Steel as carburized iron had been around in the ancient Near east and in Palestine for centuries before Lehi, and the most important source of iron ore in Syro-Palestine was located in the Gilead Mountains inside trial half-Manasseh in transjordan. In fact, King David's chief metallurgist was Barzillai ("man of iron," form the Hebrew for "iron," barzel), a metonymic name for that Gileadite functioning at the time when iron & steel technology in Palestine really took off, i.e., when it was no longer the monopoly of the Philistines (1 Samuel 13:19-22). John Tvedtnes has argued that Lehi was, among other things, a metallurgist (like the Qenites associated with Midian), and his son Nephi certainly seems to have known this trade well-mining and processing ore to fashion special tools and presumably to make golden plates in South Arabia and in the New World (1 Nephi 17:9-11, 16; 18;25-19:3; 2 Nephi 5: 14,15).

Steel-making (carburizing via hammering and quenching of iron) was commonplace in Egypt long before Lehi came on the scene, and metoric iron with high nickel content (Egyptian bi3 n pt "metal of heaven; meteoric iron" = Coptic benipe "iron") was used by highly skilled Egyptians, along with hematite (iron oxide ore), from at least the 11st Dynasty, although some pre-Dynastic use of both was made. Iron smelting began in Egypt during the New kingdom (Dynasty 18), and steel became more common than bronze by the time of Lehi. The Hittites were already making steel by the 15th century B.C., and the King of Mitanni even presented a couple of steel-bladed daggers to Amenhotep III (Dyn. 18), among other iron gifts. They have not been recovered archaeologically, but we do have the only slightly later steel-bladed and gold-hilted one from Tutankamun's tomb (above, exactly as described at I Nephi 4:9), and similar steel-bladed swords and knives have been found elsewhere at Israelite (at Kirbet Qeiyafa) and Philistine sites (at Tel el0Far'ah = Philistine Sharuhen, and at Tell Qasile). Moreover, Gordon Thomasson calls our attention to the more recent discovery of a steel short-sword (blade 12-16 inches long) with ivory hilt and bronze rivets at Philistine Ekron (Tel Miqne). The first actual steel implements known from Palestine, however, include an eleventh century B.C. pick from Upper Galilean Har Adir, and a steel axe-head from Tel Qiri (near Jokneam) from the same period. Equally early steel is known also at that time in South Arabia.

Iron works (including furnaces) were supposedly found by Petrie at Gerar in Palestine, and iron0working even spread into Meroe (modern Sudan)-both before the time of Lehi-and this may be the product of Greek mercenaries (Ionian and Carian Greeks) contemporary with Lehi using the same technology as far afield as Nubia. Assyrian texts tell of tribute in the form of iron bars delivered to Assyrian King Sargon II (722-705 B.C.), and indeed 160 tones of such bars, picks, and chains were found by archaeologists at his palace in Khorsabad (ancient Dar Skarrukin), Iraq. Most of these bars are of soft, malleable wrought iron, rather than steel (carburized iron). Already in the Hellenic heroic age, according to Homer, "[o]ne of the prizes in the funeral games in the Iliad, by which Achilles commemorated the death of his friend Patroclus, was an ingot of iron." Whether this refers to a "bloom" of iron is the relevant question, and it is clear that the bellows made by Nephi (1 Nephi 17:11; also pictured on the Middle Kingdom tomb wall at Beni Ḥasan) could be used to smelt iron at around 1200 oC in order to obtain just such a workable "bloom."