The Spice Route Through the Arabian Desert and Lehi's Travels

Parent page: Book of Mormon/Geography/Old World

Route of travel in the Arabian desert

It is obvious that the party went down the eastern and not the western shore of the Red Sea (as some have suggested) from the fact that they changed their course and turned east at the nineteenth parallel of latitude, and "did travel nearly eastward from that time forth," passing through the worst desert of all, where they "did travel and wade through much affliction," and "did live upon raw meat in the wilderness" (1 Nephi 17:1—2). Had the party journeyed on the west coast of the Red Sea, they would have had only water to the east of them at the nineteenth parallel and for hundreds of miles to come. But why the nineteenth parallel? Because Joseph Smith may have made an inspired statement to that effect.47 He did not know, of course, and nobody knew until the 1930s, that only by taking a "nearly eastward" direction from that point could Lehi have reached the one place where he could find the rest and the materials necessary to prepare for his long sea voyage.

Of the Qara Mountains which lie in that limited sector of the coast of South Arabia which Lehi would have reached if he turned east at the nineteenth parallel, Bertram Thomas, one of the few Europeans who has ever seen them, writes:

What a glorious place! Mountains three thousand feet high basking above a tropical ocean, their seaward slopes velvety with waving jungle, their roofs fragrant with rolling yellow meadows, beyond which the mountains slope northwards to a red sandstone steppe. . . . Great was my delight when in 1928 I suddenly came upon it all from out of the arid wastes of the southern borderlands. 48

As to the terrible southeastern desert, "The Empty Quarter," which seems from Nephi's account to have been the most utter desolation of all, Burton could write as late as 1852:

Of the Rub'a al-Khali I have heard enough, from credible relators, to conclude that its horrid depths swarm with a large and half-starving population; that it abounds in Wadys, valleys, gullies and ravines, . . . that the land is open to the adventurous traveler.49

The best western authority on Arabia was thus completely wrong about the whole nature of the great southeast quarter a generation after the Book of Mormon appeared, and it was not until 1930 that the world knew that the country in which Lehi's people were said to have suffered the most is actually the worst and most repelling desert on earth.

In Nephi's picture of the desert everything checks perfectly. There is not one single slip amid a wealth of detail, the more significant because it is so casually conveyed.^[1]

Lehi's desert journey: The Incense Trail

There are hints in the narrative that those in Lehi's party knew of the incense trail, an aspect of ancient Arabia that Joseph Smith could not have known....This route, already well established by the era of Lehi and Sariah, had already developed an infrastructure that would support desert travel, including wells and food sources for humans and animals.

It is not really possible to speak of a single trail. At times this trail was only a few yards wide when it traversed mountain passes. At others, it was several miles across. In places the trail split into two or more branches that, at a point farther on, would reunite into one main road. Essentially, the trail carried caravan traffic, loaded with frankincense and myrrh, from southern Arabia into the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian regions. Until late antiquity, the trail ran along the east side of the mountain range in western Arabia rather than along the west or coastal side.74 In addition, its caravans carried exotic goods that had come to Arabia by ship from India and China. Indeed, it was one of the most important economic highways of the ancient world, and therefore competition and disruption were not tolerated.75

The party of Lehi and Sariah could easily have followed, or traveled parallel to, the trail as they moved deeper into Arabia, except in areas where rugged hills or extensive boulder fields at the sides of the trail prevented a person from leaving the main road. The trail and its spurs kept to the main wells and grasslands where caravanners could obtain water and food for their animals and themselves. It is apparent that Lehi's party had met people who knew and used this trail because some in the group threatened to return home from Nahom, even though they were by then approximately fourteen hundred miles south of Jerusalem (see 1 Nephi 16:36) and even though twice between the first camp and Nahom they had faced the terrifying prospect of starvation (see 1 Nephi 16:17–32,39).

As we might expect, the terrain through which the trail ran differed from place to place. In the south, where inhabitants harvested and packed the incense, the trail ran from populated area to populated area where cultivation was extensive because of irrigation works. Farther north, past Nahom, the trail passed through a vast, sparsely settled area that was inhabited largely by unruly nomads who had to be controlled and cajoled by the governments and merchants that profited from the incense trade. It was evidently in this area that the party of Lehi and Sariah came to rely heavily on their compass to lead them to the "fertile parts of the wilderness" where they could find fodder for their animals and food for themselves (see 1 Nephi 16:14,16). Joseph Smith, of course, would not have been acquainted with such a huge desert region lying between two rather fruitful areas, one in the south and one in the north, for northwest Arabia, the location of the first camp, also offered regions of rather high fertility and settlement where a person could find oases and, in antiquity, large areas of cultivation.76

