al-Barrak, who killed the snake said it attacked the group of boys while they were relaxing on a hillside.
The viper is one of the most venomous snakes in the world and its bite may kill a person. In Saudi Arabia, it exists mostly in Hail and the Empty Quarter.
Staff Writer
The story above demonstrates that poisonous reptiles still abound in these deserts. There would be no medical services in the Arabian wilderness, no rescue helicopters at our beck and call and little law and order. We all knew many of the areas where we traveled continue to be plagued with roaming bandits; just as in Lehi's time.
Still, these thoughts didn't linger long. What member wouldn't take some risk to be the first group of Latter-day Saints to stand in the place and camp where the great prophet Nephi had stayed.
It was this lure of discovery that drove George and his friends to pursue continued investigations into the desert. Book of Mormon scholars have long believed that Arabia was the wilderness Lehi crossed to reach Bountiful and we were in the right place at the right time and with time enough off from our regular jobs here to follow the Trail of Lehi to Bountiful.
Our search would end when we had been satisfied that we had indeed located all the places in Arabia described by Nephi, including the place along the shoreline of south Arabia where Nephi constructed a large ship and set sail to the promised land of the Americas.
We all believe the Book of Mormon is a true history; an eyewitness account of the crossing of Arabia. Still, as the pieces of George's research came together; one candidate after another became important to investigate and early results convinced us that we could actually find Lehi's entire trail.
We are all employed in Saudi Arabia, and several of us have 4 by 4 trucks. So there didn't seem much to prevent us from making the attempt to find and follow Lehi's actual trail.
It was a tall order, but from the photographs George had taken in northwest Arabia, we had enough evidence to realize that this was no wild goose chase of some willful believer.
Some might contend that we are not professional scholars. This is true. We do, however have one thing the armchair academics do not -- ready access to Arabia. We live in Arabia, and we have the time and desert exploration skills needed to safely complete a difficult search for Nephi's history.
Scholars we aren't, but we knew enough before starting our search that objective research techniques would need to be used. Otherwise, what chance would we have of convincing the nay-saying non-LDS world that we had located actual Book of Mormon place-names. We are not professional academics, but most of us have Master's or Doctoral degrees in our chosen fields of study and have learned to tell the difference between objective evidence and the evidence a quack brings to the table.
George's theories were derived from historical records of travel in Arabia, and his actual field work in which we retraced the ancient Frankincense trail.
Earlier attempts to discover Lehi's trail include the written work of Dr. Hugh W. Nibley, who to this day, has never had the opportunity to travel and verify his theories in Arabia.
Studies by Lynn and Hope Hilton, Warren and Michella Aston and Scot and Maurine Proctor also contributed to our understanding of Lehi's trail.
So what could we bring to the exploration table that the earlier authors could not?
First we had continuous access to Saudi Arabia; the Kingdom which encompasses the largest portion of Lehi's trail, including such important Book of Mormon place-names as the Valley of Lemuel, the River of Laman, Shazer, the Most Fertile Parts, and the camp where Nephi broke his bow.
Second, we had the time to dissect the trail into pieces and tackle each challenge one step at a time. For example, it took George Potter and Richard Wellington three years to find the probable site of Shazer.
Third, we had a rich pool of technical experts to draw from. The American community in Arabia is blessed with talented and experienced geologists, desert explorers, old map collectors and Arabists. Finally, because many of us work closely with Saudis in our jobs, we have many opportunities to discuss travel in Arabia with those who may have had ancestors who traveled on or dealt with those using the ancient caravan trails to transport commodities from one place to another.
After traveling some 75,000 miles of desert roads and having spent what seemed like endless hours in interviews and libraries, George and his co-author and exploring partner Richard Willington are happy to report that they have finally concluded their study on Lehi's trail.
With an air of satisfaction on his face, George is convinced as he told me the other day once again: "Not only do we believe we have located every Book of Mormon place-name in Arabia, we have also found that every assertion made by Nephi about their travels in the wilderness, 81 in all, exist now or did exist in c BC 597." (see www.nephiproject.com)
I remember the surprise at first, as George found that his first-hand research and travel discoveries did not support the theories of earlier Book of Mormon writers on the subject. Dr. Nibley was the sole exception but had only written in generalities.
