What Might Have Been Translated as “Horse” and “Chariot”?

Even assuming that horse and chariot represent translation anachronisms, the nouns still represent textual placeholders from some animal and conveyance in the original plate language. Fortunately, a Mesoamerican context provides a culturally plausible possibility.

The appropriate conveyance would be a royal litter, carried on men’s shoulders rather than pulled by an animal. The royal litter is also often associated with an animal. Freidel, Schele, and Parker note:

Lintel 2 of Temple 1 shows Hasaw-Ka’an-K’awil wearing the balloon headdress of Tlaloc-Venus warfare adopted at the time of the Waxaktun conquest, and holding the bunched javelins and shield, the original metaphors for war imported then from Teotihuacán. He sits in majesty on the litter that carried him into battle, which above him hulks Waxaklahun-Ubah-Kan, the great War Serpent. . . .

Graffiti drawings scratched on the walls of Tikal palaces, depicting the conjuring of supernatural beings from the Otherworld, prove that these scenes were more than imaginary events seen only by the kings. Several of these elaborate doodles show the great litters of the king with his protector beings hovering over him while he is participating in ritual. These images are not the propaganda of rulers, created in an effort to persuade the people of the reality of the supernatural events they were witnessing. They are the poorly drawn images of witnesses, perhaps minor members of lordly families, who scratched the wonders that they saw during moments of rituals into the walls of the places where they lived their lives.

Karl Taube discusses the practice among the later lowland Maya:

Along with warriors and hunters Maya kings had a distinct relation with the forest, as they were capable of passing beyond political and natural boundaries to visit or conquer distant realms. With this unique ability, they were identified with the jaguar (the “king” of the forest)—a concept vividly expressed by royal litters and palanquins topped by jaguar beings. First appearing on Stela 212 of Late Preclassic Izapa, such jaguar vehicles are common in Classic Maya art, including figurines.

The most elaborate portrayals of jaguar palanquins appear on wooden lintels from Temples I and IV of Tikal. In the lintel scenes, the seated rulers are backed by massive supernatural jaguar figures. . . . The jaguar palanquins reveal that, during the Classic Maya period, Maya kings prowled the landscape as fierce beats guarding and extending their domains.

Maya art represents the king riding on a litter associated with an animal as an accompanying spirit. The graffiti litters at least open the possibility that these were simply formal litters and not limited to battle context. These litters were accompanied by a “battle beast,” or an animal alter ego, embodied in the regalia of the king and litter. I suggest that the plausible underlying conveyance in the story of Ammon was a royal litter, accompanied in peacetime by the spiritual animal associated with the king. I suggest that the appearance of “horse” in this context comes from Joseph’s assumption in the translation rather than the meaning of the text on the plates.

The animal was a type of alter-ego for the king, and was called the (way (pronounced “Y”):

The wayob [plural of way] of the Classic Maya imagery appeared in many guises, including humanlike forms, animals of all sorts, and grotesque combinations of human and animal bodies. . . . It is interesting that pottery scenes from most of the major kingdoms depict creatures who are the way of their ruling lords; but with the exception of the rulers of Palenque, individual kings never recorded the names of their way in the texts on their monuments. From this we deduce that particular companion spirits were associated with particular lineages and kingdoms, and that their names were generally known to the artist who painted the pots. . . .

The ancient Maya also transformed into their wayob when they fought their wars, and they very likely saw the planets and constellations as the wayob of the gods and their ancestors.

There is no way to know precisely what was on the plates. However, there is ample evidence that Joseph’s translation process allowed him to impose modern terms and concepts on ancient but unfamiliar terms. Thus, plausible combinations of elements may explain the horse/chariot combination in the Book of Mormon in a way that fits the context and the descriptions rather than just the assumption embodied in the English words horses and chariot. Strengthening this hypothesis is the mention of horses and chariots in Alma 18:9 where the context is a “great feast appointed at the land of Nephi, by the father of Lamoni, who was king over all the land.” (See “The Overking and Subordinate Kings” below in this chapter.) The fact that the horses were fed suggests either a live accompanying animal or another instance of assumptive translation.