From northwest Arabia the northward trail split, one spur turning west toward Egypt and the other continuing north toward such destinations as Jerusalem, Gaza, and Damascus. Even though the terrain was rough and dry along this part of the trail, towns and cities sprang up at regular intervals and their citizens made much of their living by servicing the incense caravans.^[2]

Lehi's desert journey: Afflictions

It is important to add a few words about the kinds of vicissitudes that the party met along the way. Nephi said of their troubles that "we did . . . wade through much affliction," afterward characterizing the hardships less vividly as "afflictions and much difficulty" (1 Nephi 17:1,6). Later Book of Mormon authors who had consulted the full set of records added important details, speaking of the family's suffering from both "famine" and "all manner of diseases" while crossing the desert (Mosiah 1:17; Alma 9:22). Joseph Smith would not necessarily have known about either kind of difficulty.77

Modern knowledge of Arabia shows it to be a land of harsh deserts with agriculture only in certain spots. Charles Doughty calls northwest Arabia "this land of famine," adding that "famine is ever in the desert."78 In contrast, beginning with Theophrastus (372–287 BC), authors of the classical age, whose writings only savants in Joseph Smith's day would have had some access to, uniformly but incorrectly portrayed the region as one of agricultural abundance and natural, luxuriant growth, giving rise to the name Arabia Felix—Arabia the Blessed.79 Thus, Nephi's narrative agrees with what is now known of the Arabian Peninsula rather than with what was seemingly true about Arabia from ancient classical sources.

What about disease? To be sure, in both Strabo's account of the Roman military force that met disaster in Arabia in 25–24 BC and in a brief note in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea there is information about illness.80 But none of this information about the general climate of health was available to Joseph Smith. It is chiefly modern explorers who have documented the awful conditions that meet travelers. For example, Ahmed Fakhry speaks of a cultivated valley that only descendants of African slaves live in because of the high risk of malaria. Doughty writes of wells filled "with corrupt water" and "infected with camel urine," a common phenomenon. He adds that he and his fellow travelers had to strain out "wiggling white vermin . . . through . . . our kerchiefs."81 Hence, the Book of Mormon offers a portrait of difficulties compatible both with what has recently become known about desert travel in Arabia and with the ancient situation that has continued roughly the same into modern times because of unchanging travel and climatic conditions.82^[3]

Lehi's desert journey: Wealth

We merely remind ourselves of the abundant riches that came to the people of southern Arabia in large part because they controlled the growing and harvesting of the world's best incense. In the dream of Lehi, this feature appears connected most directly to the people whom he saw wearing "exceedingly fine" clothing and, less directly, to the verdant, irrigated fields that supported a very large population in antiquity (see 1 Nephi 8:2,7,9–10,13). Joseph Smith could not have known about these dimensions of life in Arabia that existed about 600 BC.^[4]

Arabian trade-route followed by Lehi

Hugh Nibley

Of all types of commerce, Eduard Meyer concludes, that across the desert played a particularly important role, "to it men were beholden for the most precious and coveted of all nature's products, gold and incense. . . . On that trade rests the fact that in South Arabia among the Sabaeans about 1,000 years before Christ a high civilization was developed, which was in direct commercial contact with the states on the Mediterranean."

The story of this South Arabic trade is one of the most important and intriguing chapters in economic history, and it directly concerns the Book of Mormon. For many centuries the richest trade route in the world was that which ran along the eastern shore of the Red Sea for almost the entire length of the Arabian peninsula. This is the route that Lehi took when he escaped from Jerusalem—and even his skeptical family seemed to think that he knew what he was doing. Not only the wealth of the Indies, but even the more fabulous wealth of Africa passed through the suqs of Saba (Sheba) to Europe and the Near East, and from very early times the Israelites were in on the trade. ^[5]

Notes

1. ↑ Hugh W. Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 3rd edition, (Vol. 6 of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley), edited by John W. Welch, (Salt Lake City, Utah : Deseret Book Company ; Provo, Utah : Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1988), Chapter 18, references silently removed—consult original for citations.
2. ↑ S. Kent Brown, "New Light from Arabia on Lehi's Trail," in Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2002), Chapter 5, references silently removed—consult original for citations.
3. ↑ S. Kent Brown, "New Light from Arabia on Lehi's Trail," in Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2002), Chapter 5, references silently removed—consult original for citations.
4. ↑ S. Kent Brown, "New Light from Arabia on Lehi's Trail," in Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2002), Chapter 5, references silently removed—consult original for citations.
5. ↑ Hugh W. Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 3rd edition, (Vol. 6 of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley), edited by John W. Welch, (Salt Lake City, Utah : Deseret Book Company ; Provo, Utah : Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1988), Chapter 5, references silently removed—consult original for citations.