Previous writers had Lehi wandering in Arabia or forging a trail down the Red Sea shoreline. Both these theories are baseless in terms of Nephi's text, and furthermore would have been impossible to have accomplished during the sixth century BC.
Our discoveries were found along the slightly inland Frankincense trail. It quickly became obvious that Dr. Nibley's theory was right. That is, Lehi had taken the same trail that all trans-Arabic travelers took in that day; the Gaza to Salalah branch of the caravan route of the Frankincense trail. To help you put it into perspective, think of the Frankincense route as the New Jersey Turnpike or San Diego Freeway of its day.
How did George Potter come to walk in the shoes of an explorer? His only previous exploring days were preparation day expeditions when he was a LDS missionary. His mission from 1969-71 took him to the heights of the Andes; the land of the Incas and several other ancient civilizations.
He and his missionary companions, like most LDS missionaries called to Central and South America, enjoyed exploring the ancient ruins near where they served. To George, each set of rocky remains seemed to reveal another aspect of life in the Americans before Columbus.
After a year at BYU and his mission, George returned to his home state of California and put aside amateur archaeology. He graduated with high honors from the University of California at San Diego, and two years later received a master's degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
Upon leaving the university he became a Certified Public Accountant and practiced as an auditor for one of the so-called Big 5 firms.
Later he entered management and consulting; two professions which have taken him to over 40 countries, including a five year stay in Zurich, Switzerland.
Nine years ago, he took the opportunity to settle down with SCECO, the power company of Saudi Arabia.
Dividing his time between his family of ten children, a demanding career, Church and community work is never easy, especially when the possibilities that lay open to him to verify or disprove his evolving ideas on Lehi-Nephi's trail. Somehow, he made or found the time to ponder the Book of Mormon exploring possibilities in Arabia.
The same can be said for those who became his primary partners in research and exploration, Richard Wellington and Timothy Sedor. Their lives were also transformed.
George's Bishop at the time, Richard Wellington (UK), probably wishes George had never moved into his ward.
Richard has accompanied George on almost very trip into the desert, spent thousands of hours reading on the subject, and is the co-author of their book Discovering The Lehi-Nephi Trail. (Due for release in Fall 2002).
Their ward clerk and permanent Primary teacher, Timothy Sedor (USA) endured a similar fate. Tim has evolved into a gifted photographer, producing with George a series of videos on our discoveries. (see www.nephiproject.com).
George's life as an explorer started one hot morning in May of 1995 when Tom Culler, Craig Thorsted and George set out from their homes on the Persian Gulf side of Arabia to their destiny in the northwest corner of Saudi Arabia.
George had no idea his life was about to change. All he knew was that his two traveling partners were determined to find the Arabian candidate for Mount Sinai which the Paul mentions in the Book of Galatians.
Tom, a member of the stake presidency at the time, and Craig, his group leader, had made several previous attempts to find the candidate for the sacred mountain that so many believe (even today) is located in Egypt on the Sinai Peninsula (Mt. St. Katherine's).
Brother Potter assumed that this trip, like the ones before it, would fail to locate the mountain. With this in mind, he agreed to take Tom and Craig in his truck on the twenty-hour drive to Midian with the proviso that if they failed to find the mountain within two days, they would give up their first objective, cross the border to Jordan, and visit the famous Jordanian ruins of Petra. Thus it was agreed, and they headed out of town on a very long trip across Arabia.
As they entered the region of Arabia called Midian, George saw that the area had hundreds of mountains within its reaches. He grew very doubtful of their chances of success.
Tom and Craig however, were optimistic. Tom had a friend, who had a friend, who knew someone who lived in the area and knew the Bedouins near Jabel al-Lawz, the suspect mountain they were looking for. George felt he had been around the block a few times, and thought this would be just another goose-chase.
Lo and behold, on their arrival in Tabuk, the nearest city to their search area, there was the friend's friend's colleague waiting for them. This "City" Saudi confirmed that he knew the Bedouins in the area. George and Tom figured that even if he could not find his friends, this Saudi spoke enough English to function as a translator for them.
An hour's drive northwest from Tabuk, they left the highway and headed out across the sand and through the hills. Here and there they started picking up the Saudi's Bedu buddies. First the Bedouins took them to a tall sandstone cliff where water dripped from an overhang into a pool of water. One guide proclaimed through our translator that, "Here is where Musa (Arabic for Moses) struck the rock and water came out". George was not impressed.
