One class of inquirers affirm that it is evident, from a careful study of the Book of Mormon, that the people of Nephi were greatly influenced by the language and ideas of the Egyptians. That language was the language of their every-day life, altered or reformed (whether corrupted or improved cannot be told) so greatly in the course of time, that in his day Moroni informs us no other people knew it. In the thousand years that had elapsed between the exodus of Lehi from Jerusalem and the abridgement of the record, the Nephites had altered the Hebrew also, so that neither their sacred nor their common modes of speech could be understood by other races. At the very opening of the inspired record Nephi writes: I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father. A little further on he explains what that learning was. He says: I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning [literature] of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians. It is not strange that Lehi should have been acquainted with the Egyptian tongue, as from the days of king Solomon, for some hundreds of years, it was the polite language of the world, as French was in Europe during the eighteenth century. King Mosiah in after years confirmed this statement, that Lehi was taught in the language of the Egyptians. It would be rather unreasonable to suppose that the knowledge of that language carried no further influence than to enable the Nephites to converse in it. It brought them _en rapport_ so to speak, with those who used it in its native home in Africa, evidences of which yet exist in the Egyptian types of architecture and hieroglyphics found in the midst of the ruins of the ancient cities, scattered far and wide over this western continent. This similarity has been noticed again and again by explorers and students, but its cause still remains to them an unsolved problem.[21] To the believers in the Book of Mormon the mystery stands revealed. Other students incline to the opinion that when the Egyptian language is mentioned it probably only means its orthography. They say the Jews seem to have understood the Egyptian language or writing. For he [Lehi] having been taught in the language of the Egyptians, therefore he could read these engravings [the brass plates]. Laban and his forefathers must have understood the Egyptian, and recorded their sacred writings, from generation to generation, in that language. The words "language of the Egyptians" very probably means little more than Egyptian characters or an alphabet for spelling Hebrew words. There seemed to be two sets of characters--the Egyptian and the Hebrew (see Mormon ix., 32 and 33) for spelling; but it is doubtful whether the words written were words of two distinct languages, or words of one language written in the Egyptian and Hebrew characters. Which was the fact is not clearly specified.