Nephi is commanded by his father, together with his three brothers, to go back to Jerusalem, to the house of one Laban, who has in his possession a record of the Jews, engraven on plates of brass, as he is informed by the Lord in a dream; and that it likewise contained the genealogy of his ancestors. Nephi is ready to obey, and by some little persuasion, the four brothers embark for the plates at Jerusalem. Laban, who has them in possession, refuses to give the plates to the ambassadors. But Nephi was not to be foiled. Two unsuccessful attempts are made, and, the third time, Nephi finds Laban drunk within the walls of the city, and says: “ And I, Nephi, beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof, and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceeding fine ; and I saw the blade thereof was of most precious steel" p. 12.

This is the earliest account of steel to be found in history. Alexander the Great, who lived about three hundred years after the period here spoken of, employed iron for points to his instruments of war, as Josephus tells us; and the same author says, that he complained that his weapons were so easily blunted ; now, if steel had been in use, either at Rome, Jerusalem, or Damascus, at the time here spoken of, in Alexander’s time it would have been common, and he would have used it for his weapons instead of iron. Damascus was once famous for manufacturing swords, but it was long after the Christian era. A coarse kind of steel, or iron carbonated, was used in the days of Julius Caesar, about one hundred years before Christ.