Next, they stopped at a Bedouin camp to pick up rifles in case wolves or rabbits were spotted. The tribesmen hunted both animals for food. At last they headed up a steep dirt construction road toward the top Jebel al-Lawz. Unfortunately they found that the entire mountain was a massive construction project. It's top, which had been removed, was the future site of a US built radar and command center. The defense site would eventually cost some five hundred million US dollars. We left the mountain realizing that if it had been mount Sinai, it could no longer reveal its monuments.
George, Tom and Craig spent the afternoon as the guest of one of the Bedouin's fathers. He was a noble man in his sixties. He had one of those lean muscular bodies so typical of the older generation of rugged Bedu herdsman. Through our translator we learned that he had four wives and twenty-five sons and daughters. After hearing of such a brood, for once in his life, George felt that his own large family was only a modest lot. This probably explained why this Bedu patriarch was such a hard worker. He offered them a Bedu feast, and then personally prepared the entire meal. He gathered a live goat and bags of flour and salt into a desert feast called kebsa.
After dinner, the old Bedouin provided them with an amazing demonstration of marksmanship. With his old Chinese rifle, steadiness of body and sharp-eye, he hit target after target. After the feast, the LDS trio said good-bye to their new Bedouin friends, and set up their camp before darkness fell.
From an anthropological standpoint, it had been a wonderful outing. However, that day they found no Mount Sinai candidate. They woke the next morning bright and early.
George broke down his tent, enjoyed a wilderness breakfast, and looked forward to a delightful day in the desert, chasing an elusive Mount Sinai. That day however, they located the target of their search, possibly the very mountain that to this day is revered by the locals as Jebel-al-Musa.
The real jewel of their trip came the following day. Tom had returned to the Eastern Province, while George and Craig set out to trace the trail of Moses. In so doing, they stumbled upon a place of great importance to the LDS community, the Valley of Lemuel. (see FARMS/BYU Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, November 1999) Now George was impressed. He realized that it had all the characteristics associated with Lehi's first camp in the wilderness, and from that moment, he knew he had found a calling - "find the rest of Lehi's trail". (to be continued in Part Two)
About the Author
Bruce A. Santucci has helped George Potter by serving as his editor, narrator and supportive companion.
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The Discovery of the Valley of Lemuel:
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Oh, joy...
Did they also find evidence of the “Quaker like people” on the sun. Now that would be hot.
:)
"The Young Woman's Journal", article is dated "Feb 6, 1892".
"Nearly all the great discoveries of men in the last half century have, in one way or another, either directly or indirectly, contributed to prove Joseph Smith to be a Prophet.
As far back as 1837, I know that he said the moon was inhabited by men and women the same as this earth, and that they lived to a greater age than we do - that they live generally to near the age of a 1000 years.
He described the men as averaging near six feet in height, and dressing quite uniformly in something near the Quaker style.
In my Patriarchal blessing, given by the father of Joseph the Prophet, in Kirtland, 1837, I was told that I should preach the gospel before I was 21 years of age; that I should preach the gospel to the inhabitants upon the islands of the sea, and - to the inhabitants of the moon, even the planet you can now behold with your eyes.
The first two promises have been fulfilled, and the latter may be verified.
From the verification of two promises we may reasonably expect the third to be fulfilled also."
---------------------
"The inspiration of God caused men to hunt for a new continent until Columbus discovered it.
Men have lost millions of dollars and hundreds of lives to find a country beyond the north pole; and they will yet find that country - a warm, fruitful country, inhabited by the ten tribes of Israel, a country divided by a river, on one side of which lives the half tribe of Manasseh, which is more numerous than all the others.
So said the Prophet. At the same time he described the shape of the earth at the poles as being a rounded elongation."
Right, great story. Another fairy tale based on a fairy tale.
Various poisonous snakes are emerging from their hideouts because of the high temperatures
___________________________________________
DUH
Snakes are more likely to go down into “their hideouts because of the high temperatures”
Its cooler underground...
I think it depends on the climate.
either directly or indirectly, contributed to prove Joseph Smith to be a Prophet.
That must be in parallel world or twilight zone world.
But I do like a good laugh to wake up with = thanks.
Now off for another coffee.
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