the reformed Egyptian characters engraved on gold plates into English through various means, including the use of a seer stone or the interpreter stones, or both. Smith said when he had finished the translation, he returned the plates to the angel Moroni, and therefore they are unavailable for study. The "Anthon Transcript" The "Anthon Transcript" is a piece of paper on which Joseph Smith is said to have transcribed reformed Egyptian characters from the golden plates—the ancient record from which Smith claimed to have translated the Book of Mormon. A manuscript known as the "Caractors" document was previously thought to be this transcript. However, handwriting analysis has suggested that this document was written by John Whitmer, one of the Eight Witnesses. Since the actual Anthon Transcript was taken to New York in the winter of 1828, and John Whitmer was not affiliated with the Church until June 1829, the "Caractors" document cannot be the Anthon Transcript. Smith said that when this sample was presented by Smith's colleague Martin Harris to Columbia College professor Charles Anthon, a noted classical scholar, that Anthon had attested to the characters' authenticity in writing but had then ripped up his certification after hearing that the plates had been revealed by an angel. Anthon wrote, to the contrary, that he had believed from the first that Harris was the victim of fraud. In 1844, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints published a broadside about the Book of Mormon called "The Stick of Joseph" that reprinted some "reformed Egyptian" characters that resemble those on the first three lines of the "Caractors" document. The broadside said that the characters were those that had been shown to Anthon. But it is unlikely that the characters on the broadside came directly from the "Caractors" document because Whitmer was excommunicated in 1838 and took his papers with him. Mainstream scholarly view of reformed Egyptian Standard language reference works contain no reference to "reformed Egyptian". No non-Mormon scholars acknowledge the existence of either a "reformed Egyptian" language or a "reformed Egyptian" script as it has been described in Mormon belief. For instance, in 1966, John A. Wilson, professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, wrote, "From time to time there are allegations that picture writing has been found in America . ... In no case has a professional Egyptologist been able to recognize these characters as Egyptian hieroglyphs. From